... and Professor Anderson is describing Thailand! Read and inwardly digest... here is a short extract: A good sign of oligarchy is the absence of a coherent, well-managed opposition; another is the easy and rapid movement of sor-sor [MPs] between so-called parties as shifting governing coalitions get formed. Ne Win was one day the right hand man of Thaksin, and the next the builder of the anti-Thaksin present Aphisit government. Crucial to a successful oligarchy is astute control of the electoral system. After Indonesia undertook its first ‘free elections’ following the fall of Suharto -- elections which were hailed as democratization in the Western press -- I ran into a senior American colleague who specializes in electoral systems, and, in fact, advised the Indonesian government. When I asked him his opinion, he shook his head and said “They have the worst electoral system I have ever experienced. This is not an accident, nor a sign of stupidity. The political leaders knew exactly what they were doing in framing the laws on elections.” You can spot oligarchies also by the hierarchical language they use to generate legitimacy. The key word to look out for is “give.” The kind-grandfather regime will “give’ the national grandchildren almost free education, subsidies for farmers, tsunami warning apparatuses, cheap loans, computers for elementary schools, blankets and seeds for ‘backward’ ethnic groups and so on. I am not a great admirer of either the US or the UK political system, but people in those two countries would find it odd and even insulting if the President or the Prime Minister talked about, say, ‘giving’ one million new jobs. I’m afraid that even the best Thai scholars do not yet pay enough detailed attention to the Thai oligarchy’s language. In Indonesia today, you will often find oligarchs complaining that the rakyat masih bodoh, which means the masses are still stupid/naïve. The phrase was coined in the period just after independence was achieved 60 years ago, when people thought this stupidity, created by the colonialists, would now soon disappear. Today the oligarchs without shame use the same language clearly meaning that the masses will always be stupid, and that is why the good-hearted fatherly oligarchy is necessary. It is not a matter of great surprise that this fascination with pseudofeudal hierarchy is quite visible among the aspiring middle classes, but at this level without the word ‘give.’ In 1910, close to one third of the adult population of New York was working as maids, nannies, chauffeurs, guards and so on. Twenty years later, with the mass production of mechanical tools for cleaning and upkeeping houses, this population vanished. Not so with the middle classes of oligarchic SE Asia, who also own these tools. Maids have become a sort of status symbol, and have frequently been abused physically, mentally, and financially, by the mother or grandmother of the bourgeois family – which tells you something about the mentality of quite a few middle class, maid-employing feminists. In the old days, feudal aristocrats regarded their servants as their entourage, and often kept up long-term relations with them. Middle class parents do not see the maids as ‘entourage,’ pay them stingily, and regularly fire them. The maids are usually regarded as unreliable, lying, thieving, and lazy girls – not people to be trusted. the whole thing is here: http://www.prachatai.com/english/node/2694
The visit of His Holiness the Pope to the Philippines encouraged me to dig out this blast from the past...
