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Former Nerd Finds Bold Voice as Thai Econ Guru
Judging from its reaction, renowned Ph. D. economist Ammar Siamwalla is regarded by the government as a man to be feared, but in fact he is a person who shies away from having any power in his own hands.
The 66 year-old is fragile-looking but bold. The outspoken economist has dared to take a stand against the policies of several governments, including the current one led by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, with whom he has been in a media-presented war of words. Dr Ammar is considered to be among the foremost academics in Thailand and is popular with the general public for his in-depth views on various populist policies.
Dr Ammar is the youngest of three brothers born into the Siamwalla family, a prominent Thai-Indian clan which settled in Thailand in 1900 after coming from Baroda, India. The Siamwallas are known for their various business interests.
Dr Ammar began his education at Assumption College, then transferred to St. Paul's, a leading boarding school in the hills of Darjeeling, India. He was later sent to London for a cram course to complete his Grade 12 requirements before finally making it to the prestigious London School of Economics.
The man who is now the guru of economics in Thailand was fascinated as a child with nuclear physics, but decided to study commerce in accord with the wishes of his parents, who wanted their sons to take the family company to the next step. Dr Ammar was to help his two elder brothers manage the growing business empire. But as luck would have it, the London School of Economics did not offer an undergraduate programme in commerce at that time.
"Economics was the closest thing to commerce and, I must say, I started to like it. To use a fancy word, I would say that it was serendipity," Dr Ammar says. He is fluent in a host of languages including Thai, English and Urdu.
Although now seemingly in direct confrontation with Thailand's most powerful prime minister ever, Dr Ammar says that he was a very shy and "nerdy" kid, and a bookworm by nature.
"I was certainly not a sporty kind of person, anything but... not into sports, very shy with girls. I would say nerdy would best describe me in my school days," he admits.
He was encouraged by his professors at the London School of Economics to pursue a doctorate degree. His outstanding intellect and academic record landed him in Harvard University in the US. But in Boston, the scholar nearly lost it all.
"I got so bored with economics that it no longer was fun. That's the reason why it took me 4 years to get my degree. I just goofed off and did absolutely nothing, or rather, I did all kinds of things except study economics."
Finally his desire for a professorship at the Ivy League Tufts University spurred him to go back to his doctoral thesis. "I rushed out my thesis within six months," said Dr Ammar.
After a 6 year stint at Tufts, Dr Ammar's heart was looking back to his homeland. Soon thereafter, in 1972, he became a lecturer at Thammasat University. The events of October 6, 1976 are known to all Thais. Thammasat was at the epicentre of the violent crackdown on pro-democracy activists. Afterward, the saddened Dr Ammar left the country to work in Washington D.C. for six years before returning to Thailand.
Reflection on the October 6 bloodbath and the various phases of democratic and autocratic rule in the country had transformed the shy and timid nature of Dr Ammar into one which would come to haunt several governments. The restrictions on his vocal cords seemed to have been lifted and he slowly became more and more outspoken, openly critcising the policies of former premiers Chuan Leekpai, Bahnarn Silapacha and Chavalit Yongchaiyuth.
Dr Ammar began working in a newly formed government think-tank called Thailand Development & Research Institute in 1984. There he worked his way up, eventually to head the organisation during the economic boom of Thailand in the early to mid-1990s.
Since the 2001 general election, the transformed Dr Ammar has become a thorn in the side of Prime Minister Thaksin, whose one-man show kind of management style has been a constant object for his criticisms.
Dr Ammar has been critical of nearly every policy of the current government - Mr Thaksin's autocratic style, the 30-baht health care scheme, the one million baht village fund, his fiscal policy, and a host of other policies that continue to be rolled out by the government.
He says that he feels criticism is necessary to keep a democratic society running and that his criticisms of the prime minister are not meant to be personal.
However, he admitted, "I started to go personal on criticism (of Mr Thaksin) as I feel that the man is dangerous and a threat to liberal democracy, a democracy that allows freedom of expression and a freedom that allows exchange of views."
He added: "The idea of CEO-style management in a political context is all wrong. All this makes him a threat to the country."
The war on drugs, which has been widely popular but which has killed thousands of people, brings more strong objections from Ammar. The impact of the campaign has been very little, said the economist, as the drug trade is creeping back up again.
Of late the outspoken academic has experienced some uneasiness. He said his wife has even received some phone calls and has been upset as well.
War of Words Begins
Dr Ammar does have some praise for Mr Thaksin, saying that at least the premier has set policies that he wants to follow.
"To be fair to him, he has policies, whereas the other governments mostly did not. You would be hard put to name what Mr Chavalit's policies were, even in retrospect. This is good, and we have to give him (Thaksin) credit for that."
The war of words started between the prime minister and Ammar when the academic started to point a finger at the so-called "vision" of Mr Thaksin.
"The comment I made that really got him off was when I said that it is ok to have a vision, but a vision a day?" Since then Thaksin has not let any remark go without making a response. Dr Ammar admits that he has gotten a lot of notoriety out of the war of words.
"What happened is that I have gotten more mileage out of this than him (Thaksin) and people started to respect me more and I became well-known."
Both Mr Thaksin and his advisors have retaliated for Dr Ammar's harsh criticism of the government's policies. Pansak Vinyarat, advisor to Mr. Thaksin, once said: "What I want to know is does he read everything in-depth before he makes the comments? In my view most of his statements are good for newspaper headlines but are devoid of any substance. I don't think that his organisation, which he helped to found, has contributed too much to society in general in the past 15 years either."
But Bangkok Senator, Chermsak Pinthong, an old friend of Dr Ammar and with whom he co-authored the book Ruthan Thaksin (seeing through Thaksin), has a different perspective of the academic.
"He is a non-partisan person, straightforward in his way of thinking. He always states upfront if he has any bias or prejudice on any issue. The views of Dr Ammar represent the wellbeing of the country in general and the only people who dislike them are people with vested interests," Mr Chermsak said.
Countering Pansak's comments that the views of Dr Ammar are "devoid of substance", Mr Chermsak said that the only way to see the knowledge in his words is to see the global acceptance he has gained.
"He is very respected and the best economist in Thailand. He is warm and gentle and a person who's willing to help at any given time," Dr Pranee Tinakorn, dean of the Faculty of Economics at Thammasat University, said when asked to sum up the academic.
"If I had to find one drawback in him, it would be his sincere and direct way of saying what he thinks, which is not a very Thai way of functioning," she added.
Dr Ammar said that he and his organisation are powerless, and like most other academics all he can do is to present his viewpoint. It is up to the politicians to heed his recommendations or not.
"I never wanted power ever...I know that Thaksin is smart enough to realize that I am powerless, but somehow he has been drawn into the retaliatory mode," Dr Ammar says.
The outspoken academic says that he intends to continue being vocal about his views in the future, but he adds that "economics is my life".
Today, he says that there is very little difference between his family life and his work life and therefore the issue of retirement does not arise.
"In my field leisure intrudes into work and work intrudes into leisure," he said, although he admits that these days when he goes home his bookworm habits have slightly deviated into a passion for computer games.
Dr Ammar operates on the principal that he does not owe anything to anyone and no one owes him anything. He said that the next thing he wants to be involved with is helping to calm the southern Thailand insurgency, which has claimed nearly 700 lives over the past 15 months.
A Muslim by birth, although admittedly a very liberal one, Dr Ammar is on the newly established National Reconciliation Commission headed by former Prime Minister Anand Panyarachun. He says the use of force by the government may have to a certain degree fuelled further violence.
"An eye for an eye makes everyone go blind, and the response to the violence with more violence actually fits the requirements of the people who created the violence in the first place," he said, adding that in his view it will take time for the level of violence to go down.
Bio Data
Dr Ammar Siamwalla was born on 29 May, 1939. In 1962 he received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the University of London, UK, and in 1967 got his PhD in Economics from Harvard University in the US.
Dr Ammar taught for six years at Tufts University in the US before returning to Thailand in 1972, when he became a lecturer at Thammasat University. He went back to the US for several years after the October 6, 1976 student uprising, before resuming residence in Thailand and taking a position with the Thailand Development Research Institute, where he now has the title of Distinguished Scholar. He was formerly president of the organisation.
The list of honours and awards bestowed on Dr Ammar includes a 1995 Award for Best Research Work in economics by the National Research Council (NRC) and a Sir John Crawford Exchange Award in Agricultural Economics from the Australian Agricultural Economics Society and Australian Council for International Agricultural Research. He has or has had membership on many committees and boards, and is currently on the Board of Directors of the Bank of Asia and a member of the Law Reform Commission. Dr Ammar has numerous writing credits, the most recent being "Anatomy of the Crisis", which appeared on pp. 66-104 in the book Thailand Beyond the Crisis, by Peter Warr, ed. London: Routledge Curzon.
Dr Ammar is married and has three children.
Copyright © 2005 Bangkok Post.
04/30/2005 09:40:37 PM [BANGKOK POST - Former Nerd Finds Bold Voice]
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