Many PAD militants, aflame with extreme right-wing thinking, support some kind of appointed government, but they are chary of providing details. Their striking characteristic is their nationalistic ardour and chest-pounding adoration of the royal family.
- Extracted from Sian Powell, “Thailand’s battle royal”, The Australian, 15 November 2008.
3 responses so far ↓
1 jonfernquest // Nov 17, 2008 at 5:13 pm
You forgot the other part:
“Despite his popularity in the countryside, Thaksin’s trail of corruption and dubious posturing, his abuses of power, his manipulation of the constitution and the extrajudicial deaths of a crowd of supposed drug-pushers have led to him losing favour so comprehensively that there was little serious resistance when the military shunted his popularly elected government.”
1. Why doesn’t the article mention the UDD and their pre-coup thug predecessors? These are the groups that would assemble and threaten to beat people up, in Udonthani, in front of newspaper headquarters, etc.
2. “Thitinan says the underlying tensions that led to the 2006 coup are bobbing around on the surface of Thai life. Thailand is divided, he explains, between the traditional elites of the military and the bureaucracy and the poor rural dwellers so effectively courted by the populist Thaksin with his healthcare and micro-credit schemes. ”
Is this really what Thitinan says? Rural citizens (i.e. people) but urban military and bureaucracy (i.e. faceless institutions) ? Seems to be typical foreign journalism biased representation of conflict. Mapping the opposition to an elite conspiracy. Alas the article is probably available in all of two libraries in Bangkok, meaning that few will get the opportunity to read what he is saying.
2 amberwaves // Nov 17, 2008 at 9:18 pm
jonfernquest:
Thitinan’s article has been available online since it was published at:
http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/gratis/Pongsudhirak-19-4.pdf
Links to it have been easy to find, including in a discrete entry about it at Bangkok Pundit.
You ever gonna cough up that essay by Thak that you keep mentioning? It seems a lot more difficult to find.
3 Ralph Kramden // Nov 18, 2008 at 8:03 am
The damned foreign press just can’t get it right for jonfernquest. Even when this short article mentions that Thaksin is a convicted criminal and includes some of the usual fawning accounts of the royals, jonfernquest still complains.
The complaint is that the journalist neglects to mention anti-PAD groups. These days, those 1000-1500 word articles need to cover a lot! Maybe there could have been more on PAD’s violence, its black magic and the allegations that Sondhi is ripping off the fighting fund? But it is difficult to include everything.
By the way, which pro-Thaksin thugs (outside of the police and army) were active prior to the coup? I would like to be reminded of this.
jonferquest also complains – apparently without looking at the source (Thitinan’s article in the Journal of Democracy, and as amberwaves points out, it is readily available) – that this foreign journalist has set up a conspiracy theory: ‘Seems to be typical foreign journalism biased representation of conflict. Mapping the opposition to an elite conspiracy.’ It is interesting that this is now the standard Thai government response whenever the palace’s role in the coup is mentioned. In Thitinan’s article, it would be reasonable to conclude that he sees an old elite clashing with broader forces unleashed by Thaksin and TRT. (The link to Michael Connors piece also provided at NM is critical of such views).
Of course, Thitinan also says more than this. He talks of the rural-urban divide (sort of buying the older Anek critique and ignoring the south) and also identifies the anti-Thaksin/TRT forces as ‘The Bangkok-based urban elites (comprising the car- and home-owning middle classes in and around that city of ten million), the intelligentsia and civil society groups, the old nobility, sections of the private sector, the bureaucracy, the military, and implicitly the monarchy under King Bhumibol Adulyadej.’
One could read the source material (at least in this case). Thitinan’s article is well worth reading as a solid summary of recent political events in Thailand and it is good to see a foreign journalist actually doing a little bit of reading rather than just seeking out the quotable quotes from a short interview. Pity about the royal kowtowing though.
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