At this stage of their ongoing rebellion the world’s English-language media is not being soft on the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD).
Attacks on the credibility and agenda of the PAD have started to come thick and fast. And to help clarify the direction of coverage after a weekend when Thai politics was featured in major newspapers across the globe I have put together a small selection of indicative descriptions of the PAD.
The Sydney Morning Herald goes with “the so-called People’s Alliance for Democracy”. The Irrawaddy talks up the “right-wing People’s Alliance for Democracy”. Radio New Zealand calls them a “conservative group”. In a slight refinement The Straits Times runs with “the royalist, right-wing PAD”. A letter to the editor of The Bangkok Post lets rip and says that “the current anti-government faction is a reactionary cultural movement whose principles are anathema to genuine political progressives”. The Economist takes it one step further and asserts that “the movement’s leaders are deeply reactionary: the ‘new politics’ that they have been preaching is in fact a return to old, pre-democracy politics”.
I can’t imagine these descriptions will immediately filter into the consciousness of protesters in Bangkok and elsewhere in the kingdom. Nonetheless I have struggled to find any international media with a good word to say about the PAD and its current strategy. In an earlier version of this article Reuters characterised the PAD as “a motley group of royalist businessmen and academics”.
This isn’t the kind of coverage that is going to help their cause.
Where does that leave media baron and anti-government rebel Sondhi “only this king can get the people the things they deserve” Limthongkul?
Will he run out of puff under a torrent of bad (international) press? Or does Sondhi, for whatever reason, just not care what the world thinks of his uprising?
Sondhi L invited foreign reporters to an outdoor press conference at Govt House on Saturday. He later took to the stage to berate the same reporters for not seeing things correctly and asking dumb questions. Naturally, the correct way is PAD’s way. In this respect, he’s a stand-in for Thaksin, who took a similar line towards press inquiry.
Does PAD care about foreign perceptions of their right-wing revolution? Probably not.
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Yes the Thai and foreign media could help a lot to diffuse the situation by ‘pouring it on’ that PAD’s unlawful tactics demeans their cause and quickly erodes support for their cause.
Give up PAD and back down to avoid bloodshed.
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Yes, what the foreign press thinks is very interesting.
But what do the people who live in the country think? What is the reaction among the local media, parliament, academics, and general public?
What is truly amazing is that the foreign press editorialises so much without digging deeper into Thai public opinion. And it is a very complex picture full of contradictory forces and opinions that is continually changing. (Perhaps some order could put to all of it with some rigorous cross-sectional demographic statistics, but the whole situation is dynamic, not static.)
Truehits which monitors Thai newspaper and website traffic put Manager’s traffic at 13,600 visitors on site one day which is more than 27 times the traffic of a typical newspaper at 500.
http://truehits.net/index_ranking.php
Even if they’ve lost a lot of their credibility, PAD is still setting the agenda, or as Chamlong is probably thinking, chosen the battefield. They have been successful at forestalling any constitutional amendment and stacking of government institutions that would allow the return of Thaksin avoiding all legal charges against him. Doubt if PAD is just going to suddenly stop, just because they possibly made a strategic mistake, and pushed too hard, too soon.
When Samak or the next PM stops trying to gut the constitution and governing apparatus to serve Thaksin’s interests, only then is there a chance that PAD will back down.
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PAD will never back down, Jon. Perhaps you are forgetting what triggered this PAD protest in the first place, almost 100 days ago. It wasn’t the constitutional change, that’s for sure.
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PAD can back down, but their leaders cant(with arrest warrant over their heads). Either they have to create so much chaos that demand amnesty to all or their money run out.
Their last card would be an exchange of ending protest to amnesty.
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Dissent can never be eliminated, but if the government had handled things differently (including the proposed constitutional amendments), the PAD would be reduced to just to the level of the usual fringe group that is a mere itch to the government instead of the festering sore that it has become (and is likely to remain).
Thousands of everyday people don’t just endure the hardship of camping out for days, risking their lives for the fun of it – they have genuine concerns which the government could at least have tried to alleviate.
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The real issue is whether Thaksin will be allowed back with his money. Whether it is PAD or some other organisation, I can’t see this being allowed to happen. The message on Friday was that if the relatively benign PAD leaders are replaced, they will be replaced by more scary leaders. Once again, a workaround has been found for preconceived western notions of democracy.
The issue is not vote-buying, it is the spiralling-cascade-of-subsidies and-handouts-state, that the left-leaning 1976 Thai intellectuals find so natural and promising, that happens when the periphery of a developing state gets control of the central decisionmaking apparatus of the state. South Korea has avoided it. China has avoided it, and prospered with the center’s control over the periphery. That farmer votes count is not the real issue. Votebuying is not the real issue. The issue is whether these votes are in the navigator’s seat in the ship of state and charting the future of the country.
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OK now some home truths.
PAD is at last being exposed for it is: a vested interest group of thugs who what to regain some vestige of the past when the military ruled and a government of the people was ineffectual. Midnight University and even factions of the Press Association are condeming PAD. A seminar held over the weekend involved some key academics (some of who are doing an about face after supporting Khor Mor Chor earlier) AT LAST coming out to disagree with PAD. These persons are worthy of naming (excuse my transliteration):
1. Prinya Tewanarumitkun (Law, Thammasat)
2. Nuanoy Trirat (Econ, Chula)
3. Somchai Prichasilapakun (Dean, Law, Chiangmai)
4. Praja Komkiratee (Pol.Sc., Chiangmai)
5. Sutthacahi Yimprasoet (Arts, Chula)
6. Surichai Wan’Keo (Pol.Sc., Chula)
7. Pitchaya Pongsawat (Pol.Sc., Chula)
8. Phairoj Pholphet, Human Rights Commission of Thailand
Further, an example of the bullshit generated against Thaksin and the TRT can be seen by exposing the influential political scientist Chai-Anan Samudavanija a key drafter of the illict 2007 Constitution.
This is from the independent Thai e-news web site. It was Chai-anan who behind Article 7 to appoint a PM outside of the election process and who collected a petition of ninety-five gullible (at the time) academics to present to the king. The king refused. This led to the coup. During the current PPP Government he started again the rumour about the Finland rebellion group intent on bringing the monarchy down and replacing it with a Republican system. This was a spin of huge proportions implicating Thaksin a couple of years back. Chai-anan works for Sondhi Lim and writes for his Manager publication- another opportunity for fiction spin. He supports the 70:30 clause and says that Thailand should not be a nation of full democracy but go backwards to the ancien regime dominated by the kharatchakan (government officials) system. He recently told Thai folk not to worry if there is another coup and to ignore what outsiders say (after all -look at the Philippines or Indonesia!)
Before the election there was a rumour that the military were going to field a political party and- guess what? -Chai-anan was the man who wanted to be the military’s prima donna. According to this article he has even greater personal ambitions (see thaienews@googlegroups.com). They run exposé of these people regularly.
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PAD now should be understood to stand for Pigs’ Anarchy Detonators
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