First published 2000 by Ashgate Publishing
Reissued 2018 by Routledge
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Copyright William A. Callahan 2000
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ISBN 13:978-1-138-70646-0 (hbk)
ISBN 13:978-1-315-20180-1 (ebk)
Corruption has become a major issue in domestic politics around the world, and the serious study of corruption in academia is again in the ascendancy. Italian politics has been rocked by anti-corruption Operation Clean Hands. The 1996 American Presidential Election was noted for its irregular campaign contributions, some of which came from Asian sources. The 1997 General Election campaign in the United Kingdom was dominated by charges and counter-charges of sleaze which resulted most graphically in an independent candidate with no political organisation taking one of the safest Conservative seats in the country.
In Asia, many of the mass movements of the 1980s and 1990s often called democracy movements have challenged governments that had lost their legitimacy because of rampant corruption. The end of Soehartos New Order regime in May 1998 is just the latest example of a trend which has seen successful transitions the Philippines and Thailand, and unsuccessful challenges Burma and China.1 In Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party which had dominated politics since World War II was brought down by corruption scandals in the early 1990s. The trial of the decade occurred in Seoul where two former presidents, many high ranking government officials, and numerous heads of the powerful chaebol conglomerates were tried, convicted and imprisoned on charges of illegal bribes and campaign contributions. Likewise, administrative and electoral corruption in Taiwan has become a significant area of active prosecution.2
It has been noted that [d]uring the past decade, nonpartisan international and domestic election monitoring has grown increasingly sophisticated.3 In this book, I will examine popular responses to electoral fraud in Thailand and the Philippines, making comparisons in the last chapter with three other Southeast Asian countries. Thailand in particular presents an interesting case of the politics of corruption because the issue of corruption and reform has been at the centre of numerous political changes. The February 1991 military coup was justified by corruption charges, and welcomed by the middle class in Bangkok in that spirit.4 Vote-buying was an issue for both the conservative military and progressive groups in the March 1992 elections. And the popular response when the coup leader General Suchinda Kraprayoon became the un-elected prime minister who appointed many of the same corrupt politicians against whom he had staged the 1991 coup into his new Cabinet, was a mass movement that overthrew his entire regime. The main issue for both candidates and civil society in the September 1992 General Election was again corrupt politics.
Election eve is called the Night of the Barking Dogs in Thailand. This is because vote-buying is so furious the day before the election that canvassers have to distribute money all through the night, much to the dismay of the dogs which populate every village. At the PollWatch headquarters in Ban Manangkasila, one could call election eve the Night of the Ringing Telephones because more and more citizens were fighting against such corrupt practices, and they called up PollWatch to report vote-buying and biased officials.
In the 1995 Thai General Election this was a gargantuan task, for two reasons: firstly the 1995 election was the most expensive election in Thai history. Though some political economists argue that political reform accompanies economic growth, electoral corruption did not dissipate with Thailands phenomenal economic growth in the 1980s and early 1990s. Rather, such economic expansion fuelled money politics and, in many ways, institutionalized a culture of vote-buying. Secondly, the media, the non-governmental organizations and the general public seemed to be bored with politics and quite cynical of the use of a neutral organisation like PollWatch. Though PollWatch received active support in the September 1992 election and the November 1996 election, the negative political climate of the 1995 election made it quite understandable that many people saw PollWatch as naive. It was criticized from all quarters as being biased when it was active or a waste of time and money when it was inactive.
PollWatchs duties were also complicated by two new developments in the July 1995 election. For the first time PollWatch had to work with an Interior Ministry which organizes the elections which was led by a ruling party. Secondly, since the sitting government had not passed the organic law to establish the National Election Commission, the Prime Minister appointed another committee which overlapped with PollWatch, the Anti-Vote-Buying Committee. This shadow Election Commission in some ways undermined PollWatchs limited authority, since at the time it seemed that PollWatch 3 would be the last PollWatch. Indeed, most academic studies of Thai elections in 1990s either do not mention PollWatch, or mention how little success it enjoyed.5 As it turns out to paraphrase Mark Twain the demise of PollWatch was greatly exaggerated; it was reincarnated for the 1996 General Election and enjoyed much wider support.6
So this was the context in which PollWatch operated in its 36 days of activity before the election. There are many contradictions involved in PollWatch. It is a grassroots volunteer organisation, but it is run out of the formal dining room of a mansion Ban Manangkasila where the chandeliers are now supplemented by bare fluorescent lights. It is both a government organisation, because it gets its budget from the Prime Ministers Office, and also a non-government organisation through its tens of thousands of volunteers who come from all walks of life. It is involved in the negative task of chasing vote-buyers, as well as a more proactive mission of civic education. It is neutral in the sense of being non-partisan, but then again it is actively critical of many political parties and politicians, and thus seen as biased. As the PollWatch Secretary-General Gothom Arya explains, everyone has their own concept about what PollWatch is: government officials, the media, even in different sections of PollWatch itself. We shouldnt spend too much effort defining PollWatch, the time is too short for that. And we dont want to homogenize it either.7
