Page 2 of 2 Thaksin as peacemaker in south Thailand
By Jason Johnson
Although Hassan may not be a core leader of the clandestine BRN movement, he is known to have open communication channels with leading rebel figures, including the movement's spiritual leader Sapae-ing Basor, according to several sources. Moreover, some other figures in the Hassan-led BRN delegation are part of BRN's Pemuda youth wing in the region and have spoken out strongly at the first three rounds of dialogue held in Kuala Lumpur, according to sources familiar with the talks.
Bureaucratic resistance
Though the Democrats' resistance to Thaksin's dialogue process in part reflect typical mudslinging by the political opposition, the party's resistance should also be understood in the context of its position vis-?-vis two forms of governance: one with its foundations in royally-supported bureaucratic rule, the other based on power
derived from electoral rule, especially at the regional level.
For nearly a decade, Democrat politicians have traced the dramatic escalation of the conflict to Thaksin's decision to dissolve the SBPAC and the Civilian-Police-Military Command (CPM) 43 in 2002.
Prem Tinsulanonda, former prime minister and current president of the royal Privy Council, established the SBPAC and CPM 43 in 1981 to provide better communication between the restive minority region and the central government, and to improve intelligence gathering and coordination among security agencies. Under the authority of Prem, a Buddhist from the Democrat Party-dominated southern province of Songkhla, the SBPAC became a bastion of power for Democrat loyalists.
Thaksin's dissolution of the SBPAC and simultaneous efforts to remove many officials loyal to Prem and the Democrats was thus viewed as a direct attempt to undermine establishment power. Following Thaksin's ouster in 2006, the SBPAC was reestablished by the coup-appointed government of General Surayud Chulanont, also a member of the Privy Council and known as Prem's acolyte. Although this was hailed by nearly all analysts as a positive step towards restoring peace, violence nonetheless escalated to reach peak levels in 2007.
Leading Thai politics academic Duncan McCargo has argued that the SBPAC represents a form of "virtuous" semi-monarchial style of governance for the far south. Rather than establish a form of elected regional government, Prem set up a powerful network of officials loyal to the monarchy and the Democrats at SBPAC to oversee administration and security in the restive region. Appointed by Bangkok, nearly all SBPAC heads were ethnic Thai Buddhists from the south region, and, until recently, all were known to be loyal to Prem.
The appointment by Yingluck of Police Colonel Tawee Sodsong as the SBPAC's secretary general in late 2011 marked a shift away from Democrat Party-dominated bureaucratic power, and a potential first step towards allowing for regional autonomy. Tawee became the first SBPAC head loyal to Thaksin and not to Prem and the Democrats. His path to the agency's top spot was paved somewhat ironically by a Democrat Party-led initiative to restructure the SBPAC in late 2010.
In line with Abhisit's vow to place the military under stronger civilian control, the Democrats sought to increase the power of the SBPAC vis-a-vis the military-controlled Internal Security Operations Command's (ISOC) Region 4 Forward Command. Rather than reporting to the 4th Army chief, the reforms made the SBPAC's secretary-general report directly to the prime minister. The restructuring also stripped ISOC of its control over the SBPAC's budget and no longer required its head to hail from the Ministry of Interior. The latter provision allowed Yingluck to appoint Tawee, seen as a rising star in Thaksin's inner circle, to oversee the influential agency.
The contrasts between Tawee and his predecessor, Panu Uthairat, reflect in many ways the broader competition between the Democrats and Peua Thai in the region. Panu, a former Bangkok-appointed governor of Pattani province, had long been a Ministry of Interior official. He also was a Thai Buddhist from Pattani with extensive knowledge of the Muslim majority region and could even speak the local Malay dialect. Still, many Malay Muslim nationalist activists felt that the Prem-aligned Panu was prejudiced against Malay Muslims.
Southern satellites
That Panu was viewed in a negative light by some Malay-speaking Muslims was hardly surprising given the history of conflict between southern Buddhist officials and local Malay Muslims. Thai Buddhist officials from the southern region tend to look down on Malay Muslims, often viewing them as overly religious, insular, uneducated, and even prone to separatist and criminal violence.
Some Malay Muslim academics and others trace the origin of these attitudes to southerners' long history of administrative influence in the far south. Prior to the formation of territorial borders in the early 20th century, Siam's southern satellites Nakorn Sri Thammarat and Songkhla exercised control over the Patani Sultanate. Since then, southern Buddhists have dominated Ministry of Interior positions in the far south.
Hailing from Thailand's central region, Tawee took control of the SBPAC without some of the inherent biases that southern Thai Buddhist officials generally hold. Some political insiders familiar with Tawee's work at the SBPAC said that he seemed like a wide-eyed newcomer to the distinct region. To be sure, Tawee worked there when he served as the deputy secretary general of the Department of Special Investigations (DSI) under Thaksin from 2004 to 2006.
Although that association means he was involved with Thaksin's heavy-handed tactics, this time he is believed to have Thaksin's full backing to address widespread grievances and galvanize support among Malay Muslims in a manner unprecedented for a SBPAC head.
Like previous SPBAC heads since 2006, Tawee immediately stressed the urgent need for justice and to show respect for the uniqueness of Malay Muslim identity. However, Tawee began to send out shockwaves at seminars and meetings in the region when he began emphasizing the need for some form of special regional elected governance. On many occasions he has even referred to Malay Muslim nationalist icon Haji Sulong's seven-point plan for creating an autonomous region in the late 1940s.
From Tawee's public references to Sulong, it is possible to tease out links between the Thaksin-driven peace-making effort and Sulong's seven-point recommendations. Sulong initially had the support of former prime minister Pridi Banomyong, who had visions of Swiss-style federalism for Thailand, but was later killed by southern Thai police in 1954 under the ultra-nationalistic government of military strongman Phibun Songkhram.
Sulong's son, Den Tohmeena, later became a prominent local politician and initial leader of the once influential Wadah faction, a group of Malay Muslim politicians brought under the wing of General Chavalit Yongchaiyuth and his New Aspiration Party in the early 1990s. Chavalit, prime minister between 2006 and 2007, developed strong personal and political ties to Wadah figures and former separatists through his involvement in quasi-amnesty programs for Malay Muslim separatists in the 1980s.
The Wadah faction would later dominate the region's parliamentary seats in the 1990s and later followed Chavalit by joining Thaksin's initial Thai Rak Thai party in 2001. But with the spike in insurgency-related violence, Wadah figures' ties to Thaksin contributed to their failure at the polls to the Democrats in the 2005, 2007 and 2011 elections. In the most recent national election, the Democrats won nine out of 11 parliamentary seats in the far south, though critics and observers have claimed the party was involved in vote-buying and relied on the army's muscle to persuade voters.
While the Chavalit-linked Wadah figures have never returned to political prominence, the 81-year-old former premier has a strong reputation in the conflict-ridden region as one of the few national-level political figures who is sympathetic to moderate nationalist aspirations. Several years ago Chavalit proposed a highly decentralized model for restructured governance for the region. Initially dubbed Nakorn Pattani, Chavalit's model has been one of several that have been discussed with locals by a network of NGOs carrying out forums about restructured governance in the region.
Thaksin's new position towards the region may in part stem from the precedent established by Chavalit. "Even though Thaksin would probably not want to admit it, he is following the path that General Chavalit started more than two decades ago," said one local Malay Muslim academic.
A long-time security official based in the region who is a strong supporter of Democrat leader Abhisit but favors Peua Thai's approach said: "Chavalit has vision concerning the region's future, especially concerning the direction of special regional governance. Chavalit has had this vision for a long time, and I'm sure Thaksin has learned from Chavalit's earlier efforts."
Because Peua Thai has shown a willingness to offer substantial concessions to the region, the Thaksin-aligned party has made political headway - most especially in intellectual circles - in spite of Thaksin's past links to state violence and human-rights abuses. "We are not like Thaksin's supporters in the northeast or in the north [where Thaksin enjoys his strongest political support]," said one young Patani nationalist activist. "We do not love Thaksin but we recognize that he is willing to negotiate and offer something like autonomy. The Democrat party would never be willing to do this."
Aversions and inclinations
Peua Thai's more conciliatory approach toward Malay Muslim aspirations reflects to some extent its lack of political and social ties to the electoral base most opposed to formal dialogue and autonomy: Buddhists in the violence-struck region and in nearby southern provinces like Songkhla.
Many Sino-Thais and Thai Buddhists have fled the majority Malay Muslim region out of fears of being targeted by a rebel movement some analysts claim engages in ethnic cleansing. Many of those who have remained not only fear for their security but also resent Tawee and Peua Thai for what they perceive as excessive accommodation to perpetrators of violence.
While Thaksin, Tawee, and Peua Thai may not wish to overtly ignore local Buddhists' concerns and grievances, they are more inclined to offer substantial concessions to Malay Muslims because their connections to southern Buddhists are less tangible than those of the more regionally-established Democrats.
In Buddhist intellectual circles, many point to the region's most peaceful decade since the 1960s - the 1990s - and claim that if Thaksin had kept institutions like the SBPAC intact and not taken an iron-fisted approach in dealing with the rebel movement then the violence and demands for autonomous government, emanating now nearly exclusively from the movement and nationalist activists, would never have happened.
Yet the model of monarchial-bureaucratic rule has been increasingly challenged by electoral politics since Thaksin's initial rise to power in 2001. With Thailand's widely-respected 85-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej in fragile health, there are looming questions over the country's political trajectory and sustainability of top-down governance models. Many analysts and security officials anticipate that greater decentralization is inevitable, including but not exclusively in the far south.
With no signs that the Thai military's counter-insurgency tactics will undermine the resilient rebel movement, many analysts believed it was imperative to elevate past secret talks to a formal dialogue level and begin to lay the groundwork for special regional governance structures. Thaksin's approach contributed to the resurgence of insurgent violence a decade ago. Now, his willingness to challenge bureaucratic power and replace it with some form of regional elected governance has raised new hopes of a breakthrough.
While recent short-term failures of the dialogue process have galvanized Thaksin's critics, they risk overlooking the initiative's long term vision for the region. "Thaksin and Malaysia have an agreement: it's autonomy. Between now and when that happens, you will see a lot of drama, but that is the deal," said a government official loyal to Thaksin. "We have to prepare Thailand for this."
Observers to the protracted conflict have long argued that Thai governments need to show greater recognition of the unique identity of Malay Muslims and offer something similar to autonomy. It is still difficult for many to grasp the notion that Thaksin is now the main supporter of these delicate issues. Establishment powers have long resisted allowing for regional representative governance and entering a formal dialogue with rebels. It is thus unsurprising that the current peace drive towards autonomy has come from a government that draws its power from the ballot box and not from the royalist establishment.
Jason Johnson is an independent researcher and consultant covering southernmost Thailand. He is currently based in Pattani province, southern Thailand, and may be reached at jrj.johnson@gmail.com
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