Political jungle journeys with The Nation's Chang Noi

Published in the Nation on January 31, 2009
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/option/print.php?newsid=30094807

The Chang Noi column is The Nation’s jewel in the crown. Chang Noi, or “Little Elephant”, are actually two people but beyond that I won't give any hints to the identities behind their pseudonym.

Jungle Book
By Chang Noi
Published by Silkworm Books, 2008
Available at leading bookstores, Bt550

Reviewed by James Eckardt
Special to The Nation

They have now come up with a magnificent collection of their columns, entitled "Jungle Book" (Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai, 2009, 247pp) and subtitled "Thailand's Politics, Moral Panic and Plunder, 1960-2008".

"Chiang Noi first padded onto The Nation's editorial pages in April 1996," the authors write in their introduction. "This book has a selection from almost 400 articles that have appeared since… Writing this column has been a lot of fun. The 12-year span of the bubble, the bust, the fight over the 1997 Constitution, the rise of Thaksin and the coup and crisis of 2006-2008."

The authors have preferred to "traipse off into the deep jungles of history, nose into the underground of academia, or simply stomp up a hill in search of a longer, clearer view of the landscape". Continuing the jungle metaphor, they have divided their book into sections called Fauna (the big political beasts), Feeding Habits (the political food chain), Tooth and Claw (the weapons used to destroy basic rights and freedoms), and Lords of the Jungle (the dominant political animals of the past few years). Three other sections deal with popular culture from movies to TV to music to sex scandals.

The sum of the 64 essays in this collection is much greater than their parts. They have been meticulously juxtaposed for maximum effect. For example, the article "How to Buy a Country" written on July 31, 2000, is followed immediately by "How to Sell a Country" written on May 15, 2006.

The authors offer 10 points of advice to Thaksin Shinawatra on how to buy a country, such as get a monopoly, wait for an economic crisis, acquire a savvy marketing team, plaster posters of yourself all over the country. Most important: "Buy every politician not nailed down. This is where point 2 (waiting for a crisis) really starts to pay off. Many will be hard-up or deeply in debt. Many will be rightly worried about their own personal safety if they fail to keep up the usual payments to their armies of hangers-on."

As for selling the country, Thaksin again has 10 options. "Have a core business in which the profit level is ultimately determined by government rules rather than market competition … Sabotage the regulatory environment. Delay calls for market liberalisation. Even improve your own concession terms if you're feeling ambitious." And, of course, stomp any possible sources of criticism: TV channels, newspapers, radio stations. "Harass NGOs. Ridicule intellectuals. Intimidate everybody with a lethal anti-drug campaign. Strew the country with defamation suits. Pour scorn on democracy, rights, and the rule of law."

The first section on political "fauna" is an appalling catalogue of financial skullduggery by such accomplished masters as the provincial godfathers Sia Jiew and Kamnan Poh, as well as Montri Pongpanit. who made a career of plundering every ministry he controlled. In terms of epic corruption, however, none can match police chief Phao Siyanon, profiled later in the book. During a 10-year spree from 1947 to 1957, he waxed rich from the opium trade while assassinating a long line of local activists, army officers, business rivals and members of parliament.

The Feeding Habits section is a delicious chronicle of scandals from mass logging in the Salween region to shakedown scams at the Ministry of Public Health to massive fraud in the rice price support scheme to bid rigging for Bangkok's new airport.

Against this legacy of corruption and intimidation stand non-government organisations (NGOs) that fight for a wide variety of causes. "The movement is big, varied, and far from perfect. . . Its strength comes from the issues themselves, and from the base of popular support." Thaksin demonised them, then offered to provide them with funding. "He thinks he can buy NGOs as easily as MPs," note the authors.

Towards the end of the book, the authors lament that the great themes of Thailand in the 1990s were reform, openness, and participation while the great themes of the 2000s have been authoritarianism, suppression and exclusion, first under Thaksin, then the military. The country has been riven into two bleeding halves.

"Thaksin did not create the disunity," the authors conclude. "It was there already. Nor did he spark the politicisation of that disunity. That had already begun. He simply sharpened it, and profited from it. Removing him does not close the divisions by one centimetre."

A last word: "Jungle Book" is highly readable with short punchy sentences and flashes of wit. The tales the authors tell are often dire but the reader can't help but enjoy them.