iieiiei1eWrkers - Leicester Research Archive - University of Leicester

political power is now on the decline. Although the standard censorship
measures are obligingly adhered to by the media practitioners in Radio Thailand,
they do not apply as strictly to those outside the official institution, particularly
by the press. In this context, the spaces available for political and social
debate need to be seen across the range of the mass media as well as within
the state media. On radio, the emergence of the popular news commentary
programmes and political drama illustrate the limits of state control in closing
the space for argument.
Our analysis of the serious genres revolves around the themes relating to debate
on social transition which are the focus of the present ideological struggles
within the dominant power bloc. For instance, how does each institution
propose to achieve their social utopia? Are they presenting the same imagery?
How is the notion of modernisation or progress defined and interpreted in
different programmes? And lastly, how is the consensus on a constitutional
monarchy presented? In contrast, we also look at how these discourses are
translated into fictional representation in an analysis of political drama in the
final section.
7.1 The Sunday Sermon and Buddhist Moral Ethics
"We all have to contribute urgently in order to counter i/ic threats and
dangers that our nation, our religion and our beloved and revered
king, is facing. If we do not do anything, we wi/I be doomed.
But if we see i/ia danger, we must gel up and slap forward, ready /0
engage in battle. We are not fighting a conveniional war, we are
fighting an ideological war.
('I-low can monks and I3udd/iists lie/p to
develop the nation?', 30th April, 1986)
Despite the schism in the Thai Sangha over the degree of institutional
independence from the state, as the above quotation by Panyananta Bhikkhu,
one of the prominent advocate of Buddhadasa . Bhikkhu indicates, all factions
recognise an urgent need to preserve Buddhist moral ethics as well as to
accommodate to certain reforms.
In the Sunday sermon programme the state provides the space for both the
established Sangha and the once banned non-conformist, Buddhadasa Bhikkhu,
and his disciples. While the perspective of the former closely corresponds with
On the role of the monks and the modernisation scheme, see for
example Suksamran, S. (1977), Political Buddhism in Southeast Asia: The
Role of the Sangha in the Modernisalion of Thailand, and Mulder, N.
(1973), Buddhism and National Development in Thailand.
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