the new generation loves moso! (moso?)

Its message is clear: the new generation loves moso! (moso?)

By Chang Noi

Published on July 13, 2009

Emblazoned on THE SIDE of the Skytrain snaking through Bangkok is the message: "Mindfulness+Rationality=Immunity." On an ad panel inside, cartoon figures with skin tones ranging from black through blue to green wear T-shirts with slogans like "I've got immunity," or "It's easy", and spout speech bubbles announcing "New-generation people love moso".

On television, the prime minister, looking so shiny with optimism that he almost overcomes his natural reserve, tells us "I believe this will help make the country secure and the people happy in a sustainable way".

On first sight of the "Mindfulness + Rationality = Immunity" train, Chang Noi honestly thought this was something about swine flu - a campaign urging us all to act sensibly and ward off this threatening disease.

But it's not. This is a campaign by the Internal Security Operations Command of the Army. It's one of several such public campaigns that have popped up in recent weeks. It is supported by the billion baht of public money that the government voted for ISOC after the Songkran troubles.

But what is it all about? What is "moso"? A pop group? A brand of candy? A new music channel? Google tells us moso is a type of bamboo, a hotel chain in Vanuatu, a town in Italy and a university in Missouri.

Both the television and Skytrain ads point to a website, www.mosothai.com. The home page on the site does not overcome the bewilderment. The heading is about a "Project for Sustainable Thinking". The multicolour cartoon figures are there again, proclaiming on their T-shirts and speech bubbles how much they love moso.

But there's no hint about who or what moso is. Burrowing down a tab on "Background of the campaign", there is finally an explanation. It translates as follows.

In the first word, "mo" comes from "moderation" which means adequacy - not too much, not too little, just right. "So" comes from "society".

So when "mo" and "so" are joined up, it means a society of moderation where people live their lives just right.

And who are the moso people?

Moso people means the new generation of society who lives its life in this just-right way, upholding the principle of moderation.

Being someone of rationality, having immunity in thinking and living according to the sufficiency economy philosophy of His Majesty the King.

Being moso is not difficult…

First off, we must all understand "moderation" in living.

It's easy. Just do everything just right, know the limits of our own ability, don't overdo anything, know how to use more "rationality", study what is too much or too little, and weigh up the good and bad points with clarity.

And when we have both thinking that is "moderation" added together with enough "rationality", these two will give us "immunity" against the obstructions and manifold problems that confront us. And importantly, we must have knowledge and ethics as well.

It's guaranteed that if we can all apply these three principles, and if we pass this message on for people around to try also, no matter what obstructions or economic problems arrive in what form, just having a heart of sufficiency, knowing how to measure ourselves and solve problems with rationality, and being cautious for the sake of immunity will lead to a society with thinking that is sustainable, and able to overcome various problems in the best way.

But why does the "new generation" love moso so much? The rest of the site gives some clues, but not many. There are puffs of support from pop personalities, including the serial endorser, Ad Carabao, but he spoils it by sporting a massive Jatukam Ramathep amulet, which suggests he is looking elsewhere for his "immunity".

There's another TV spot with pop personalities, shot in moody black-and-white, mouthing the above script; and yet another with a TV presenter and a group of happy peasants standing in a field. On the web-board, many have contributed exactly the same comment: "This is a good campaign".

The Army has long dished out PR on its own importance. After the 2006 coup, it poured men and money into a campaign to influence the hearts and minds of the Thaksinite North and Northeast. This moso campaign represents a new frontier - an attempt to influence society as a whole through public media.

The campaign seems to be aimed primarily at urban youth. The website has the pastel colours, Japanese-style graphics and flashing gizmos that characterise Thai teen web-boards and the like.

The multicolour cartoon ads and the pop endorsements are straining for hipness. The cuteness of the "mo-so" mnemonic and the use of English are probably meant to have trendy appeal.

It's ambitious, but what chance does it have of working?

This is advertising. An ad has to tell people what the product is and why they should want it. To be successful, an ad usually needs to be focused and clear.

Does this campaign have these basic qualities? Is it about sufficiency, or the moderation society, or sustainable thinking? In the minds of the originators, these may be all about the same thing. But for the consumer, this is confusing.

The use of English is like, cool, but it is also a barrier to easy understanding. What exactly is a "moderation society" in English anyway? It's hardly a term in everyday international use.

Is Ad's lifestyle - choppers, cockfighting, concerts that disintegrate into brawls - a guide to moderation?

How many people understand the Thai word used for "immunity", a medical term most people would never use in their lifetime.

Even the word for "rationality" has a slightly academic feel to it. Is this the language of the street? The formula of "Mindfulness + Rationality = Immunity" is also not so easy to compute.

Most of all, does the campaign have a compelling reason for the consumer to buy? To put it simply, what's in it for us? What's in it for the people who have not been acting so moderately lately?

Source : nationmultimedia.com

Voting with the wallet

Voting with the wallet

1 june 2009

By   Chang  Noi

It’s difficult to make any social or economic analysis of how people vote in Thai elections because the data are simply not available. In many countries exit pollsters collect information on how people voted along with data on income, social status, gender, and even attitudes. Here in Thailand, the Election Commission has banned such surveys. The state seems opposed to the collection of this sort of information, probably because of what it might reveal.

But you can do a bit of rough estimation with the figures that are available. One simple question is whether people’s voting is affected by how well-off they are.

At the 2007 general election, the average income of people in provinces which voted Democrat was two-and-a-half times the average income in provinces which voted for PPP.

(Technical stuff. The income comes from the 2007 Gross Provincial Product tables. A party “won” the province if it got more seats than any other party. Yes, Bangkok distorts the result, but not by very much. Taking Bangkok out of the calculation, the Democrat-voting provinces still had around twice the average income per head as the PPP -voting provinces.)

In the 2007 election year, the average income per head for the whole country was 128,606 baht. In the 25 Democrat-voting provinces, it was around 221,000 baht, well above the average. In the 32 PPP-voting provinces, it was around 93,000 baht, well below the average. What’s more, the pattern was relatively consistent. Only a handful of “poor” provinces voted Democrat. And only four provinces with income above the national average voted PPP (all on the outskirts of the capital).

A difference of two or two-and-a-half times is pretty large. An average family in the Democrat-voting provinces has an annual income of around 750,000 baht. In the PPP-voting provinces, the equivalent figure was only 300,000 baht.

But of course simple income can be very misleading as a guide to how well-off people really are. What about health and education and other indicators of the quality of life? One of the most sensitive markers of real poverty is malnutrition in infants and young children. The numbers have fallen sharply in Thailand over the past two decades, but there are still some areas where the figures are still significant. The provinces with the worst record on malnutrition are all in the outer northeast. Those provinces all voted PPP in 2007. The provinces with the next-worse record are in the inner northeast and upper north. All but one of these provinces voted PPP. None of them voted Democrat.

In the provinces which voted Democrat, there are around twice as many doctors per head of population as in the provinces which voted PPP. On average children stay at school for about a year and a half longer. In the PPP-voting provinces, a far larger proportion of schools are rated as of poor quality.

Most development indicators show the same pattern, with two exceptions. The PPP-voting provinces rank higher than the Democrat-voting provinces on the quality of family and community life, and on the level of social and political participation.

The UN has a Human Achievement Index which ranks all the provinces in terms of their human development. In 2007, most of the Democrat-voting provinces came in the top half of the ranking, with an average position of 22nd. Most of the PPP-voting provinces came in the bottom half of the ranking, with an average position of 45th. (Again, removing Bangkok changes this a bit but not much.)

Of course, you can look at these findings in many ways. A cynic might say that the PPP wins in the poorer provinces because it is cheaper to buy the votes there. Someone more idealistic might imagine that the poorer provinces voted PPP because the people there thought a PPP-led government would give them more help than a Democrat-led one.

The daily news is again filled with tales of politicians squabbling over suspiciously lucrative deals, coalition parties gaily stabbing one another in the back, generals dreaming of forming political parties to lead the country again, government agencies valiantly suppressing opportunities for free expression, and government spokesmen spouting nonsense with poker faces. This return of politics-as-usual is very comforting. It’s hard to recall that only a few weeks ago angry youths were hurling concrete blocks onto politicians’ cars, and launching blazing buses at the troops. And that a few days before that, large numbers of people dressed in red had been complaining about injustice, double standards, and privilege.

It’s comforting to feel that politics is just about wheeler-dealing among the gods, rather than about the resolution of deep-seated conflicts in the society. But it would probably be a mistake to be too comforted, too unmindful.  There are now some blunt, simple realities underlying Thai politics which are not going to disappear however many new parties are formed and however many back-room deals are made.  

One song, two nations, in the shadow of another looming crisis

One song, two nations, in the shadow of another looming crisis

By  Chang Noi

16 feb 2009

 

Every now and then a song comes along that captures a moment. Since its release late last year, the song ‘Dao Mahalai’ (University star) by the country ensemble, Saomat Megadance, has been a huge hit. That’s not just because of it’s a catchy tune and infectious energy, but because of what it says and how it says it.

 

The song tells a story. Dao comes from Ban Nong Yai, Big Pond Village, a name so typical it appears in almost every province. Her mother sold some land to send Dao to university in Bangkok. Because Dao is pretty and standout in everything she does, she’s become a star amongst her peers. As the song opens, she phones home. In a flat country accent, mother summons Dao back to the village to help on the farm during the university vacation.

 

Dao suffers instant culture shock. She finds the village so underdeveloped, full of pigs, dogs, crows and chickens. The villagers are uneducated, and eat fermented fish, frogs, lizards, and even beetles picked out of buffalo dung. The boys drink local liquor, ride motorcycles, and like country music. In Bangkok, Dao prefers a Benz or a latest-model BMW, and modern pop stars with cute farang names likes Golf and Mike. Back in the village there’s just the sound of the birds.

 

In Bangkok she can stroll around the shopping malls. Back in Big Pond there’s only the occasional market where you have dodge between the cows and buffaloes. The stalls sell only shirts at 199 baht. “How can people wear this stuff. Dao just can’t adjust.”

 

It gets worse. She goes out to the field to help on the harvest. Still wearing her high heels, she falls flat on her face, and comes face-to-face with a slobbering buffalo. After a bone-shaking ride home on a local tractor, she collapses with a fever. “This is not me. This is not the real Dao.” In Bangkok she’s “a cheerleader, a pretty, a presenter. You want me to be a farmer?”

 

Dao is bored with the village, the food, the stink of the animals. She wants to go back to Bangkok and be the star of the university again. “That matches the concept that Dao has set for herself.” But her mother can’t take it. Studying has no product. Farming does. Mother knows how to till a field, but what on earth is Dao going to do when she finishes university? At this challenge, Dao’s language takes flight into outer space. Her mother’s criticisms “demean the prestige of a star of the university.”

 

The song’s theme is nothing new. Boys and girls have been migrating from the village to the city for ever, and have been coming from Thailand’s northeast to Bangkok in huge numbers for three decades. They come to get educated, to make some money, to have fun, to broaden their world, to become modern. There have been countless songs on this theme.

 

But this one stands out, partly because of the viewpoint. The song and the band are right in the middle of the spectrum between Dao and her mother. The lilt of the melody and the speak-over style of singing are classic country music. But the driving rhythm comes straight from urban rock, and the delivery has a touch of hip-hop. The very name of the band, Saomat Megadance, starts out in the village and ends in the global disco. The singer is neither a clean-cut assembly-line pop star nor a classic country singer but a bubbly girl-next-door with a belting voice. The song mocks both Dao and her mother, but mocks with great warmth. This is the way things are.

 

The real triumph of the song lies in the lyrics and the language. Dao reels off the names and brandnames of Bangkok culture, which are all in English: Benz, Centerpoint, The Mall, Big-C, Central, Seven, Academia Fantasia. She litters her language with English words (summer, country, city), especially some favored in the media world (concept, pretty, presenter), and especially complex words (pasteurized, sensitive,university) which have style value as contrast with Thai’s usual monosyllables.

 

Her mother talks the language of the northeast. As the song slides into its squabbling conclusion, the contrast is acute. Mother delivers a curse in language so broad it is barely comprehensible, and so earthily crude that it is distinctively village. Dao responds with the song’s signature line, “Mother doesn’t understand Dao, mother is not sensitive,” with “sensitive” spoken twice in English, and delivered in its distinctive, sniffy Bangkok pronunciation. The gap between Dao and her mother is not just one of generations or even only of cultures. If language is the bedrock of nationhood, then they belong to different nations. What’s more, neither tongue is the standard Thai of the official imagination. Mother talks in Isan Lao. Dao uses Bangkokspeak, the polyglot dialect of the globalized city.

 

The song arrives as the urban economy is again tipping over a cliff. It’s no coincidence that the last song which was couched in a similar style and achieved the same hit status was Ploen Phromdaen’s ‘The Floating Baht’ which appeared in the teeth of the 1997 crisis.

 

In 1997, when employment collapsed, two million of Dao and her friends had to go back to Big Pond, at least for a short time. The song hints that this time such a movement could be more difficult. That’s not for economic reasons. The carrying capacity of the rural economy is pretty good. Low oil prices have brought down input costs far more than selling prices. Margins are healthy. The problem is that the cultural gap has got wider. The two nations have eased further apart in the past decade. That’s the song’s stunning message.

 

Still, maybe Dao may just have to ditch her high heels, steel herself for the culture shock, relearn the language -- and get herself a passport to travel from one nation to the other.

 

 

(www.geocities.com/changnoi2) 

 

 

The Thai military is back in charge

The Thai military is back in charge

By  Chang Noi

2 feb 2009

 

The big winner from the political chaos of the last three years has been the Thai military. Possibly, the generals are now more powerful than at any time over the past twenty years. Under coup rule, they might seem more powerful but in truth are a little limited by being fully exposed. In present circumstances, they have a discrete cover. It is hard to recall the last change of government when the army chief played such a prominent role. The publicity-shy General Anupong has a bigger profile in day-to-day news than his publicity-hogging predecessor General Sonthi a year ago.

 

The most spectacular evidence of the military’s success is in the national budget. Over three budget cycles, the allocation for defence has almost doubled from 85 billion baht in 2006 to 167 billion baht in 2009. The allocation for internal security has also soared from 77 billion to 114 billion over the same period. No other segment of the budget has grown in the same way, and indeed most have been shaved down to accommodate this growth in security spending.

 

The scale of this budget boost has to be measured against what preceded it. The defence share of the budget had slumped steadily from 19 percent in 1991 down to 6.3 percent in 2006. It was no coincidence that this decline in the defence share coincided with the long period of parliamentary rule, and that the upturn (now back to 9.1 percent) has come after a coup. Buying weapons is back on the agenda. The navy wants to add submarines to park beside its aircraft carrier.

 

But the budget is only one sign of the military’s recent success. The military also has three trophies from the frenzy of legislation in the dying days of the coup-appointed parliament.

 

The most important is the Internal Security Act. This legislation reconfirms the military’s role in internal security which seemed in peril after the Democrats remaindered the anti-communist law in the late 1990s. In the first, extremely ambitious draft of the law, the army head was to become head of the revived ISOC, and beholden to virtually nobody. The parliament amended this to make the prime minister the titular head of ISOC, but in effect the operational power remains with the army chief. The boundaries of internal security are not defined in the law and hence are open to wide interpretation. The act is the charter for the army to reclaim the guardianship role in Thai politics that it developed in the Cold War era and lost over the past two decades. This guardianship is not just about putting governments in power but extends down the administrative pyramid. The army policy document leaked a year ago stated that “kamnan, village heads, and local government bodies must be in our hands,” and army personnel should take over duties such as suppressing drugs, controlling illegal migration, combating drought and flood, and alleviating poverty. The ISOC chief in each province is to spearhead this policy, mobilizing help from reservists and former cadet school students.

 

The Broadcasting Act is another triumph. Ever since 1992, there has been public pressure for reform and liberalization of the media. The 1997 Constitution mandated a new regulatory structure under which broadcasting frequencies would be treated as public goods. This structure was never implemented because of sabotage by old vested interests. The new Broadcasting Act is a brilliant preemptive move that puts all the intentions of the 1997 Constitution firmly in the past. The Act creates a new regulatory structure but offers absolutely no threat to the old system of broadcasting concessions. Thailand is probably the only purported democracy where the military owns two free-to-air television channels, one directly managed, and many radio stations. These broadcast outlets are channels for propaganda and sources of non-transparent flows of income.

 

The Defence Ministry Act is a direct response to Thaksin’s interventions in the military promotion lists. In the past the promotion lists were prepared by the service chiefs then passed to the defence minister and prime minister before submission for the royal signature. Generally any disagreements had to be resolved among the parties before the final submission. In 2005, Thaksin seems to have altered the final list, provoking a crisis. The new bill changes the system. The list is vetted by a committee made up of the three service chiefs, permanent secretary for defence, prime minister, and defence minister. Any dispute is to be decided by a vote. The service chiefs have a built-in majority. As long as they are united, the prime minister is out of it.

 

In July 2006, General Prem famously said, “soldiers belong to His Majesty the King, not to a government. A government is like a jockey. It supervises soldiers, but the real owners are the country, and the King.” During the long standoff between the PAD and the Samak-Somchai governments, General Anupong repeatedly insisted on remaining “independent” and being “on the side of the people,” which essentially meant refusing to act as the security arm of the elected government. When a State of Emergency was declared, he mobilized troops but kept them inside the barracks. When the airports were seized, he stood aside. At one point Anupong stated, “I am not a soldier of the government. The army belongs to the Thai public. I can’t channel it to serve as anybody’s private army.”

 

Under the constitution, the monarch is the head of the armed forces. The working relationship between the executive and military has always been a matter of delicate negotiation. After 1992, the pendulum seemed to be swinging away from the generals. Parliament demanded more transparency in the budget. Chuan and Samak disrupted the “convention” that the defence minister should be a military man. Thaksin exerted influence on promotions. Now the pendulum has swung firmly back. The military is more a power unto itself. The prime minister seems to be a spokesman defending the military against accusations of abuse.

 

 

(www.geocities.com/changnoi2)  

 

Solving the far south starts from understanding the far south

Solving the far south starts from understanding the far south

By  Chang Noi

19 jan 2009

 

Last week Amnesty International reported the Thai army is systematically using torture in the far south. The army denies it has any such policy. Yet a Narathiwat court last month ruled that an imam had been battered to death in military detention. For the past year, the far south has been swept from the front pages by the violence in the rest of the country, but the problem has not gone away. The frequency of incidents has dropped, but the intensity of violence has increased.

 

Earlier, many blamed the mess on Thaksin, his dismantling of the SBPAC, and his use of the police rather than the army. But Thaksin has gone. The police have been removed. The SBPAC is back. Somehow, things are not getting better.

 

To his enormous credit, Abhisit seems prepared to try something new. But what? The resurgence of violence four years ago prompted new attempts to understand the region and the violence with more depth than daily reporting and comment. Some of these efforts have recently been published.

 

The Thammasat political scientist and peace activist, Chaiwat Satha-Anand, has editedImagined Land, a kind of soul-searching exercise about how the rest of the country views and interprets the far south. In this collection, Decha Tangseefa read the “bureaucrat manuals” prepared to brief army and government personnel assigned to the far south. These manuals explain about Islam and Islamic society, and advise officials how to conduct themselves. To his amazement Decha found that the content had scarcely changed over eight decades. In 2004, government reprinted the 1923 edition with minimal change. An introduction explained that “the advice for bureaucrats contained herein is not outdated at all” because the situation is “no different.” As Decha points out, this claim is stunning. In 1923, the Thai state was very different; the past sixty years of protest and insurgency among Malay Muslims had not yet happened; and the radical globalized Islam of today was nowhere to be seen.

 

By reading the manuals closely, Decha discovers some small changes. The 1923 edition advised officials to build good relations with local teachers and imams by arranging special meetings “with suitable ceremony.” In the 2004 edition, this last phrase changed to “just for ceremony.” In short, where officials were once advised to go out of their way to show respect, they are now prompted to put on a show. In the Thai, the difference is only one word. The dismissive attitude of these manuals is itself a kind of violence.

 

The British political scientist, Professor Duncan McCargo, spent a year in the far south interviewing officials, soldiers, ex-rebels, politicians, academics and local by-standers. His book, Tearing Apart the Land, is forthright, powerful, polemical. The military will not like it at all.

 

McCargo reaches the conclusion that the Thai security forces cannot prevail. To put that another way, the militants have already won.

 

The Krue Se mosque and Tak Bai incidents turned the local population fiercely against the security forces. The army realized that they were being suckered into confrontations which made them look bad. In later incidents at Saiburi, Kapho, Tanyong Limo, the army refused to be drawn into similar traps, even though this meant the sacrifice of Teacher Julin and several soldiers. But standing back just delivered the militants victory in another form. Territory slipped out of effective control. Patrols were reduced to driving around at high speed to evade attack. The army could no longer protect people. Whether for love or for fear, few in the three provinces would now dare side with the security forces. In McCargo’s estimate (made around a year ago) large tracts of the three provinces are wholly or partially “no-go” area, effectively beyond state control.

 

Though the hated police have been withdrawn, the army is not doing much better. “The core pursuits of the Thai military are playing politics and engaging in business activities.” The nature of the fighting is new, and the military do not have the right training or equipment. McCargo observes in amazement that they cannot even run a simple checkpoint properly. Intelligence is poor and often contradictory. Strategy depends heavily on learning from old anti-communist campaigns, now often irrelevant. More and more use is made of rangers and paramilitary forces that are less well-trained, less competent, less disciplined, and less sensitive.

 

If a military solution is unlikely, what else? McCargo examines what the militants and the local population seem to want. In the absence of formal demands, this is tricky. He concludes there is no strong evidence of separatism, in fact no coherent political demand at all, but simply a fierce anger at being treated so badly. What the Malay Muslims seem to want is a way to live within Thailand without being treated as outcastes. The solution, McCargo argues, is “to give Malay Muslims substantial control over their own affairs, while retaining the border region as part of Thailand. In other words, substantive autonomy.”

 

This thought has come up several times over the last four years—notably from Chaturon Chaisaeng and even General Chavalit Yongchaiyuth. Each time the army has slapped it down, trotting out the mantra that Thailand is a unitary state which cannot be divided. But this argument is thin. Many unitary states devolve power in order to manage special situations. The far south is not really different from “minority problems” that other countries have managed quite well. Maybe the military fears that a political solution could be seen as a defeat for them. This sensitivity needs to be finessed.

 

The eclipse of Thaksin and the installation of a new government present an opportunity to break the deadlock over the far south. The Democrats have bravely said they will look deeper than a military solution, and Abhisit has taken the initiative to start a process. In different ways these two books suggest that some very brave and radical decisions need to be made.

 

 

(www.geocities.com/changnoi2)   

 

The international media and the missing parts of the puzzle

By Chang Noi

Published on January 5, 2009

 

LITTLE MORE than two decades ago, Thailand attracted relatively little interest in the outside world. Its economy was still largely agricultural. Its financial system was closed. Tourism was limited to adventurous types prepared to hire fishing boats to get to pristine islands now buried under concrete. Bangkok had few foreign residents other than employees of international agencies. Beyond the capital there were only a few left stranded after the Vietnam war. Academic interest was confined to a specialised coterie, mainly anthropologists studying picturesque backwardness among the northern hill-tribes or in deepest Isaan. Thai restaurants were rare even in Bangkok let alone the outside world.

Fast-forward to the present and the change is overwhelming. The economy has been inserted into the world spanning production chains of multinationals. The baht and the stock index bounce around on flows of international finance. A million people pass through the immigration checkpoints every month. Thai restaurants are a fixture on every high street.

Many, many people have an interest in understanding what is happening in Thailand for the simple reason that they have something at stake. The world's automobile giants have huge investments accumulated over 20 years. Managers of international financial funds hold Thai currency, stocks, and bonds. Manufacturers of millions of products depend on a Thai-based supplier for some part or component. The size of the resident international community has ballooned as the growth and internationalisation of the local economy has sucked in everyone from English teachers to Korean restaurateurs. Rural Thailand is dotted with colonies of European retirees. Thousands of families hope a vacation in Thailand will be a highpoint of their year.

With more people in the world having more at stake in Thailand, there has been a growing demand to understand the country and how it works. International financial firms analyse the economy for the clients on a daily or weekly basis. Risk analysts publish regular reports. Thai academics can earn extra pocket money by acting as speakers and consultants. A few blogs act as forums for debate and comment. In this knowledge industry, the foreign media play a major role because of the immediacy of their response to events.

Go back two decades again, and the interest of major international media in Thailand was almost zero. The Far Eastern Economic Review catered to a slim and specialised audience, but stories on Thailand in the international press were very rare, and on BBC or other major broadcasters were virtually unknown. Journalists resident in Bangkok were mostly focused on neighbouring countries such as Burma and Cambodia. If anything big happened in Thailand, journalists flew in and struggled to understand what was going on. During the political crisis of 1992, many journalists who had last been in Thailand at the close of the Vietnam War hopped off the planes and tried to understand what was happening in a framework that was now 20 years out of date. Today is very, very different. During the peaks of last year's rolling crisis, Thailand was often the lead story on BBC, CNN, al-Jazeera, and NHK. The Chinese news agency, Xinhua, named the Thai turmoil among its top 10 international stories of the year. International papers like the International Herald Tribune , Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times regularly run a Thailand story several times a week. Several daily newspapers from Australia, Japan and Europe maintain permanent correspondents in Bangkok. In contrast to the fly-in/fly-out mob, many of these international correspondents stay for a long time, become proficient in the language, and get dug into the culture.

The job of everybody in this knowledge industry is to give a full picture. The audience for the specialised reports, the blogs, and the international media demand to know what is really going on because they have a lot at stake. In the past three years, and especially in the past three months, that has been very, very obvious. Investors have seen their capital devalued. Manufacturers have had worldwide production systems disrupted. Families have lost their holidays. The demand to know and understand how the country really works has increased. But this creates difficulty because of those parts of the picture that are blocked out.

The local media practice self-censorship because it would be dangerous not to. But in private space, Thais compensate for the gaps in public knowledge by exchanging opinions, relaying gossip, comparing interpretations. This network of information-sharing is very dense. Of course, it is difficult to judge the validity of much of what is exchanged. But this informal information network helps people to fill in the blanks and allow them to feel that they understand the full picture.

Those consuming the international media do not have access to a similar network. Hence the gaps in their picture are glaringly obvious. People find it difficult to accept that an institution that figures so prominently in the nation's Constitution, in the daily word-of-mouth exchange of information, and in the visual drama of street protest is not part of the political landscape. International correspondents try to compensate because their audience demands it.

Over the past year alone, the nature of political debate within Thailand has changed utterly. More sections of society are involved in the debate. Things once unsaid are now said. In public forums, speakers have evolved codes, metaphors, and gestures, which their audience can understand. On radio, presenters have quietly transgressed old taboos. In semi-private spaces like the interior of a taxi, exchanges have become more forthright.

Those restating old truths about Thai politics are perhaps trying to reassure themselves that nothing has really changed. But it has. The knowledge industry, both inside and outside the country, will continue trying to fill in the missing parts of the puzzle because there is such a large audience that has so much at stake and a desire to understand what is really going on.

 

http://nationmultimedia.com/2009/01/05/opinion/opinion_30092413.php