FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
nationthailand

A ‘social contract’ we’re forced to sign

A ‘social contract’ we’re forced to sign

In pushing for reconciliation, the junta distorts an esteemed democratic fundamental 

If the military-led government’s much-vaunted reconciliation plan were in any way guided by wisdom, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha wouldn’t be allowing his subordinates to bandy about a term like “social contract” in attempts to justify junta rule. The phrase is being deployed to describe the National Council for Peace and Order’s plan for reconciling the country’s political rivals.
Prayut began by assigning Army chief General Chalermchai Sitthisart to chair the panel formulating this “social contract”, which held four “public forums” that could not logically be called public hearings. They took place at regional military barracks around the country last Monday through Thursday. 
The participants were mostly Interior Ministry civil servants. Invitations were extended to politicians and social workers, but red-shirt leader Jatuporn Prompan was the only high-profile public figure who attended. Allowed leave from his prison cell, he was at the Bangkok seminar hosted by First Army Area Command, saying his movement would not stand in the way of reconciliation efforts. Many other public figures, including top politicians, 
publicly dismissed the touted social contract as junta propaganda.
The critics are on the mark. Rather than the all-inclusive, truly democratic type of social contract espoused by socio-political visionaries during the European Enlightenment, what the Thai government is proposing sounds more like a directive from the top brass. “All Thais should join hands in creating an atmosphere [conducive to] harmony and national unity,” it reads. “Rights and freedoms should be exercised with responsibility and tolerance. Thais should adopt the royal philosophy of self-sufficiency while also improving national competitiveness to boost incomes and 
create opportunities in the market.”
The word “should” here is best interpreted as “must”.
The concept of a social contract was first broached in the writings of philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes (in “Leviathan” in 1651) and John Locke (in “Two Treatises of Government” in 1690). Jean Jacques Rousseau gave the term its widest circulation with the title of his 1762 volume promoting liberal values in tyrannical times. While the need for authoritarian discipline remained generally accepted, Rousseau in particular urged that the general populace enjoy the pursuit of free will.
If Prayut had read Rousseau’s “Social Contract” – Sanya Prachakom’s Thai translation has been around since 1978 – he would know that his 2017 variant is in sharp contradiction, as was his 2014 coup. Both deny the people’s will rather than championing it.
“Let us then admit that force does not create right, and that we are obliged to obey only legitimate powers,” Rousseau wrote. “Since no man has a natural authority over his fellow, and force creates no right, we must conclude that conventions form the basis of all legitimate authority among men.”
And yet here we are with the sacred concept that helped lay the groundwork for the French and American revolutions being thrust in our faces fully distorted. All power belongs to the people, Rousseau declared, clear as a liberty bell. The rulers they choose are wholly accountable to the people’s wishes and commands.
The military junta has no legitimacy or right to revise Rousseau’s social contract or offer its own peculiar self-serving interpretation. The junta’s social contract as presented is indeed nothing better than propaganda, a reflection of its own will, not that of the people.

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