Thai Prime Minister Vejjajiva is hopeful for his country

While a student at Oxford, current Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva never once made a trip across the Atlantic to Columbia.

Even so, the University still impacted his undergraduate years, in the form of works by economics professor Joseph Stiglitz. In a story that comes full circle, Stiglitz moderated the Prime Minister’s talk Tuesday afternoon on democracy and economy in Thailand.

In his speech for Columbia’s World Leaders Forum program, Vejjajiva looked past the current economic crisis and political unrest as he laid out plans for Thailand’s future post-recovery. While he realizes he has a long road ahead before completely stabilizing Thailand, looking toward political and economic goals is the only way to properly implement lasting improvements and change.

University President Lee Bollinger joined Stiglitz in introducing the prime minister, who spoke to a packed house of students and faculty, and seemed hopeful about Thailand’s stabilization while acknowledging its rocky political history.

Vejjajiva said his government was working hard toward political reconciliation in the sometimes-fragmented country as well as effectively jump-starting the economy.

But despite Thailand’s political difficulties—the country, he said, has had 18 constitutions and went through four prime ministers just last year—he stressed that it would be wrong to characterize these ongoing problems as a failure of democracy. In fact, Vejjajiva believed that learning to adapt to a more sustainable democracy was the way of Thailand’s future, and perhaps the only way it would survive in the long run.

Stiglitz, who said he has been watching the economic development of Thailand for 42 years, noted how unusual it was to find a prime minister so well-educated in economics, and who could understand the backbone of sound economic policies.

“I don’t think there are many political leaders who have had to suffer through my papers,” Stiglitz joked.

Vejjajiva fielded audience questions, where he conceded that the Thai government has a lot of work left to do in terms of winning the trust of some constituents and keeping civil unrest under control in various regions. A Cambodian student asked Vejjajiva to explain the reasoning behind his actions in the deadly Cambodia-Thailand temple dispute, an ongoing border disagreement about territory around the Preah Vihear temple.

”We’ve actually had fighting, we’ve actually had casualties, we’ve actually had death,” Vejjajiva said, expressing a desire to “return to days when the two people on the either side can benefit from this world heritage.”

Thailand has been in the news lately as the aging Thai monarch continues to be hospitalized with a fever. When asked what would happen if the country needed to move onto a successor, Vejjajiva said that, while the line of succession is very clearly cut, he expected the monarchy to continue to rule as an institution above partisan politics regardless of who is instated.

Still, Vejjajiva was commended as forward-thinking by his peers, who were impressed by his strategy of looking “post-crisis.”

“If one doesn’t have a vision of where one wants to go, you’re obviously not going to get there,” Stiglitz said.