4 replies to this topic

[Sexpat]

"Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said yesterday that Thailand should offer a certain degree of autonomy to people in the predominantly Muslim region to allow them to be good Muslims in the predominantly Buddhist kingdom. Najib, who is to tour the restive South with Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva in December, said he would tell them that Kuala Lumpur would not support extremists who violate Thai laws.

"Look, you know you just have to be good Thai citizens. Don't expect Malaysia to back any violation of Thai law. You are on your own and if they [law breakers] come over, we will send you back," the Malaysian Prime Minister said in an exclusive interview with The Nation's Editor-in-Chief Suthichai Yoon.

Prime Minister Abhisit invited Najib to tour the deep South after the Thailand-Malaysia's annual consultative meeting and he said he would love to see people living in the region. Najib said some form of autonomy could be a solution to end the violence, which has claimed more than 3,800 live since the beginning of 2004. "You may not want to call it autonomy but there could at least be some form of involvement," he said."

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2009/10/26...cs_30115181.php

[Hedda]

It would be interesting to know if Najib originated this autonomy talk on his own or whether Abhisit said something to him at the ASEAN summit that caused him to try to set the stage for their joint tour of the South in December. The Bangkok folks who put Opposite in power and who may well be calling the shots even now on important issues, have a long history of opposing any semblance of autonomy in the South. It would be difficult to imagine Opposite taking a contrary position. One wonders if statement from the prime ministers of Cambodia and Malaysia on matters that are essentially Thailand's concern indicate a perception of weakness or vulnerability in the Thai prime minister.

[Penang]

I doubt very much if PM Najin discussed the south at all with PM Abhisit during the ASEAN summit meetings. More likely, Najib is trying to position himself in his own domestic politics to be a defender of Muslim rights in southern Thailand by seeking to support some form of local autonomy for the Malays in Pattani. There are many Malay people in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and throughout ASEAN who do not trust what the Bangkok government says or does with its Muslim minority and Najib wants to make sure in his early premiership that he is viewed as an international defender of those rights.

[BORG]

One of the real problems with Bangkok giving the south autonomy is that the people in Issan will be quieck to demand the same thing. The Bangkok elite and the army have maintained their control over this country through a tightly controlled centralized control of everything. Autonomy will be a real threat to that power base.

[Bob]

It's difficult if not impossible for me to believe that there was any approval, tacit or otherwise, by the Thai government for the Malaysian Prime Minister's comments. And, presuming the Malaysian Prime Minister is sincere in his belief that some form of autonomy in the south of Thailand might be a solution (or part of a solution), he ought to have known better than to advocate it publicly (as, given the Thai proclivity to reject anything from outsiders, it would be counter-productive). The state of external politics in the region seems rather naive to me.