ช้างในห้องที่ไม่มีใครอยากมองเห็น An elephant in the room
ยุทธศาสตร์ 20 ปีของ คสช
ดิ อีโคโนมิสต์ รายงานว่าคสช.ได้ทำการรัฐประหารมาตั้งแต่เดือนพฤษภาคมปี 2014 และ บริหารบ้านเมืองเกือบ 3 ปีแล้ว
ก็ยังไม่มีวี่แววว่าจะเกิดการเลือกตั้งขึ้นในไทยเมื่อไร
คสช.เพิ่งนำเสนอและอธิบายแผนยุทธศาสตร์ชาติ 20 ปี
ต่อนักการทูตและผู้สื่อข่าวต่างชาติ ซึ่ง แผนยุทธศาสตร์ชาติ 20 ปี
ที่รัฐบาลที่มาจากการเลือกตั้งชุดต่อๆไปต้องปฏิบัติตามแนวทาง
ที่คสช.วางไว้อย่างเคร่งครัด เป็นสัญญาณว่าทหารจะยัง
ไม่ถอนตัวจากอำนาจการบริหารประเทศไปไหน
แผนยุทธศาสตร์ชาติ 20 ปี ถูกบรรจุไว้ในรัฐธรรมนูญ
กำหนดว่ารัฐบาลที่มาจากการเลือกตั้งในอนาคตต้องดำเนินโยบาย
ภายใต้การควบคุมดูแลของ คณะกรรมมาธิการที่แต่งตั้งโดยกองทัพ และผู้นำเหล่าทัพที่นั่งอยู่ในวุฒิสภา ซึ่งมีอำนาจเข้ามาแทรกแซง
การบริหารประเทศทันที หากพบว่านักการเมืองที่มาจากการเลือกตั้ง
ดำเนินนโยบายของตัวเองที่ผิดจากที่รัฐบาลคสช.กำหนดแนวทางไว้
ไทยเคยมีอัตราการเติบโตทางเศรษฐกิจที่สูงที่สุดในภูมิภาค
แต่หลายปีที่ผ่านมาอัตราการเติบโตกลับตกลงอย่างเห็นได้
จนธนาคารโลกรายงานในเดือนที่ผ่านมาว่า กัมพูชา, มาเลเซีย
และเวียดนามดึงดูดนักลงทุนได้มากกว่า
โดยที่ผ่านมา เศรษฐกิจของไทยถูกควบคุมโดยบริษัทขนาดใหญ่
เพียงไม่กี่แห่ง ขณะที่รัฐบาลก็ทุ่มงบประมาณเพื่อพัฒนาคุณภาพชีวิตและเศรษฐกิจแค่เฉพาะในกรุงเทพ และเมืองใหญ่ๆ
ทำให้คุณภาพชีวิตระหว่างคนเมืองและต่างจังหวัดมีแต่จะเพิ่มสูงขึ้น
รัฐบาลคสช.รู้ปัญหาข้อนี้ดี แต่ไม่สามารถแก้ไขปัญหาช่องว่าง
ระหว่างคนรวยและคนจนได้
สภาพเศรษฐกิจในยุครัฐบาลคสช.จึงอยู่ในสภาพตกต่ำฝืดเคือง
ค่าครองชีพพุ่งสูง ทำให้รายรับของประชาชนไม่พอกับรายจ่าย
ส่วนสภาพการเมืองก็อยู่ในสภาวะที่เรียกได้ว่าไม่เป็นประชาธิปไตย
และไร้เสถียรภาพ จากการที่รัฐบาลคสช.ไล่จับฝ่ายตรงข้าม
ทางการเมือง และผู้ที่ออกมาวิพากษ์วิจารณ์รัฐบาลคสช.
ให้เห็นเป็นรายวัน
แม้เดือนมกราคมที่ผ่านมา รัฐบาลคสช.ได้เชิญกลุ่มการเมืองฝ่ายต่างๆ รวมทั้งสมาชิกพรรคเพื่อไทย เข้าร่วมการประชุมเพื่อสร้างความสามัคคีปรองดอง
แต่ก็เป็นที่น่าสงสัยว่าแผนการปรองดองของรัฐบาลคสช.
จะประสบความสำเร็จได้อย่างไร ในเมื่อยังคงมีการไล่ล่าจับกุม
ผู้ใกล้ชิดและให้การสนับสนุน ดร. ทักษิณ ชินวัตร อยู่อย่างต่อเนื่อง
นอกจากนี้ ยังมีคำสั่งให้กรมสรรพากรขยายเวลาเรียกเก็บภาษี
จาก ดร. ทักษิณ ชินวัตร จากการขายหุ้นชินคอร์ปเป็นเงินกว่า 12,000 ล้านบาทก่อนคดีจะขาดอายุความในวันที่ 31 มีนาคมนี้
หากไม่ดำเนินการและปล่อยให้คดีหมดอายุความ ผู้เกี่ยวข้อง
และกรมสรรพากร อาจมีความผิดฐานละเว้นการปฏิบัติหน้าที่
ปัญหาการสร้างความปรองดองในไทยนั้น เกิดจากความเข้าใจผิด
ที่กองทัพไทยเชื่อมั่นว่าตัวเองทำหน้าที่เป็นเหมือนกรรมการ
ยุติความขัดแย้ง ด้วยการก่อรัฐประหารหลายสิบครั้งในช่วงศตวรรษ
ที่ผ่านมาเพื่อปกป้องประเทศชาติ
แต่ไม่เคยคิดเลยว่าตัวเองก็เป็นส่วนหนึ่งของอาการป่วยไข้ที่ไทย
กำลังเผชิญ
ที่มา FB
Narin Sanguansap
ooo
Generals’ disarray
The Thai junta’s 20-year plan omits the most urgent item
It claims to crave national reconciliation while continuing to persecute political opponents
It claims to crave national reconciliation while continuing to persecute political opponents
Mar 23rd 2017
Source: The Economist
WHEN its tanks rolled into Bangkok in 2014—ousting an elected government that had been paralysed by protests—Thailand’s ruling junta promised that democracy would be back in a jiffy. Three years on, there is still no sign of the promised polls. Instead, in mid-March, the generals treated diplomats and foreign journalists to a briefing on their “20-Year National Strategy”, a programme which, they insist, all future governments will be legally obliged to follow. It is only the latest indication that the men in uniform are here to stay.
The junta’s right to impose its master plan on Thailand is enshrined in its new constitution, which it rammed though in a referendum last year after banning campaigners from criticising the text. That document allows for fresh elections, which, after multiple postponements, are now expected in 2018. But it also empowers a junta-stacked senate and several unusual committees to baby-sit incoming governments—which includes giving these bodies the right to intervene should elected politicians choose to pursue their own policies instead of sticking to the generals’ preordained plan.
Spin doctors had previously stated, to general mystification, that the national strategy would encompass “six areas, six primary strategies and four supporting strategies”. The latest explanation was similarly vapid: a clutch of admirable but vague aspirations, such as improving the competitiveness of the economy and promoting equality of opportunity, flecked with trendy phrases such as “green economy” and “human capital”. The small print is to be filled out by committees, supposedly after public consultations. Cynics speculate that the details will be left woolly on purpose, to make it easier for the army to justify meddling whenever it likes.
Arthritic tiger
Everyone agrees that Thailand could do with a long-term plan. Once one of South-East Asia’s economic stars, it has grown more slowly than all of its large neighbours for years. In a report released earlier this month the World Bank warned that Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam looked more competitive. Well-connected tycoons dominate business; many schools outside the biggest cities are woeful. For years governments have splurged the largest part of their budget on the lucky residents of Bangkok and its industrial exurbs, helping to keep citizens in the outer provinces poor.
Insiders say the junta is more aware of these problems than the antics of Prayuth Chan-ocha, its cartoonish leader (pictured, at centre, in khaki), suggest. So far it has propped up growth through tax cuts, transfers and temporary incentives to boost consumer spending. But it looks incapable of instigating the contentious reforms that a 20-year plan should entail. It has been successful at squelching opposition in Thailand’s rural heartland, but remains beholden to a narrow urban clique determined to preserve its privileges. It introduced an inheritance tax in 2015, but only after greatly diluting the original proposal; a plan to tax land is crawling along.
Moreover, the junta’s schemes increasingly appear hostage to the whims of Thailand’s new monarch, King Vajiralongkorn, whose motives remain uncertain. He has already wrong-footed the generals twice: first, by choosing not to accede to the throne for a month after his father’s death last October; second, by ordering changes to sections of the junta’s constitution that lightly limited the palace’s ill-defined powers. (Those redrafts are now awaiting the king’s approval, one of several ways in which bigwigs have continued to tinker with the charter even though the electorate is supposed to have signed off on it.)
Lately the king has been purging and promoting court officials. Perhaps 20 people have left his service; cryptic notes in the Royal Gazette say they were dismissed for foibles including “procrastination” and “arrogance”; one “lacked enthusiasm”. In February the palace announced that Jumpol Manmai, a senior aide, had been sacked for “extremely evil behaviour”. He was later photographed with his head shaven, once a common punishment for Thais who offended the sovereign.
Some have taken this episode as a sign that the army and the palace are in fact rubbing along: Mr Jumpol was once thought close to Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister whom the generals and their backers abhor. But the junta may well worry that the king will seek to use an annual army reshuffle, due in September, to shake up their ranks too.
The only way to secure Thailand’s next two decades is to defuse the quarrel that lies at the heart of its political strife: a sporadically violent class war that has pitted well-off urbanites, royals and soldiers against the sometimes bumbling governments that the more numerous rural voters elect when they have a chance. In January the generals announced that a “reconciliation panel” will hold hearings with some politicians, including members of Mr Thaksin’s party, Pheu Thai, which they have twice booted from power. The process is said to have started at the king’s initiative. The idea is that participants will eventually sign a new “social contract”.
But it is hard to see what such talks can achieve when the junta is still hounding Mr Thaksin and his supporters. Yingluck Shinawatra, another former prime minister who is Mr Thaksin’s sister, is still undergoing a slow trial for negligence while in office; this month the government said that a newly discovered “miracle of law” would allow it to claim 12bn baht ($360m) in taxes from Mr Thaksin, who now lives in self-imposed exile, despite the expiry of the relevant statute of limitations. Meanwhile the military insists that it is not an actor in Thailand’s politics, but a referee, and therefore need not take part in the reconciliation it is stewarding. In a remarkable feat of blindness, the soldiers still seem to believe that the dozen or so coups they have launched since the 1930s amount to a noble defence of the kingdom—and not the single biggest cause of its malaise.
WHEN its tanks rolled into Bangkok in 2014—ousting an elected government that had been paralysed by protests—Thailand’s ruling junta promised that democracy would be back in a jiffy. Three years on, there is still no sign of the promised polls. Instead, in mid-March, the generals treated diplomats and foreign journalists to a briefing on their “20-Year National Strategy”, a programme which, they insist, all future governments will be legally obliged to follow. It is only the latest indication that the men in uniform are here to stay.
The junta’s right to impose its master plan on Thailand is enshrined in its new constitution, which it rammed though in a referendum last year after banning campaigners from criticising the text. That document allows for fresh elections, which, after multiple postponements, are now expected in 2018. But it also empowers a junta-stacked senate and several unusual committees to baby-sit incoming governments—which includes giving these bodies the right to intervene should elected politicians choose to pursue their own policies instead of sticking to the generals’ preordained plan.
Spin doctors had previously stated, to general mystification, that the national strategy would encompass “six areas, six primary strategies and four supporting strategies”. The latest explanation was similarly vapid: a clutch of admirable but vague aspirations, such as improving the competitiveness of the economy and promoting equality of opportunity, flecked with trendy phrases such as “green economy” and “human capital”. The small print is to be filled out by committees, supposedly after public consultations. Cynics speculate that the details will be left woolly on purpose, to make it easier for the army to justify meddling whenever it likes.
Arthritic tiger
Everyone agrees that Thailand could do with a long-term plan. Once one of South-East Asia’s economic stars, it has grown more slowly than all of its large neighbours for years. In a report released earlier this month the World Bank warned that Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam looked more competitive. Well-connected tycoons dominate business; many schools outside the biggest cities are woeful. For years governments have splurged the largest part of their budget on the lucky residents of Bangkok and its industrial exurbs, helping to keep citizens in the outer provinces poor.
Insiders say the junta is more aware of these problems than the antics of Prayuth Chan-ocha, its cartoonish leader (pictured, at centre, in khaki), suggest. So far it has propped up growth through tax cuts, transfers and temporary incentives to boost consumer spending. But it looks incapable of instigating the contentious reforms that a 20-year plan should entail. It has been successful at squelching opposition in Thailand’s rural heartland, but remains beholden to a narrow urban clique determined to preserve its privileges. It introduced an inheritance tax in 2015, but only after greatly diluting the original proposal; a plan to tax land is crawling along.
Moreover, the junta’s schemes increasingly appear hostage to the whims of Thailand’s new monarch, King Vajiralongkorn, whose motives remain uncertain. He has already wrong-footed the generals twice: first, by choosing not to accede to the throne for a month after his father’s death last October; second, by ordering changes to sections of the junta’s constitution that lightly limited the palace’s ill-defined powers. (Those redrafts are now awaiting the king’s approval, one of several ways in which bigwigs have continued to tinker with the charter even though the electorate is supposed to have signed off on it.)
Lately the king has been purging and promoting court officials. Perhaps 20 people have left his service; cryptic notes in the Royal Gazette say they were dismissed for foibles including “procrastination” and “arrogance”; one “lacked enthusiasm”. In February the palace announced that Jumpol Manmai, a senior aide, had been sacked for “extremely evil behaviour”. He was later photographed with his head shaven, once a common punishment for Thais who offended the sovereign.
Some have taken this episode as a sign that the army and the palace are in fact rubbing along: Mr Jumpol was once thought close to Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister whom the generals and their backers abhor. But the junta may well worry that the king will seek to use an annual army reshuffle, due in September, to shake up their ranks too.
The only way to secure Thailand’s next two decades is to defuse the quarrel that lies at the heart of its political strife: a sporadically violent class war that has pitted well-off urbanites, royals and soldiers against the sometimes bumbling governments that the more numerous rural voters elect when they have a chance. In January the generals announced that a “reconciliation panel” will hold hearings with some politicians, including members of Mr Thaksin’s party, Pheu Thai, which they have twice booted from power. The process is said to have started at the king’s initiative. The idea is that participants will eventually sign a new “social contract”.
But it is hard to see what such talks can achieve when the junta is still hounding Mr Thaksin and his supporters. Yingluck Shinawatra, another former prime minister who is Mr Thaksin’s sister, is still undergoing a slow trial for negligence while in office; this month the government said that a newly discovered “miracle of law” would allow it to claim 12bn baht ($360m) in taxes from Mr Thaksin, who now lives in self-imposed exile, despite the expiry of the relevant statute of limitations. Meanwhile the military insists that it is not an actor in Thailand’s politics, but a referee, and therefore need not take part in the reconciliation it is stewarding. In a remarkable feat of blindness, the soldiers still seem to believe that the dozen or so coups they have launched since the 1930s amount to a noble defence of the kingdom—and not the single biggest cause of its malaise.
