Asia Times: Civil society finds fertile soil in constitution


	July 7, 2000	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Civil society finds fertile soil in constitution
By Mahesh Uniyal

BANGKOK - Eight years after a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests and following the 1997 financial crisis that deflated its economy, Thailand is fast learning the value of human dignity, say rights experts.

The Southeast Asian nation, which was effectively ruled by autocratic regimes until 1992, still has a long way to go, but there are firm signs that it is on the right road to real political and social democracy, they assert.

Indeed, ''impressive gains'' in the field of human rights in Thailand have been hailed by the international community, even as critics of present shortcomings admit that these represent a passing phase. ''We may not be among the top 10 (nations) in human rights, but compared to other countries in the region, we are much better,'' says one of Thailand's leading human rights campaigners, Somchai Homlaor. Thailand still has a few blots on its rights record book, he admits. ''(But) more attention will be paid to these as civil society gets stronger.''

The seeds for strengthening civil society in Thailand have been sown by the landmark 1997 constitution that has been praised by the world community. ''There has been a major change in Thailand, where the main safeguard of human rights and human development is the 1997 constitution, the country's first democratic one,'' says the latest annual Human Development Report of the UN Development Program (UNDP) released late June.

Like rights analysts in Thailand, the UNDP report noted that the changes made by the new constitution are not cosmetic. ''The current constitution is the only one that can claim to be most democratic. In the past there was a reluctance to recognize civil society, but (it is) now being given great recognition,'' says leading Thai constitutional expert Vitit Muntarbhorn of Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.

One of the tests of the new constitution came in mid-June, when the government was forced to call back a censored version of the report of a probe into the May 1992 confrontation between pro-democracy protestors and the then military rulers. This was made possible by the new constitutionally guaranteed right of access to public information, which was used by relatives of those who either died or went missing after the bloodbath called the "Black May" incident. Unlike in earlier constitutions, this wide range of rights are enforceable in the courts. The constitution says that ''human dignity'' is the basis of human rights in Thailand.

The 1992 incident, in which government troops allegedly gunned down scores of demonstrators protesting the appointment of Gen Suchinda Kraprayoon as prime minister, was a turning point in Thailand's political history. It marked the end of six decades of direct and indirect military rule. To this day, there are conflicting versions between the military's account of the crackdown and relatives of victims who demand an apology from Suchinda.

However, analysts say it was the 1997 economic crisis that put Thailand irrevocably on the road to political democracy. ''The 1997 crisis awakened Thai society to the realization that they have to speed up political reformation, otherwise the nation cannot survive,'' says Homlaor.

''Ironically perhaps, the plight of the national economy had a positive impact on political changes,'' says Muntarbhorn.

According to Homlaor, the economic crisis also exposed the mismatch between the economic and political system. It was because the political system till then was ''still backward'' that Thailand found it was ''not capable of facing the crisis'', he points out.

The new political and civil rights are also seen as aiding Thailand's recovery from the crisis, specially in helping the most vulnerable people who are on the fringes of economic growth. Latest official figures show that the crisis has pushed a sizeable proportion below the poverty line. In addition there are sharp income disparities, with some 60 percent of the national wealth held by just a fifth of the population. ''While the topmost echelons are getting richer, the poorest are getting poorer in relative terms as part of a lack of equity/social justice,'' says Muntarbhorn in a study published by the UNDP.

However, the new political and civil rights are helping correct social and economic imbalances, he says. ''The development process in the country has long been unbalanced,'' says Muntarbhorn. But unlike earlier five-year national economic and social development plans that were ''top down and centralized in approach'', the current eighth plan begun in 1997, has a ''more human centered and participatory mindset'', he adds.

According to Homlaor, the political changes in Thailand should ''lead to better economic development that will benefit people and not just the elite''. He points out that without the right to demand their due by political mobilization, the poor cannot hope to gain from economic growth.

Although the right to assemble for public meetings is older than the 1997 constitution, it is the new freedom to demand information that can make the difference, he feels. Mark Thamthai of Chulalongkorn University and a member of the national Information Commission set up under the new constitution, agrees. ''Information can help overcome fear,'' he says, referring to the ''fear on the part of the most vulnerable people to do anything (including demand their rights)''.

However, Thamthai says he has been disappointed to see that this fear still prevails. The new information law has been ''hardly used'' despite having ''300,000 uses'' for ordinary people, he points out.

Muntarbhorn thinks that Thailand is still in a stage of ''experimentation with the new realities (and) all these new rules of the game are in the stage of gestation.''

(Inter Press Service)

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