Thai Tensions Form Apt Backdrop for Asean Meeting

By MARWAAN MACAN-MARKAR / IPS WRITER

BANGKOK — The decision by Thai government to shift the venue of a regional summit from Bangkok to the northern city of Chiang Mai points to an administration unsure of its place in the country’s capital.

Prime Minster Somchai Wongsawat announced the move during a weekend visit to the country’s second largest city, which nestles in the hilly region close to the Burmese border. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) leaders’ meeting will run there from December 15-18.

"The main reason for the change was the government’s worry that the continuing protests led by the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) could cause trouble for the event," the ‘Bangkok Post’ reported on Monday, quoting an unnamed foreign ministry source.

It is a decision that is winning little praise from some former diplomats, given what a change of venue implies. "This is the government’s admission of its weaknesses and that it is not in control," Kasit Piromya, a former Thai ambassador to the United States, told IPS. "It is the government that runs the country, yet we see that they are not in charge."

It also reflects the government’s refusal to "solve the problem by having a dialogue with the PAD," he added. "The government has not shown any sign that it wants to speak with the PAD and defuse the situation to hold the Asean summit in Bangkok."

The PAD, which champions a conservative, right-wing and an extreme nationalist agenda, has crippled the ruling six-party coalition from functioning through its street protests that have continued since May. It currently occupies the prime minister’s office and hundreds of its protesters laid siege to parliament in early October.

However, political tension does not plague Thailand alone. Malaysia, to its south, is gripped with its own turmoil. The government that has ruled for decades, led by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), is in a spin due to an internal tussle for power and pressure from the opposition led by the charismatic Anwar Ibrahim.

The power of the ruling Barisan Nasional (National Alliance) coalition was shattered during general elections in March, emboldening the opposition and the country’s minorities to mount challenges after the watershed poll. The opposition won five states and 82 seats in the 222-seat parliament, while the Barisan retained 140 seats.

Since the poll, Anwar, who leads the National Justice Party, has held regular political rallies in Kuala Lumpur and elsewhere, attracting thousands of people at times. He has already threatened to form a new government by attracting defectors from the Barisan’s parliamentarians.

What is happening in Thailand and Malaysia reflects a "shift in how people perceive democracy in this region," says Roshan Jason, executive director of the Asean Inter-parliamentary Myanmar (Burma) Caucus. "The public is demanding greater engagement in the process of government and decision making."

"The old order of letting Southeast Asian governments rule without any accountability to the people is unravelling," he added during a telephone interview from Kuala Lumpur. "Unfortunately, Asean still trails behind other regions in this area," Jason said.

Yet not all of Asean’s founding nations—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand—are eager to create a political culture that keeps an elected government in check through opposition pressure and campaigns by anti-government activists. The affluent city-state of Singapore is still determined to remain a nominal democracy.

Recently, Chee Soon Juan, leader of the opposition Singapore Democratic Party, was slapped with another crippling fine in the latest of legal cases brought against him by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his father, Lee Kuan Yew. The cases affirmed the authoritarian climate that still prevails in the region’s most economically developed nation.

Indonesia and the Philippines, by contrast, have made strides towards becoming more democratic and have moved beyond the stage where Thailand and Malaysia find themselves. Asean’s other members include Brunei, an absolute monarchy, Burma, under the grip of a military dictatorship, Cambodia, which has a young, flawed democracy, and Laos and Vietnam, both of which are ruled by communist parties.

Bringing this patchwork of struggling democracies, semi-democracies and non-democracies into a cohesive regional entity is the challenge that looms before the 14th Asean summit. After all, the period under Thailand’s stewardship was to mark a major transition for this bloc, which was created in 1967 as a bulwark against the spread of communism during the height of the Cold War.

The focus of this year’s summit is the endorsement of the Asean Charter, which aims to transform this 10-member body into a rules-based entity. A key pillar in this makeover is a plan to establish a new regional human rights mechanism. Asean has also set its sights on creating a unified, integrated economic community by 2015.

"We now look forward to an early entry into force of the Asean Charter before the Asean leaders meet in Bangkok for their summit," Surin Pitsuwan, Asean secretary-general and former Thai foreign minister, said in a statement last week before the change of venue was announced.

In fact, one regional diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the political tension in Thailand leading up to the summit in Chiang Mai serves as "a reality check for the Asean governments about the new political attitudes in our region. The Charter will be meaningless if this trend is ignored there."