Mitigating Factors? Arguing Thaksin’s Case, II

(Readers starting at the top of the blog are strongly encouraged to read the three immediately previous posts before moving on to this one.)

Now consider a different set of “mitigating” arguments that could be offered on Thaksin’s behalf. These arguments presume that the war on drugs was indeed a bad, even a nasty thing, but want to suggest that this does not mean Thaksin himself is an awful person or leader.

1. Thaksin meant well, even if his methods were misguided.

Here the argument is that Thaksin exercised poor judgment in planning the war on drugs, but that he meant well and did it all out of love for the Thai people. In the United States, this sort of argument is increasingly used with respect to George W. Bush: i.e., “Iraq is a disaster, but Bush has a good heart and just wants to defend freedom.”

That sort of argument is essentially non-falsifiable; none of us can confidently presume to judge the deepest contents of a politician’s heart. (I have a theory about Thaksin on that score—and Bush too!—but I’ll save those for another day.) However, politicians and leaders are properly judged on the consequences of their actions, so even if true this only takes Thaksin off the hook so far. But one could imagine a plausible argument saying a) Thaksin did mess up the war on drugs but b) he meant well and still is a good person so c) his errors in the drug war don’t make him unfit to run a football club or any other business.

2.Thaksin’s disastrous war on drugs needs to be weighed against the other benefits of his regime.

This argument is more promising. Plausibly stated, it might go something like this: okay, put one in the minus column on Thaksin’s ledger for the whole war on drugs bit. But look at the good his regime did in other areas: expanding health care for the rural poor, for instance. Surely that saved more lives than were lost in the drug war. Or the continued economic development of the nation. Or the reported reduction in poverty. If you take these all together, you’ll find Thaksin was a net plus for the Thai people, especially the rural base that elected him, despite the problems with the drug war.

In my view there may well be something to be said for this argument, if one adopts a utilitarian barometer for judging leaders. But non-utilitarians (such as those pesky human rights groups) will not be so easily swayed by this kind of argument. On the other hand, a quasi-Marxian view might hold that the liberal human rights groups like Amnesty International place too much emphasis on the bourgeois rights, and not enough on socio-economic rights such as the right to live free of poverty. From this point of view, the concerns of human rights groups are entirely too narrow; death from malnutrition or poor health care is just as awful as death at the hands of police conducting a drug war, but only the latter gets the headlines, it could be claimed.

Trying to adjudicate the merits of these different points of view is beyond the scope of this blog; for now it’s enough to point out that what one thinks about claim #2 will depend on both one’s reading of the facts about Thailand’s overall development under Thaksin and what standard one uses to judge leaders and public policy.

3. Other leaders around the world commit human rights violations too, but you don’t see the British getting up in arms about that; Tony Blair’s support for the Iraq War led to far more deaths than Thaksin is even accused of. But there wouldn’t be this uproar and scrutiny if it were Tony Blair trying to buy an English football club.

The force of this argument is that it’s easy to pick apart the faults of other regimes while being blind to the much bigger faults of our own regimes. In particular, entire academic industries in the developed West are devoted to studying emerging democracies, often with a faintly condescending tone as contained in distinctions between “emerging” and “mature” democracies and so forth; yet media and academic attention doesn’t focus as easily on the undemocratic features and tendencies in our own societies, and quickly moves on or forgets when the actions of nations like the UK or the US lead to human rights violations abroad.

There is clearly something to be said for this argument, but it’s not really successful as a defense of Thaksin per se. Rather, its value is in its demand for moral consistency. If we are to pick apart Thaksin’s apparent complicity in the war on drugs, we must do the same for other leaders, or other new owners in the Premiership. Shouldn’t the media be running the rule over Tom Hicks, the crony and donor of George W. Bush, as complicit in human rights violations? And why haven’t the media really ever gotten to the bottom of the Roman Abramovich story? These are fair points, even if they don’t really exonerate Thaksin.

4. In evaluating Thaksin’s record on human rights, you have to compare him not simply to an abstract standard of respect for liberal human rights, but to plausible political alternatives in Thailand. Thaksin may have been bad for human rights, at least in some respects, but isn’t the military junta that replaced him just as bad, or worse, or even much worse?

Call this the “realist argument.” The realist argument raises an excellent question, one leading into the themes of the next couple of major posts–the first looking a bit harder at just what human rights groups do, the second (to appear next week) on the impact of Thaksin on prospects for democracy in Thailand. It will suffice to say here that one can consistently criticize Thaksin for the war on drugs, yet also be anti-coup and aghast at the military junta’s curtailment of political freedoms.That in fact is the implicit position, with several variations, of many academics studying Thai politics.

What is the upshot of all this? To lay my cards on the table, it seems fairly clear to me that the war on drugs was a human rights disaster, and I hope independent inquiries will one day lead to a genuine reckoning and some measure of accountability. Freedom House’s three recommendations from 2005 effectively specify what ought to happen:

“Thailand should immediately hold a full public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the war on drugs of 2003 and the extrajudicial killings associated with it.

Those suspected of involvement in any extradjudicial killings, including senior officers, should be brought to trial.

Firm action should be taken against state officials allegedly responsible for human rights abuses, torture, and disappearances in the south, including criminal trials when appropriate.”

The only caveat is that “immediately” needs to be amended to “immediately after the establishment of a new government in Thailand.” Any inquiry led by the junta that implicates Thaksin or his government will immediately be tainted as politically motivated and will lack the needed credibility. Judging from comments by Thaksin’s lawyer last week, his client would be pleased to have the opportunity to clear his name in a formal setting. It would be great for all concerned if he were to have that opportunity.

But while I’m persuaded the war on drugs was a major offense against human rights that Thaksin should have to answer for to an independent inquiry, the questions of whether, in evaluating his regime as a whole, this harm was outweighed by other good things Thaksin helped bring about, or whether the plausible alternatives to Thaksin are or would have been worse, are less clear cut.

To address those questions, we’ll have to examine an issue that (in my mind anyway) is even more important than that of specific human rights abuses: the impact of Thaksin and Thaksinization on democracy in Thailand. On the one hand, Thaksin is often defended with reference to the legitimacy that comes from winning elections; on the other hand, many critics believe that Thaksin’s commitment to democracy was superficial at best and charge him with undermining a free civil society. This is an important set of questions, particularly if one holds the view (as I do) that establishing and maintaining democratic norms is the precondition for upholding human rights and quickly rectifying their violation.

So we’ll take that up next week. And, we’ll also circle back (believe me) to the question of Thaksin’s fitness to own Manchester City, as well as the related question of whether Thaksin’s ownership of City somehow makes the club and its supporters complicit in his alleged offenses against human rights. (My answer on that is a qualified no; more explanation next week.)

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