Academe's major influence on the governance of Thailand

(Part I)

BANGKOK, Thailand — After the postponement of our October Bangkok trip for two months, due to the flooding of Metropolitan Bangkok, I joined the O.B. Montessori Child and Community Foundation staff members, with the Agriculture and Food Technology teachers, senior administrative assistants to resume the trip last week.

This time being our 45th school anniversary, we prepared to honor Prof. M.L. Charuphant “Noi” Thongtham as one of our major “lifetime partners,” with an award ceremony. He earned his BS in Agriculture (major in Horticulture) from central Luzon State University and his masters from Kasetsart University. Since 1998, M.L. Charuphant has assisted in the development of the 11 hectare O.B. Montessori Alfonso Farm at the border of Tagaytay and Sulsugin, Alfonso, Cavite. Since 1998 we partnered with Kasetsart University conducting a yearly exchange of horticulture and food technologist experts helped developed a multi-crop farm, with a fish pond and endemic collections of orchids and ferns, as well as enrich the food service in the school bistros.

A faithful assistant to King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s agricultural research

Prof. M.L. Charuphant “Noi” Thongtham’s great-great grandfather was King Rama IV, or King Mongkut. Since 1974, Prof. Noi has been doing volunteer work for His Majesty the King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s Royal Project, particularly the weaning of hill-tribes from growing opium poppies, which took 8 years.

Prof. Noi did research on fruit crops, such as pomegranate and edible fig, but his most successful research work was on ferns, which he experimented on drying and dyeing fern leaves as ornamental products. It expanded to become his dried flower project. A major part of the Professor’s research work and collection of ferns collected globally were destroyed by flood.

Many in the academia volunteered their services to do research for the Royal Project, but Prof. Noi’s dried flower project is the most successful, for it is self-supporting. The reason why Prof. Noi cannot retire is that his dried flower project is the source of income, not just for hill-tribes and impoverished farmers in the Northeast, but also the source of livelihood for more than 50 workers in Bangkok, Kamphaeng Saen and Chiang Mai, who process the dried materials into finished products.

Chulalongkorn Univeristy’s seminar for crisis management

Scholars and business leaders called for bureaucratic and political reform to forge unity of the nation and for decentralized management to tackle uncertainties and crises in the future.

“Thailand suffered about Bt1.4 trillion in business losses from the disaster. According to the World Bank estimate, 90 percent was in manufacturing,” said Veerathai Santiprabhop, executive director of capital market research at the Stock Exchange of Thailand.

This issue was addressed at the “Recovery after the 2011 flood and prevention measures for 2012” seminar, organized by the Alumni Association of Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration at Chulalongkorn University along with B Grimm and Thansetha-kij newspaper.

Royol Chitradon, director of the Hydro and Agro Informatics Institute, said water management should be modernized similar to the development of small and medium-sized enterprises after the economic crisis in 2007, when big companies and financial institutions collapsed.

Chai-Anan Samudavanija, an eminent scholar, said the government should revise its roles from operating to policy-making, particularly in a crisis. “The recent massive flooding proved that the current government failed to manage the crisis, while people lost their confidence in the government and politicians,” he said.

Floodwaters are gone but supply chain issues linger

Thomas Fuller of the International Herald Tribune (January 21-22) wrote — The floodwaters receded weeks ago from this sprawling industrial zone, but the streets are littered with detritus, phones do not work and rusted machinery has been dumped outside warehouses that once buzzed with efficiency.

Before Thailand’s great flood of 2011, companies like Panasonic, JVC and Hitachi produced electronics and computer components that were exported around the world. Now of the 227 factories operating in the zone, only 15 percent have restarted production, according to Nipit Arunvongse Na Ayudhya, the managing director of the company that manages the Nava Nakorn industrial zone, one of the largest in Thailand and located just north of Bangkok. He conducted a meeting where he sought to soothe anxious foreign factory managers.

Before the floods, Thailand produced about 40 percent to 45 percent of the world’s hard disk drives, the invaluable and ubiquitous storage devices of the digital age. Consumers worldwide may face prolonged period of high prices for hard drives. In the United States, certain models are currently 40 percent to 50 percent more expensive.

John Coyne, the president and chief executive of Western Digital, which makes about one-third of the world’s hard drives, said about 60 other companies that produce hard drives and components were flooded.

Foreign investors peppered the managers of the industrial zone with skeptical questions about the timetable of rehabilitation and reliability of future flood forecasting for monsoon season beginning in May.

The thorny issue on lese majeste law

In a cynical world, it is difficult to imagine the depth of respect that the Thai people have for their monarch, King Bhumibol - Rama IX in the Chakri line. Skeptical outsiders may think it contrived or quaint, but Thais have a profound respect for the king – no mere ceremonial figurehead – and for his moral authority that has offered sanctuary during Thailand’s turbulent past 50 years.

In 1992, Bhumibol ended a political crisis between the prime minister and his chief political opponent, which had threatened civil war. The two men prostrated themselves at the king’s feet, on live television, where they stayed silent as the king instructed them on how to bring the country back to peace. Violence in the streets, which killed dozens, ceased, and there were free elections.

Behind the walls of Chitralada Palace, where king lives, the king has transformed gardens into an agriculture research stations, with a dairy farm, rice fields, and orchards. His involvement with agriculture began with a concerted effort to find new crops for the hill-tribes, in order to wean them from opium cultivation. He then applied this experience to farm programs. The monarchy costs the Thai treasury nothing, at least directly, since the royal family pays its own way with income from vast property holdings and investments.

Ultra royalists are starting to use social networks to launch attacks and condemn people they consider anti-royalists or opponents of the controversial lese majeste law, making cyberspace a hotspot for political flaming and unsubstantiated accusations. At the end of last year, a new video clip was uploaded on YouTube making unsubstantiated political allegations against nine people, including scholars such as Pavin, Chachavalpongun and Somsak Jiamteerasakul, and activists like Jitra Kotchadej.

In a similar vein, Thammasat University law lecturer, Piyabutr Saengkanokul, a member of the Nitirat group (pro Thaksin, brother of current Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra) of law lecturers that will launch a public campaign to amend the controversial lese majeste law was heavily slandered on the Internet. There were calls for the university to sue him under the lese majeste law after he spoke of the concept of “the King can do no wrong” to an audience at Chulalongkorn University at the end of December.

Harvard professor predicts Thailand’s low public debt proves her resiliency

Harvard University economics professor Kenneth Rogoff said in a speech at Kasikornbank’s seminar in Bangkok – “It was difficult to predict the timing of the next crisis and the vulnerability level of each country, but one benchmark is the level of a country’s public debt.”

Thailand’s low public debt will keep it resilient against future crises. Thailand’s public debt hovers about 41 percent of gross domestic product. Thailand is one of only a handful of economies that have never defaulted on their external debts, the co-author of “This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly,” said.

The Asian Economic Community, which will take distinct shape in 2015, presents great opportunities for Thai companies to go overseas with a flexible labor force moving across borders. It is good for Thailand, as its population is growing slowly.

Wake up call to Philippine universities

There is a harmful tendency of various government agencies to blame each other during critical circumstances. The Executive, Judiciary and Legislative Departments keep “passing the buck” to one another. Meantime, so-called “Social Surveys” gauge the progress of presidential leadership erratically, which often demoralizes the public.

At the height of the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy, his father Joseph and brother Teddy gathered together luminaries of leading American universities to take their pick of the members of the future “president’s men” in the cabinet. Few of our past Philippine presidents have done this. Instead it was considered “pay back” time for their big-time campaign supporters.

It’s time that the social scientists and researchers of major universities in the Philippines play a meaningful role in regulating the crisis management of our country. 

(Part II: Thai Student Council Recommend “Inclusive Education” To PM Yingluck)