November 20, 2009
By Frank G. Anderson
Column: Thai Traditions
UPI Asia Online
Nakhonratchasima, Thailand — “Thaksin’s the obstacle. He’s uprooting our relations with Cambodia,” Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vajjajiva said in response to media inquiries about the two kingdoms’ recent rocky diplomatic road, news reports said Friday.
Abhisit may have something there. It was during the administration of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra that the now infamous dispute over the Phrea Vihear temple on the two countries’ border first boiled over into a tit-for-tat diplomat expulsion and a one-on-one word-for-word accusation contest began.
It is rumored, given no small amount of circumstantial evidence, that Thaksin had traded Thai sovereignty by, in part, obtaining oil concessions that benefitted himself while surrendering part of Thailand’s territory to Cambodia in a less-than-transparent Phreah Vihear quid pro quo. Both Cambodia and Thaksin deny any such oil deal was made, but experts are sifting through trails to establish conclusive connections. It won’t be an easy task.
Meanwhile the Thai government, responding to deep concerns in both countries about a possible border war, has stated that it has no plans to close the border – as it did recently with Malaysia in one area because of terrorism and drug threats.
As well, Thai officials, including the governors of Buriram and Sisaket provinces, which border Cambodia, have been busy shuttling back and forth to reassure locals and senior officials that things are normal and there is nothing to worry about. Sisaket’s governor Raphee Phongbuphakij told residents in the area he was confident that a coming athletic competition between Thailand and Cambodia “will restore close relationships between the people of our two nations and lead to further increase in friendly ties.”
His words were echoed by the Thai Army Region 2 commander in the area, Lt. Gen. Thowee Walit Jarasamrit, who told the public and media in an interview, “In general everything along the border is quiet … everything is peaceful and normal, and there is still close understanding between (our) two countries.”
He neglected to mention, however, that some 4.6 kilometers of Thai territory that was accessible to Thais in the past is now blocked off and occupied by Cambodian civilian settlers and military.
The Thai military’s silence is reputed to be one of the main reasons that relationships continue to be cited at least as friendly; to wit, that it has refused to act to first protect Thai territory, and then to recover it.
Thai opposition voices, including those indignant ones among the People’s Alliance for Democracy, have added fuel to the fire by suggesting that Thailand’s army has been unduly awarded with a massive budget over the years but failed to perform its duty – primarily, to protect the nation – in letting Cambodia take over Thai land.
Such nationalist sentiment is appreciated by Thailand’s powers-that-be – but so too are the vested interests that powerful political and commercial kingpins have in the economies of both countries. Even with national security at stake, closets are full of skeletons and the ones who know where they are have been lining their pockets over time with unrecorded deals that often don’t respect national interests. It’s an old game in Thailand and hardly one to be dropped anytime soon.
Thailand, as part of the ASEAN monolith, is playing a much bigger game than finding fault with a former prime minister or squabbling about sovereignty. That game is a greater Southeast Asia community that is fully independent of Western shackles and that can run its own destiny.
Recent ASEAN meetings in Thailand and in countries in the region have been designed to cement greater unity and cooperation in a broad range of areas, including those ubiquitous human rights issues. The great game afoot is as divergent as the gap between the poor and the rich.
For ASEAN leaders, the game is officially to seek solidarity, independence and closer cooperation among the players. For the people living in ASEAN countries, however, the game means being further exposed to a well-organized and well-armed authoritarian style of rule that obfuscates the line between human rights and national security, always sacrificing one in favor of the other. That is, constantly sacrificing human and civil rights in favor of the interests of the state.
That kind of game can have only one eventual outcome: a police state. That in itself brings on another eventual outcome, revolution and bloodshed caused by a frustrated public and amalgam of intellectuals and activists who have had enough of state control.
In the case of Thailand, the state has domestically asserted itself in a dangerous, seemingly laissez-faire fashion that speaks of democracy while implementing the tools of totalitarian rule, based on an illusion and dogma.
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(Frank G. Anderson is the Thailand representative of American Citizens Abroad. He was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer to Thailand from 1965-67, working in community development. A freelance writer and founder of northeast Thailand's first local English language newspaper, the Korat Post – www.thekoratpost.com – he has spent over eight years in Thailand "embedded" with the local media. He has an MBA in information management and an associate degree in construction technology.)
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