โดย ม.ล.ณัฏฐกรณ์ เทวกุล
24 มิถุนายน 2552
หมายเหตุไทยอีนิวส์:บทความชื่อ What distinguishes Thailand from Iran?ถูกนำเสนอครั้งแรกใน asiasentinel ผู้เขียนคือม.ล.ณัฏฐกรณ์บอกว่า "เป็นบทความที่นสพ.ในประเทศมิได้เเสดงความสนใจที่จะลง" ทั้งนี้บทความกล่าวถึงความแตกต่างของวิกฤตการณ์ประชาธิปไตยในอิหร่านกับไทย โดยกรณีอิหร่านประชาชนฝ่ายประท้วงออกมาชุมนุมโดยกล่าวหาว่าฝ่ายรัฐบาลที่ชนะท่วมท้นนั้น"โกงการเลือกตั้ง" แต่กรณีของไทยผู้ประท้วง(พันธมิตร)ออกมาประท้วงรัฐบาลทักษิณและเครือข่ายที่ชนะการเลือกตั้งท่วมท้นด้วยข้อหาเป็นเผด็จการรัฐสภา
แต่ที่2ประเทศช่างละม้ายคล้ายคลึงกันก็คือ ความไม่เป็นประชาธิปไตยที่สมบูรณ์ อยู่ในภาวะที่กึ่งประชาธิปไตย กล่าวคือ2ประเทศนี้ ให้ประชาชนในประเทศของตัวเองออกเสียงเลือกตั้ง ทว่าก็มีชนชั้นนำที่ไม่ต้องมาจากการเลือกตั้งของประชาชน มีอำนาจเหนือในการครอบงำทิศทางของประเทศว่า ควรต้องไปในทิศทางไหนที่ชนชั้นนำของ2ประเทศนี้ต้องการ แม้มันจะขัดต่อเสียงอันแท้จริงของประชาชนส่วนใหญ่ในประเทศแค่ไหนก็ตาม
โปรดอ่านรายละเอียด
BANGKOK – When angry demonstrators recently took to the streets in Iran, the seething masses claim that they had been robbed of true democracy recalled recent protest scenes in Thailand. There is an obvious and dangerous trend now in international politics that when any demagogue type politician wins a landslide election, the opposition claims vote fraud and in many cases sends its marauding masses into the streets to stir unrest.
Nobody has yet appointed a color to Iran’s ‘street revolution’, though it’s probably only a matter of time before a snappy news headline sticks to the uprising. Green may be the chosen tone. But the storyline of purported pro-democracy demonstrators taking to the streets is now familiar, and in many instances represents a graver threat to democracy than the supposedly authoritarian leaders they are protesting against.
Vladimir Putin's election triumphs in Russia have been widely lamented by opposition critics and foreign media, who have similarly claimed he aims to become a new age Czar bent on reestablishing the Russian empire. Hugo Chavez's election wins in Venezuela have likewise been lamented outside the country due to his populism and export of anti-American policies in Latin America.
Marc Ravalomanana's democratically elected leadership in Madagascar was characterized as a sell-out to foreign business interests, which eventually brought on a military coup. Georgia president Mikheil Saakashvili, who led a 2003 “rose revolution” street movement which deposed Eduard Shevardnadze and was later democratically elected in 2008, is often criticized as a puppet of Washington and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) backed by Russian opposition politicians.
But it is in Thailand, where angry street mobs have for the past three and a half years challenged the legitimacy of successive democratically governments, where the structural parallels are starkest with what’s now transpiring on the streets of Iran. Former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who notched two thumping election victories and a legally contested third, was criticized by his detractors for establishing a parliamentary dictatorship through his consolidation of power and was toppled in a 2006 coup.
Just because an elected leader, one selected by a majority of the population, is not favored by certain minority powerful forces, in a true democracy it does not give them the legitimacy or right to extra-constitutionally remove them. It is thus puts the microscope on those who hold powerful offices through unelected means, bringing us to the latest democratic hot spot: Iran.
Whether Iran may be considered a functioning democracy depends on whether structurally there are accountability mechanisms in place to challenge the ruling establishment, led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian voters head to the polls every four years to elect their president and 290 members of a unicameral legislature. However candidates for parliament or president are vetted by a 12-member Guardian Council that allows the religious establishment to decide who runs in elections.
Iran’s Guardian Council is dominated by loyalists to the Supreme Leader, who directly appoints six of the body’s 12 members. The other six are appointed by the elected parliament, but with choices pre-screened by the head of the judiciary, who is also appointed by the Supreme Leader. In effect the Guardian Council, which plays the role of deciding the country’s electoral choices, is directly answerable to the Supreme Leader.
The Guardian Council's veto powers over political candidates and investigative powers of the election process are in some ways analogous to the situation in Thailand. For instance, Thailand’s election commission is essentially appointed by a group of judges. The presidents of three main courts, two other judges selected by another group of judges, and two elected politicians from the ruling coalition and the opposition make up the Thai commission’s selection committee.
The five-to-two domination of the process by unelected judges, officially appointed in the final process by an unelected head of state, over those with democratic accountability make for a structurally anti-democratic screening process that is dominated by the conservative legal establishment. Hence the role of judges in Thailand, in many ways, mirrors that of the Guardian Council in Iran.
But Iran’s Guardian Council is not its most undemocratic institution; that role is reserved for Supreme Leader and Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hoseyni Khamenei, who has the power to appoint the head of the judiciary, the head of state-owned television and radio networks, the head of the armed forces and final say over defense and foreign policy as commander-in-chief.
Iran’s so-called Supreme Leader, as seen by many experts on Iran, possesses powers close to that of an ancient day monarch or modern day dictator. It is Khamenei’s unelected status that have in recent days drawn the large share of opinions about why Iran needs to go through a people’s revolution reversely analogous to its 1979 religious predecessor.
It is thus interesting from a pro-election perspective that the top governing structure of Iran's Islamic theocracy is arguably more democratic—at least in the electoral sense—than a host of countries out there. While Iran’s Supreme Leader position is widely portrayed in mainstream media as an unelected dictator, Khamenei spent decades moving up the ranks as a religious scholar. Through his perceived learnedness among peers and senior title holders, he earned a coordinating political role for influential clerics.
He later served eight years as president under Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, leader of the 1979 revolution, proving his leadership skills, culturally required religious expertise, and devoutness to the teachings of Allah. With all that in mind, prior to becoming Supreme Leader, Khamenei’s qualifications were put forth to an 86-member Assembly of Experts for consideration.
That assembly, which also possesses the power to remove the Supreme Leader, is actually a deliberative body of 86 Mujtahids, or Islamic scholars, elected directly by the general public every eight years. Assuming that these Islamic scholars perform their representative role, in the political sense, they have the power and ability to check the 'absolute' powers of the Ayatollah Khamenei.
Though it is often argued that in practice the Assembly of Experts have never exercised their powers to challenge or check the Supreme Leader's decisions (though the minutes of their twice-yearly meetings are not published, so this is debatable), in technical terms the Iranian constitution provides for a quite democratic checking and balancing mechanism - one that reflects the uniqueness of the country's religio-cultural traditions within the framework of a modified conservative democracy.
Iran’s Assembly of Experts is also in charge of supervising, dismissing and electing the Supreme Leader, and in the event of his death, resignation or dismissal, the democratically elected body of wise-men is vested with the powers to take steps in shortest possible time to appoint a new leader.
According to the Iranian constitution, "Whenever the Leader becomes incapable of fulfilling his constitutional duties, or loses one of the qualifications mentioned in the Constitution, or it becomes known that he did not possess some of the qualifications initially, he will be dismissed.” Thus it could be argued that Iran’s leadership transition plan is more democratic than the soft and hard dictatorships and monarchies of Asia and Europe.
While it may be argued that Iran's cultural uniqueness requires that the state is ruled by a semi-democratic form of religious theocracy, there is no such cultural or historical guidance in the case of the Thai Kingdom or its European counterparts. The line of separation between church and state is clear in Thailand, and Buddhist teachings do not advocate the application of its doctrines in the constitution or laws as required under Sharia law in Islamic republics.
Yet even in European constitutional monarchies, where the lines separating church and state have been less clear throughout history, there are virtually no remaining monarchical-religious ruled states on the continent. Nevertheless, where they do remain in the world, the semi-authoritarian tendencies are often well-veiled and frequently impose on the election-based mandate of forming and conducting national defense and foreign policies.
In comparison, the Islamic Republic of Iran's mechanisms for checks and balances, including the crucial role of the Assembly of Experts, demonstrates a more highly evolved democracy, even with Islam integral to its rule and operation. Despite extreme drawbacks on human rights and the support of terrorism by state authorities, democratic transitions in Iran since the 1979 revolution until now were in the main orderly and peaceful.
Yet Mir Hossein Mousavi, the loser in Iran’s June 12 general election, has been popularly presented as a symbol of democratic change in Iran. To be sure, the massive street protests in Teheran seeking nullification of the election results that gave incumbent president Ahmadinejad are no doubt reflective of a strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction with Supreme Leader Khamenei and the political system he presides over.
It’s still unclear if Iran’s street protesters want merely a change in the presidency or rather a more ambitious change of the country’s entire governance structure, including what would be a time-consuming dismantlement or reorientation of all religion-based political institutions. The young men and woman protesting in Teheran’s streets should now ask themselves not whether Ahmadinejad should be president, but rather are they ready to dispense entirely with the roles of the religious establishment.
Before they say ‘yes’, protestors should also consider the risks of street protest-led regime change and how a disorderly transition could invite outside great power interventions and manipulations. There are structural reasons why Iraq is now a modern-day American colony and why Iran to date is still able to maintain its strength and independence in a hostile regional environment with operational nuclear missiles pointed directly at it.
For as long as Islam remains Iran's state religion, as well as its people's preferred religion, the role of Ayatollahs will always be respected and influential. Can the same be said for Thailand’s unelected institutions and personages? To most the answer may be yes. However a minority view could argue that the much touted national sense of “Thainess” has been promoted by the state-controlled school system, which inculcates students with a pro-establishment bias over usually corrupt elected politicians. But is Thailand’s semi-democratic rule, seen as guided by divinity and arguably managed by nominees, truly cultural or imagined?
That is where the democratic difference between Iran and Thailand lies. The completion of Thailand's long democratic evolution, dating to the end of absolute monarchy in 1932, is not inevitable without the support of the majority of the electorate. For politically aware competing street protestors in Thailand, and among astute news consumers, the realization of Thailand’s democratic deficit is there; for most it remains hidden from view, obfuscated by state-controlled media and self-interests-concerned private media.
The street protests in Iran have shown that Khamenei's political standing is not unassailable. If he were to abuse his power, including a role in manipulating election outcome, the elected Assembly of Experts has the power to remove him. Perhaps Iran does have it democratically elected checks and balances. The events now transpiring in Iran could in future have particular relevance in Thailand. This is while the significance in the present time could only be imagined through a painful contrasting exercise by the not so proper, nor superficial, thinking mind. The results of such an exercise is something that Thais must come to grip with, whatever the answer may be.
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Nattakorn Devakula is a news analyst for Thailand Channel 11's “Newsline” and “NNT News Bulletin”. He is also a regular international news commentator on Thailand’s 24-hours cable news network, TNN, under program “TNN World News”.
