Absolute democracy can be absolutely unacceptable

Our conversation took place last week and began, like countless others, with both of us wondering when we were going to see light at the end of the tunnel for Thailand. He surprised me by saying he did not dislike Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha and thought he was kind of funny. However, he did not believe a Prayut-led reform would succeed, because “if the beginning is wrong, the ending can’t be right”.

I told him he could be right, but only if by “the beginning” he meant democracy. For me, at least, the much-cherished principle has morphed into a “winner takes all” game, giving one election result too much importance – and that’s what’s wrong. When we empower the prime minister to pick the entire Cabinet, we give him or her too much and too unrealistic responsibility. It makes all political entities and virtually everyone gear up for one thing and one thing only – a general election victory. That may work in other countries, but here the prime minister can end up as a kind of dictator, sending a highly superstitious person to lead the Science Ministry (for instance) and we can do absolutely nothing about it.

How about we vote to elect, say, the finance, education, ICT, health, or agriculture minister? How “undemocratic” would that be? One man with many votes is more democratic in my book. It empowers the people on the streets even more. Instead of picking only the prime minister (through giving his or her party an election victory) and trusting him or her to pick the rest of the management team, we could vote to pick each of the team members. More power to us all.

This is where the eyes of my conversation partner narrowed. “Do you mean we can have a Democrat education minister, a Chart Thai agriculture minister and Newin Chidchob or Suwat Liptapanlop as sports minister, all working under a Pheu Thai prime minister?” he asked, being polite enough to exclaim “What a mess that would be!”

It would, at the beginning at least, look a bit like a kindergarten classroom, I concurred. But hey, we scraped through a great flood disaster with the government and the Bangkok governor coming from different parties. And while we can add or fine-tune measures to deal with the negatives, let’s look at the positives, which I think are abundant.

We can replace a bad agriculture minister with someone we think is better, and we can do that without letting his silly farm subsidy scheme wreak havoc on the entire government. We’ll kiss goodbye to the bad old days when we could only grit our teeth as a textbook nepotism practitioner took the helm of the Justice Ministry. Ministers will work to please the people, not party bosses. In fact, the people will truly become the ministers’ bosses.

This is not saying political nominees will become extinct, but there certainly will be fewer of them and the spotlight on those who remain will be a lot more glaring. I’m not saying political parties will stop trying everything at all costs to control the energy sector, but at least we will have a say on who will become the energy minister, and his or her vision on existing oil exploration concessions, for example, will get deserved attention. 

Most important of all, democracy will stop being a winner-takes-all game. It will start being about finding great qualities and good public servants for all aspects of national administration, as it’s supposed to be. We will have the right people in the right jobs, not a government with great healthcare visions but poor fiscal expertise. 

How many elections will that need and how often will we need them? Well, democracy is neither cheap nor simple. How much does an election cost? Bt1 billion? Bt5 billion? We’ve lost more on countless fiascos. And who says democracy is just a once-every-four-year exercise?

My conversation partner was finally convinced. “Now I get what you mean,” he said. “The Thai government will become like Real Madrid, right? You know, with the greatest players in every position of the field.” Exactly, I told him. The best part is, if we do it right, we won’t have to fire the coach every two years.

We both knew it was just wishful thinking, though. At best, Thailand’s “reform” blueprint will oblige political parties to name potential ministers going into the election campaign. That will be proclaimed as being as democratic as it can get. And it won’t be surprising if vocal opposition to anything more “ultimate” comes from pro-democracy people themselves. Absolute democracy, after all, can be absolutely unacceptable.