Anand at the Fawning Correspondents Club | 22.05.05

Commenting on Anand Panyarachun’s telling foreign correspondents to “keep a distance” from Southern violence/terrorism, I predicted that the brave cliché peddlers would simply shrug and hold on to their Anand the Saint and Thaksin the Satan caricatures. Right on cue, Richard Hermes (more on him in the postscript) penned a eulogy about Anand and his unfortunate speech at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Saturday’s Bangkok Post:

Planting a seed of autonomy, not independence

Former prime minister Anand Panyarachun promised his wife he’d retire at 65. This August he turns 73. Fortunately, some old men don’t lose their desire to work for the public good.

With a lede like that, you just know you’re in for a hard-headed, biting analysis. Better go get my saccharine-o-meter.

Mr Anand’s visit to the Foreign Correspondent’s [sic] Club on Wednesday drew a packed house — by all accounts the biggest crowd since Thaksin Shinawatra’s annual appearance last October.

It was fitting, then, that the funniest moments of Mr Anand’s two-hour talk on his work as chairman of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission came through anecdotes about his personal conversations with Mr Thaksin. He said Mr Thaksin suggested at one recent meeting that they speak frankly, “like farang to farang” — a line that got a laugh in a room full of foreign correspondents.

Once, in a previous encounter, Mr Thaksin teased Mr Anand about his elderliness; while Mr Thaksin is of the digital age, Mr Thaksin said, Mr Anand is still stuck in analogue. Mr Anand, who admits he can’t use a computer and still writes his speeches by hand, had to look up ”analogue” in the dictionary.

According to Mr Anand, the premier told him that he still lives in the ”old paradigm”. In that paradigm, the problems in the South have old-fashioned causes such as lack of respect for human rights, ethnic insensitivity and government corruption. We’re living in the new paradigm now, Mr Thaksin told him, and we don’t have those old problems any more.

Mr Anand thought: I’ve seen that ”new” paradigm before.

Although my saccharine-o-meter is going wild, I’m getting really sleepy quoting this. So let me sum up this little anecdote for you instead. Anand the Gallant Computer Illiterate killed Thaksin the Evil Dotbomber (using non-violent, eco-friendly, human-rightful, ethnically sensitive, and uncorrupted means), married the grateful Fawning Correspondent, and lived happily ever after.

No that’s not it, but it might as well have been. Certainly my version would’ve been just as substantial, only slightly less factual, and much more entertaining. To the extent that this fairy tale… sorry, anecdote reveals anything, it’s about Khun Anand himself. This two-term prime-minister either really blames the authorities instead of the perpetrators for the daily bombings and killings in the South, or somehow believes that this is a message he should get across. Either way, he’s doomed as a statesman.

Having lived in Thailand and China, I know something about rights abuse, ethnic insensitivity, and government corruption. None of those cause monks to be slain, attacks to continue during the tsunami disaster, machete-wielding young men to storm police posts on a suicide mission. None, okay? If they did, China would be in utter turmoil right about now, and all over the country. Instead, China had been experiencing only sporadic separatist violence in Xinjiang, just as Thailand had in the Deep South prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Separatism can be good, bad, or anything in between and the Thai people can and should discuss it like adults do. We can ask, for example, why the troublemakers in the South (murky and varied though their identities may be) appear to have changed their tactics in recent years from burning schools and attacking teachers here and there to more audacious and violent undertakings with a distinctly Islamist flavor? What impact, moral and otherwise, do international terrorists have on local separatists? If 9/11 could rouse hitherto unveiled and unbothered French schoolgirls into donning and flaunting their headgear, how could it have affected Thai non-students with a history of violence in the Deep South? Is their goal even the secession of historical Pattani anymore? Is there even a movement — with a leader, an organization, and an objective — or miscellaneous copycats on nihilistic autopilot and bound only by hatred?

Instead of addressing these difficult questions, however, Khun Anand chose the easy way out: talk tough against the authorities whose men and women are dying every day, forget the innocent, adopt a holier-than-thou mannerism, and win yourself some preprogrammed applauses from fawning correspondents. Well, actually that isn’t so easy for anyone with a conscience. But it did the trick alright for some toadies who call themselves “journalists”.

Mr Anand’s confidence is not the swagger of a young politician at the peak of his power, but rather, the kind that comes with no longer having anything to prove. He has been accused of being a communist, anti-royalty and pro-separatist. Choose your era and you’ll find an epithet. He long ago traded the young man’s hubris for a measured patience and a more pragmatic appreciation of the one constant that is change.

[emphasis on “hubris” original in print edition; don’t ask me why.]

Choose an era? Alright, how about the Korean War? Young Anand was playing tennis at Dulwich before moving on to Cambridge. Vietnam? He was Thailand’s ambassador to the UN for twelve straight years. The 90s? He was twice handpicked to be prime minister, first by military coup stagers and then by the king, and was wildly popular both times. More recently, he joined the Carlyle Group on invitation from George H. W. Bush. Sorry to disappoint, but Mr. Hermes will have to look for his outcast elsewhere. Anand belongs to the establishment’s establishment, a point that he himself helpfully hammered home in the 1,823-word bio he wrote to accompany his latest world-stage gig.)

Sure, he’s had his detractors, too (I’m fast becoming one). But even the explosive communist charge post 1976 managed to suspend his bureaucratic career for no more than two years, after which he was appointed ambassador to West Germany. I’ve never heard of “anti-royal” but if it’d ever existed outside Mr. Hermes’s imagination, it would’ve been in the same forgotten era as the communist accusation (compared with the current and constant whisper campaign alleging PM Thaksin’s clash with the king, some of which was enthusiastically propagated by scoop-hungry foreign correspondents). As for “pro-separatist” — again, if anyone ever called Anand that — the “era” would be now. And it wouldn’t be an epithet, but an opinion. Get used to it. To casually dismiss a criticism one doesn’t like as “epithet” is itself very epithetic.

At times he [Anand] employed a disabling testiness when pressured. More than one reporter’s question at the club was answered with an indignant chuckle or a blunt ”I’m not sure what you’re talking about”, which can be quite disabling indeed for a journalist who may or may not know what he’s talking about himself, in a room full of his peers.

Ah, the paralyzing chuckles and “I’m not sure what you’re talking”. Mr. Hermes should consider himself lucky Khun Anand didn’t throw a “No comment”, for he and his peers would’ve been ODed instead of just disabled.

Needless to say, the masterful put-downs described above are to be employed only by someone so talented (not to mention, adulated) as Khun Anand. Khun Thaksin shouldn’t try this at home or anywhere; he would get hell for it.

My favorite parts of Mr Anand’s appearance were when he was at his most esoteric — taking us back 400 years, for example, to an era when the prime minister was Greek and there were Malay, Burmese and Manadarin [sic] elements in the court. It wasn’t always like this, was Mr Anand’s message; the myth of an essential ”Thai-ness” which leaves no room for ethnic diversity is a relatively new one.

Yes, indeed, very new. I first heard it last month, from a gentleman named Anand Panyarachun. Back then I responded mostly with negatives, citing worse injustice and slight suffered by the hill tribesmen and 15 million-strong ethnic Lao (although I did point out that Muslim-Thai politicians have done very well, rising to such posts as interior minister and foreign minister). There are, however, plenty of positive evidences against this egregious myth about a non-existent myth, and to do justice to them, I’ll have to put them in a separate post. For now, though, I’ll just say that along with his citation of human rights, insensitivity, and corruption as causes of terrorism, this comment shows once again that Khun Anand is more concerned with singing the right tunes than stating the accurate facts.

Best of all was his riff on linguistics […] Mr Anand pointed out, the Thai language still lacks words for many concepts easily named in other languages, including ”autonomy”.

I’m not so good at riffing (which, of course, originally refers to melodic figures that accompany a solo improvisation) but I do know some linguistics. The Thai word for “autonomy” is “การปกครองตนเอง” (kaan-pok-krong-ton-aing). The word exists, and has existed for as long as I can remember. Its latest 15 minutes of fame was when HRH Princess Sirindhorn visited China’s (so-called) Xinjiang Autonomous Region, which was translated to “เขตปกครองตนเองซินเจียง”.

”I told the members of my commission, don’t bring up this subject publicly — yet,” Mr Anand said on Wednesday, ”but we need to start thinking seriously” about ways to give the people of the South more autonomy without sacrificing Thailand’s territorial integrity.

Such concepts, however, are easily distorted. ”The moment you try to explain to a Thai this idea of autonomy,” he said, ”they say you’re talking about independence.”

If the signifying word for ”autonomy” doesn’t exist in the mind of an army general, or a taxi driver, or a politician, how can the concept?

First, the word does exist. Cut it out already.

Second, With the word comes the concept, which also does exist, though not in a consistent form. Khun Anand’s condescension notwithstanding, the inconsistency can hardly be blamed on the regular Thai. When Khun Anand talks of “autonomy”, does he mean the kind China bestows on Xinjiang and Tibet, which are autonomous in nothing but the name? I don’t think most Thais will have any problems with a similar arrangement for historical Pattani. A US state, on the other hand, is truly autonomous, each with its own constitution and three democratic branches of government. This indeed would be a more problematic model, as the “democratic” part may get in the way — of the “insurgents” as well as the central government. Further along the scale of autonomy, Scotland has its own soccer team competing in the World Cup and its own banknotes. Personally I don’t mind a Pattani soccer team or Pattani money so long as the latter’s not pegged to the baht and I’m not required to accept it.

So what kind of “autonomy” is it going to be, Khun Anand? Is it time for another chuckle and “I don’t know what you’re talking about”? Indeed, he probably really doesn’t. But at least Mr. Hermes is impressed.

If our correspondent is really interested in English words that are without Thai counterparts, he actually should try sound bite and applause line.

Meanwhile, of Thailand’s 76 provinces, only Bangkok elects its own governor. Putting aside the restive three in the Deep South, wouldn’t the people of the other 72 provinces want to elect their own governors, too? I’m not sure they care, because with all due respect to Bangkok Governor Apirak Kosayodhin, he presides over waste collection, some of the less endowed schools, and little else. Appointed by the interior ministry, other governors have even less authority. All twigs and branches of the Thai bureaucracy report to their respective ministries in Bangkok. The Royal Thai Police is even more institutionalized, having been modeled after the armed forces (hence “police generals”). PM Thaksin’s CEO governor initiative is an attempt to give governors some real authority — a prerequisite if the office is ever to be worth an election — but so far has met with only scorn from the journalistic class (mostly in form of demagogic taunts about the CEO moniker).

So, hypothetically, if in the future I’d like to campaign for delegating more power to the provinces, who do I kill? Surely nobody would mind if it just so happened to be journalists, right? How about foreign correspondents? Hmmm…

Observing Mr Anand suggests an answer: through patient explanation, eloquent persuasion and lots of old-fashioned pavement pounding. In short, a special kind of leadership. Mr Anand should not be mistaken for a messiah, but he does have the capacity to inspire. It’s not easy to get a roomful of skeptical journalists to applaud, but Mr Anand managed it once or twice. ”Success rests on your shoulders,” he told the crowd.

Let’s see, Khun Anand saw a decisive role for journalists in his scheme, and the putative journalists applauded? Huh? I haven’t heard anything like this since Masoud’s assassination. With the old-fashioned neutrality replaced by this newfound eagerness to be part of the story, would these newsmen agree then that Newsweek should’ve kept the Koran-flushing story secret even if it had been true? No? Why not? Success rests on your shoulders, brothers and sisters!

Wake up and smell the coconut milk, self-worshiping cultists. Success doesn’t rest on your shoulders and thank heaven for that. The press can really screw things up — as the Newsweek scandal has shown — but ultimately in the grand scheme of things, each one of us is responsible for our actions and the ensuing success and failure. I have no intention of passing the buck, especially not to journalists.

Mr Thaksin may have calculated early on that if the NRC helps improve the situation in the South, he can take the credit, and if things continue to go wrong, he can use the commission to shirk blame. It’s also possible that Mr Thaksin simply did have a change of heart when he went to Japan with his family. It’s easy to imagine him there, enjoying peaceful revelations under the blossoms of a cherry tree.

After its sycophancy and idiocy, the most irksome thing about this op-ed is that you are almost never certain which word is Khun Anand’s and which, Mr. Hermes’s. If the above is from Khun Anand, then he’s finished. It’s tasteless. And for a man whose affectionate public nickname is “Rattanakosin Patrician” and whose prestige is based largely on that image, that’s a fatal blow. Let the Kool-Aid drinkers continue to drink the stuff, his words will carry no weight with me from now on.

Then, of course, the paragraph could be Mr. Hermes’s. And in any case I should address it. Like I said, it’s tasteless. And it’s tasteless because it’s unfair. If one can’t determine one way or another why Khun Thaksin set up the NRC, then why bring it up at all? Why else, but to poison the well with a suggestion of his cynicism.

Well, whether or not Khun Thaksin was up to such a devious scheme, the very insinuation ironically makes clear that a counter scheme is already firmly in place. If the situation improves, Khun Anand and his NRC will take the credit; otherwise, PM Thaksin is stuck with the blame. Now tell me if this isn’t doubly cynical.

It doesn’t really matter if Mr Thaksin’s change of heart on the South is genuine or Machiavellian. What matters is that, at least for now, Mr Thaksin has changed, and this is reason for hope.

My saccharine-o-meter just exploded.

It’s unfortunate that some media have inaccurately characterised Mr Anand as urging people to ”forget” Tak Bai or, as this newspaper reported on Thursday, not pay ”too much attention” to the South. In fact, Mr Anand wants to generate for the South the same kind of vibrant national debate that buoyed his leadership of the drafting of the 1997 constitution.

If the report was inaccurate, then will Mr. Hermes please kindly get the Bangkok Post to run a correction? Isn’t that the least he, as a Post journalist, could and should do?. Short of that, will he care to explain what Khun Anand actually said that was so misconstrued? I know as well as anyone that the Post is no stranger to misquotations, faux quotations and mischaracterizations, but this time the speech was delivered in English and the “keep a distance” quote was of the straightforward kind, as was “separatism is no big deal, so try to treat it as a criminal activity.” The “vibrant national debate” stuff that Mr. Hermes cited as a replacement reinforces rather than refutes the reported “back off” tone of his speech. After all, the foreign correspondents Anand was addressing can’t be expected to be part of a national debate, can it? And didn’t Khun Anand also drive home that the issue was local one and not international? Mr. Hermes didn’t give us the context for “success rests on your shoulders”, but it seems clear to me that Khun Anand was at the very least asking the international journalists to do something different. What could that be? They were already covering the Deep South violence extensively.

Ironically, if there’s anyone in Thailand who doesn’t need Mr. Hermes’s help in keeping his coverage in Bangkok Post accurate, it’s Khun Anand. Thanks probably to his stint as chairman of the Post Publishing Group, the Bangkok Post’s publisher, or to his stature as a popular ex-prime-minister, or perhaps both, he managed to extract the sole correction I’ve ever seen from the Post in all my years of reading the paper on and off. In late 2003 (if I’m not mistaken), the Post’s reported in a front-pager that Khun Anand delivered a speech unfavorably comparing Thaksin’s Thailand to Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore. Khun Anand promptly protested that he wasn’t aiming at Thaksin, which made another Post front-pager. A day or two later, the Post published a correction in the Postbag space.

So, unless either a correction from the Post or a clarification from Khun Anand materializes, I’d just assume Mr. Hermes was trying very awkwardly to whitewash Khun Anan’s speech. No offense meant, of course, for I know that success rests on his shoulders!

Here’s a secret that an old hand like Mr Anand surely learned many paradigms ago: sometimes, when one least expects it, a little hope has a funny way of catching fire.

My exploded saccharine-o-meter just caught fire. But let’s hang in there, for here finally is the last paragraph:

The peace process involves risks, including a collective step into the unknown. Mr Anand hopes to make this bid for peace different from the failed chances of the past by building broad popular support that will put pressure on the government to act on his panel’s recommendations. To get there, he’ll not only have to convince people that his ideas are right. He’ll have to conjure whole concepts out of thin air — including the difference between autonomy and independence that until now has not had a prominent place in the national conversation — and make them material for a large part of a nation of 60 million people. How can Mr Anand prove that autonomy doesn’t mean independence? With luck, he’ll be able to do it not only with words, but with a kind of leadership that comes from an old man who has nothing to fear, including failure.

I think Khun Anand should fear brownnosers, who’ll either blow hot air right into his head and turn it into a balloon or embarrass him the way the communist witchhunters could only dream of. Another piece of advice: next time you’re busy conjuring things out of thin air, don’t bring them along.

PS Richard Hermes is one of the fifteen 2004-2005 Luce Scholar sent to “gain a firsthand understanding of Asia by living and working for a year in one of 14 Asian countries”. He failed that “understanding” bit. In that, however, he has plenty of company, including Henry Luce himself, different though his politics may be from his.

Update The mythical “Thai-ness” myth debunked.

00:09 ▪ media

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Tad Masters 12.12.05

Malay Muslims in South of Thailand have been Double-Crossed

Just over a year ago, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahatir Mohamad, urged the Thai government to grant autonomy to Thailand’s three southernmost provinces - Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani - that are inhabited mostly by Yawi-speaking Malay Muslims (reported in the Malaysian press, October 22, 2004).

The region has sought independence from Thailand for hundreds of years. In the past two years, some two thousand people in the region have been killed. Most of the deaths can be linked to local resentment of the Thai administration of the region.

Last May, a former Thai Prime Minister, Anand Panyarachun, who is also chairman of the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), told the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand that he favored autonomy for the region (“Planting a Seed of Autonomy, not Independence”, Bangkok Post, May 21, 2005.)

Two months ago, Anand declared that he had changed his mind and that he no longer wanted autonomy. He said he preferred, instead, “regional power sharing” and setting up a “special administrative zone” in the region like the Bangkok Administrative Zone.

Last month, the Thai government hosted Mahatir, rolled out the red carpet and wined and feted him. Then Anand and the current the Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, told Mahatir that in the Thai language “autonomy” actually meant “independence”, which the Thai government does not want to for the region, and that he should not use the word (“‘Autonomy not a good word, both sides agree”, The Nation, November 23, 2005). So, at the insistence of Anand and Thaksin, Mahatir withdrew his recommendation of autonomy (“Mahathir rules out total autonomy for Thai south”, The Independent, Dhaka, Bangladesh, November 22, 2005).

It is possible, of course, that Mahatir will change his mind again. Perhaps there will be another big tragic incident in the troubled region soon, compelling Mahatir to urge autonomy again.

Still more recently, an academic, Prawase Wasi, who is the NRC deputy chairman, declared that he does not believe in “regional power sharing” or a “special administrative zone” (in an article for the Issara News Centre of the Thai Journalists Association, reported in the Bangkok Post, November 28, 2005).

Prawase said that local Buddhists, who are a minority, feared that a special administrative zone would lead to their oppression by majority Muslims. Prawase suggested that there be, instead, a “social contract” between the state, Muslims and Buddhists. All well and good, but that seems to be light years away.

Recalling the communist insurrection in northern Thailand two decades ago, Prawase suggested an amnesty for insurgents who surrender their arms and join in “national development”. (Prawase did not elaborate. In one case, some 20 years ago, to induce communist Muong guerrillas in Nan Province to give up the insurrection, the Thai government gave them money and tractors and cleared a road and ran electricity to their mountain-top village.)

Some have called for a referendum in the region, so that the local people can make known their preferences: independence, federation with Malaysia or autonomy within Thailand - or write in their own particular choice of form of state and government.

The Thai government, however, will never agree to a referendum in the region. Thus, it remains for the United Nations to demand and monitor a referendum.

Tad Masters
Bangkok
email: mastersbkkth@yahoo.com