Political morality the key : former diplomat

By Pravit Rojanaphruk

The Nation

Published on October 2, 2008

People who want the "new politics" proposed by the anti-government People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) do so because they want "politics that has something to do with the word morality", Kasit Piromya, a PAD supporter and former Thai ambassador to Washington, Moscow and Tokyo, said on Tuesday night.

He was speaking at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand.

But he warned that many of the details of the "new politics" had still to be worked out. He does not know of any "absolute formula" for achieving the suggested representation of the professions and said the idea may eventually not even come to fruition.

Kasit suggested the details regarding which professions should have how many representative seats depend on how much tax each particular profession or industry paid.

The former diplomat, who is also a member of the Democrat Party's shadow cabinet, was very clear about identifying the PAD's perceived enemy: ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

"He wants to have absolute control over Thai society," Kasit claimed. "He doesn't take the King seriously; he wants to own the bloody country! I found him to be very dangerous for Thailand."

Kasit said "the Thai people" did not have "the patience and tolerance" to allow electoral democracy to evolve and sort out its own problems, so "new politics" was needed.

"We have become very impatient, save only for the Democrats," Kasit said.

Democrat Party deputy leader Korn Chatikavanij defended the PAD by saying those who criticised the alliance for being undemocratic held a very narrow view. Until not long ago, Britain had a hereditary House of Lords and yet nobody called the UK undemocratic, he said.

A third speaker at the Foreign Correspondents' Club, Chris Baker, an expert on Thai politics, asked how the PAD could ever establish legitimacy and authority for its "new politics" paradigm. He criticised it as not being new at all, but rather "very old politics".

In this "old politics", the majority of the people are regarded as unready to exercise their right to vote. It also proposes that certain people should have more rights than others, he said.

"This is not 'new politics'. In Thailand this is very old politics. What concerns me now is that there will be a movement of some people who don't understand or who are afraid [of the new political reality], and there will be an attempt to delegitimise the [political] upswell."

Baker argued that rural voters in the North and Northeast did not make decisions on which party to vote for, because of money paid by politicians alone. They also considered party policies.

"Yes. People do still hand out notes, but that's not why people choose a candidate," he said.

Korn said in the last election, some former Thai Rak Thai Party MPs who had joined the Puea Pandin Party failed to win seats in the Northeast even though they spent three times more money than their People Power Party opponents. This, he said, suggested "the so-called populist policies" were becoming a key factor.

(www.nationmultimedia.com/2008/10/02/politics/politics_30084916.php)