Constitutional Reform And Democracy In Thailand

[Xangsamhua]

An interesting report from the Asia Foundation at http://asiafoundation.org/resources/pdfs/T...portenglish.pdf

The report covers responses from a survey in July 2009 of 1500 people from all regions, conducted through face-to face interviews. Interviewees were questioned about the direction of the country, biggest problems facing Thailand, the Constitution, the electoral system, politicians, police and army, the New Politics proposal and decentralization.

I haven't the time or energy to summarize the main points here. The Preface, Executive Summary and Introduction do that quite well and only take 5-10 minutes to read. The whole document is 127 pages.

A few things I noted:

1. Two thirds of the respondents think the country is headed in the wrong direction due to poor economics. Only 11% cited recent political conflicts as a factor.

2. 62% support the banning of politicians and dissolution of parties. Only 21% think politicians who are convicted of crimes should be pardoned. 57% would revoke the pardon granted to the coup-makers in the 2007 constitution.

3. 68% recognize that political conflict is a normal part of the democratic process and 98% believe that there is more that unites Thai people than divides them.

4. Thais are more politically tolerant than the publics of other Asian countries. 79% would allow meetings of unpopular parties in their area. 92% believe that women should be free to make their own choice in voting - the highest percentage of any country surveyed by the Asia Foundation in the past decade.

5. Only 26% support the reduction of directly elected MPs and their replacement by MPs selected by "functional groups or independent institutions" (i.e. the "New Politics" proposal). 54% would drop the party-list system in favour of single-member electorates.

6. The courts have the highest rate of trust and the police the lowest. 61% believe "most people cannot be trusted". However, they trust their neighbours (74% say they are trustworthy).

7. Most people seem to either condone corruption or accept it as inevitable to get things done (the Executive Summary is not really explicit in this matter).

8. 84% say there is no obligation to vote for an election candidate even if they had accepted money or a gift. However, 58% believe that voters in their area could be influenced by vote-buying activity.

There's quite a bit more, and I've only looked at the Executive Summary, so for political junkies there should be plenty in the report to reflect on.