This is a very informative book on an enormously important topic in contemporary Thai politics: the virtual hegemony of the ruling Democrat Party in southern Thailand. The party's stronghold is so firm that even the mighty Thai Rak Thai Party (led by Thaksin Shinawatra) could win only two of the region's 54 parliamentary seats in the 2005 election. Based on his extensive fieldwork in Songkhla Province, Marc Askew presents the first comprehensive analysis of this party and its following. The fieldwork specifically targets four multi-level elections held in Songkhla in 2004–05. In doing so, Askew provides a blow-by-blow, first-hand account of these elections to unravel the mechanisms underlying the Democrat's domination. The account is further enlivened by his interviews with candidates and their supporters, both Democrat and non-Democrat.
Askew makes two essential claims in regard to the party's significant position in Thailand's political arena. First, that the Democrat Party has made effective use of its organisational resources; in particular the reliance upon its tightly knit informal groupings called phuak. He argues that despite regarding themselves as the ‘cleanest’ party in Thailand, the Democrat Party has resorted to vote buying, although he points out that it has done so with restraint and on a limited scale. Thus, at one level, he grounds his explanation in the less-than-savoury practicalities of Machiavellian politics.
If Askew had stopped here, his book would be little different from much of the literature on rural Thai politics. Instead, he gives a second and far more interesting answer: that the Democrat's dominance hinges on the politics of culture — the invention and manipulation of ‘southern Thai culture’ for political purposes. This notion refers to the romanticised, essentialising myth that ‘southern Thailand’ constitutes a distinctive community that has always upheld the noble values of integrity and loyalty. At election time, the Democrat mobilises a range of symbolic and rhetorical instruments to project itself as a party that embodies and champions such putatively timeless political principles. Those instruments include election slogans and posters; the dissemination of rumours; and well-attended campaign rallies, where candidates adept in oratory skills evoke and appeal to the image of ‘virtuous southerners’ and simultaneously demonise their opponents as endangering the ‘morality’ of southern Thailand. A diverse mix of people who comprise this imagined political community – old and young, rich and poor – has been socialised into believing that they must support the Democrat Party as a matter of principle and loyalty. Thus, their voting behaviour is based on their deep emotional attachment to the Democrats. Southerners reaffirm their regional identity and pride by supporting Democrat candidates.
One might categorise this as a case of ideological domination in a Marxist sense. Askew, however, avoids using such a label, presumably because ‘ideology’ carries the connotation that ordinary people are passive and gullible. He assigns more agency or autonomy to the southerners' decisions to behave and express their politics in the manner that they do. The question of whether southern Thailand is unique or not is unimportant to Askew. Rather, the book focuses on how these images about southern Thailand represent particular ideas about the Thai nation and its future.
Askew's rich analysis raises several questions, however. According to him, many southerners are dissatisfied with the Democrats' poor performance on specific issues (e.g., rural development). Come election time, however, such mundane issues, which would otherwise undermine the Democrats' legitimacy, are somehow overshadowed by abstract political principles. Southerners become marvellously united in supporting the Democrats, so much so that they make comments that sound surreal to uninitiated ears such as ‘I left home determined not to vote Democrat anymore, but once I entered the polling booth … I found myself changing my mind and voting for the Democrats once again’ (p. 291). Askew falls short of showing convincingly why or how this kind of voter puts long-term non-material collective interests above short-term material benefits at election time. Also not entirely clear is why so many southerners continue to embrace the symbolically constructed image of Democrats' morality, when it is often contravened in reality.
In addressing these questions, Askew highlights the importance of Chuan Leekpai, a former prime minister and Democrat Party leader who embodies the idealised southern Thai culture. Chuan showed his face (only briefly) at many rallies, allowed himself to be seen with Democrat candidates, and urged the audience ‘as southerners’ to vote for the Democrats. This symbolism turned the tide, like magic, in favour of the Democrats. To make this account more convincing, however, Askew might have elaborated more on how Chuan has historically acquired the enormous symbolic or moral capital he enjoys or why southerners revere him as the symbol of the Democrat ideology in the first place.
In relation to this, Askew's account is not too deeply historical. He traces the Democrat domination to 1992, when the party appropriated the folklore scholars' previous construction of southern Thai culture. The Democrat ascendancy (if not complete domination) actually dates to the mid-1970s (as noted by Askew on pp. 35–6) when ‘southern culture’ was not an operating paradigm. At that time, Chuan was just one of many emerging politicians; he had not attained the iconographic stature that he enjoys at present. This begs the question: What explains the pattern of domination that had emerged long before the 1990s? What is the historical origin of the Democrat rule?
One politician who might hold the key to answering this question (at least in Songkhla's case) is Khlai La-ongmani, one of the Democrat Party's founders and Songkhla's longstanding, well-respected MP. He recruited and groomed the successive generation of ‘good’ Democrats. Askew mentions Khlai in passing only. Another key individual treated cursorily by Askew is Prem Tinsulanonda, a native of Songkhla who served as prime minister (1980–88) by receiving the King's firm support. As such, Prem, while not a Democrat, deserves far more attention than Askew accords him (p. 35) for having contributed to the image of ‘virtuous southern Thailand’. Highlighting the role of these individuals might better illuminate the broad historical process, through which the Democrat Party has established, safeguarded and consolidated its regional bastion of support. Chuan could be considered as much a product of the moral universe constructed by Khlai, Prem and others as he is a principal architect or guardian of it.
These points, however, do not detract from Askew's valuable and timely scholarly contribution. The dynamics of electoral politics in one southern province come vividly alive in this meticulously researched and well-written work of political anthropology. The rich empirical details presented here form a solid foundation on which Thai politics scholars can build theories that are sensitive to the (socially constructed) values, expectations and aspirations of rural-based voters in Thailand.
