A path to truth in Thailand

via CAAI News Media

By Danny Unger

BANGKOK - While the gathering of anti-government red-shirt protesters in central Bangkok is over, it remains unclear what comes next for Thailand. There are encouraging calls for all Thais to recognize the real grievances of the rural and urban poor, ranging from economic marginalization and social exclusion to political disenfranchisement. There is also strong sentiment in favor of prosecuting energetically those responsible for the recent contested killings and arson attacks.

Meanwhile, in the context of this week's censure debate in parliament, the predictable focus of all too much attention has been on what happened rather than the important need to focus on why things happened. Whatever evidence is offered in parliament in support of one interpretation of events against another is not going to sway many listeners in the current polarized context.

Thailand's modern political history, and indeed much of its ethos, is marked by amnesties, forgiveness and tolerance. These wise policies and fine human qualities might in some contexts be described as encouraging legal impunity and failures to assign responsibility for crimes and abuses. The habits of tolerance and policies of amnesty may have helped Thais in the past to move on, to put painful incidents behind them. Perhaps, however, these habits carry a hidden cost. Along with Thais' ability to move on, has there also been a failure to confront and resolve substantive issues, a failure to learn from the past?

There does not seem to be any obvious wisdom suggesting which approach - accountability and sanction on the one hand, or amnesty and avoidance of assigning blame on the other - is best. One approach offers some satisfaction that the morally culpable (or virtuous) may be held to account and the hope that society as a whole may benefit from the punishment of deviance (or the rewarding of virtue).

The other approach, however, may offer the only real chance of escape from a spiral of division, hate and violence. This moral and policy dilemma accounts for the popularity, at least for a time, of variations on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a very distinct approximation of which is currently at work in Cambodia's Extraordinary Chambers trials of the Khmer Rouge. The South African approach sacrifices a degree of moral accountability in hopes of achieving a semblance of social peace.

Thailand's greatest need today is greater social peace, or is it the commitment to the rule of law and the establishment of a framework for future dispute resolution? My own tentative conclusion is that strengthening norms of legal accountability is the more pressing need, in part because the goal of social peace might be pursued simultaneously through other means, both substantive and symbolic.

In addition, however, I have my doubts that the achievement of social calm through claims of substantive unity is today possible. It may no longer be credible to assert that because we are all Thais we should be at peace with one another. The better hope, I believe, lies with an effort to establish the procedural bases of pluralism, the agreement to settle conflicts through prescribed procedures such as elections of parliaments.

Today, different groups of Thais seem to have embraced alternative conceptions of the political equivalent of original sin, the Christian notion of a primordial act that accounts for all (sinful) acts that follow. Many Thais now seem to be mesmerized by the perceived injustices of the 2001 Constitutional Court ruling in former premier Thaksin Shinawatra's favor, the September 2006 coup that toppled his administration, and the 2008 court rulings that dissolved the Thaksin-aligned Samak Sundaravej and Somchai Wongsawat governments.

This preoccupation with past injustices raises doubts that Thais will be ready soon for either widespread forgetting or forgiving. Thailand now resembles in some respects Northern Ireland, the Middle East, the Balkans, or South Asia, places where the grip of past conflict and injustice on politics, even the very distant past, is particularly tough to shake.

Creating a culture of accountability would not be easy in Thailand given the widespread impunity enjoyed by the powerful. And even if those responsible for the seizure of Suvannaphumi Airport in 2008 face prosecution along with those who ordered, enabled, and committed arson on May 19 this year, it is likely that there will be confusion between equivalence understood in terms of legal procedure and equivalence measured in the severity of sentencing. For many, only the latter is likely to satisfy.

One important step that could help promote social peace and offer a degree of accountability would be vast improvements in getting out the truth about the uses of the state's instruments of violence, whether authorized by constitutional authority or otherwise. To be sure, progress in finding and revealing such truths would not be easy. Powerful groups now shelter behind current opaque information practices. And there are also broader cultural forces at work that suggest only a concerted and sustained effort of leadership could begin to change existing practices.

Dramatic improvements in finding and revealing truths could benefit any groups in Thailand that are comparatively truthful. Thailand currently lives in a postmodern climate in which comparatively few widespread political truths are accepted by most Thais. Instead, there are many different and diametrically opposed stories.

Whatever the opposition Puea Thai party, or the red shirts, or the government might say today, it seems that much of their opposition will assume it to be lies or distortions while most of their supporters will accept it as truths. If one of those groups is more prone to truth telling than the others, it should have an interest in helping citizens differentiate lies from truths. Unless citizens have some confidence in their ability to make such a distinction, they are likely to remain agnostic in the face of most any claims to truth, except perhaps those issued by their fellow partisans.

Producing fundamental changes in Thailand's information regime would be difficult not only because many powerful interests would oppose the changes, but also because there may be an element in Thai culture itself that gives as much weight to appropriate conduct and comment as to a militant insistence on truthful statements.

In addition, anyone hoping to change Thailand's information practices has to confront media partisanship and, in particular, the technological changes that today make it so easy for consumers to expose themselves only to those voices with which they expect to agree. In any case, great changes cannot be effected quickly.

What mechanisms then might produce a story about the incidents of recent months that most Thais would accept as a reasonable approximation of the truth? It is not easy to think of individuals in Thailand who enjoy substantial trust among all competing partisan groups, although the government currently is trying to do so. This approach might yet work.

A possible alternative would be to invite a group of eminent persons from other Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries, or perhaps a group appointed by United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon. The government might not favor the latter approach because it implies that Thais may not be ready to trust the government itself. Many Thais may be uncomfortable with such an approach. It is not easy, after all, to envision the Canadian or Japanese governments appointing foreigners to a comparable fact-finding mission.

However, if the government believes the facts will on balance support its claims, rather than those of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship, it could well benefit from resort to foreigners. Such a group, whether composed of Thais, foreigners, or both, could be charged with uncovering and publishing facts and assigning responsibilities, to the extent it was able to do so. And it could be expected to be explicit in referring to those groups and agencies from which it received cooperation and information, and those that offered only obstruction.

Danny Unger is a political science professor at Northern Illinois University.