Comments on: Red shirts and civil disobedience

By: Portman

Portman — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 12:00:43 +0000

Marty, It would be great if political leaders with that profile could emerge within the red shirt/PT framework or elsewhere. I fear they would be seen as too threatening to the PT but perhaps they could use the red shirt momentum. There is a long tradition of suppressing any type of social reform movement in Thailand. Even environmentalists and local activists are seen as a threat to the status quo and regularly murdered or otherwise dealt with. I see Thaksin and as having taken up the responsibility for this suppression when he was in power with enthusiasm no different from the military and other elitist elements. Look at his record in the South for an idea of his approach to disadvantaged minorities.

By: Marty

Marty — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 05:21:48 +0000

Portman, I feel that there is a window of opportunity for someone to step up and lead the Red/PTP. I don’t think it’s someone from within either of the two groups that we would readily recognize. They seem to have gone through most of the old guard. If they can entice some people with good values and a genuine desire to help the rural poor I think they can reform otherwise they will probably implode, which is what the Military, courts, PAD, Democrats etc have been trying to do for a couple of years. I really don’t think they need Thaksin or his money to be successful, what they need is a good platform, lots of organization and a cleaned up image.

By: Portman

Portman — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 05:09:43 +0000

“all judges must be elected by elected MPs!
criminal cases should be judged by juries not judges!
all special case laws like lese majeste and laws for political office-holders, etc should be scrapped!”

I am not sure in which advanced democracy judges are elected by MPs. That doesn’t sound like a great recipe for a judicial branch that is independent from the legislative and executive branches. Judges positions would just go to the highest bidder and they would jockey for position to judge cases involving people that pay the highest bribes. Where is Asia are there juries outside Hong Kong which struggles so hard to find educated jurors that I was once summoned for jury service there despite not even being a permanent resident? Juries in Thailand would be intimidated to the point of uselessness like they were by gangsters in the US in the 30s. As for scrapping lese majeste laws completely, this is also pie in the sky for a long time to come.

Your view is similar to the many overseas based farang academics and journalists who try to see Thailand purely through farang eyes
and with a strong grounding in what is PC in their countries in the early 21st century i.e. any government or individual who comes to power through the ballot box is good, no matter how crooked the election or how corrupt, self-serving and murderous the individuals. Hitler and Mussolini fitted this bill perfectly and had many admirers in the US in the 20s and 30s.

By: Jim Taylor

Jim Taylor — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 04:03:41 +0000

Good one David Brown- but I think we are fighting a losing battle against the dark forces that have now taken a strangle hold in every area of governance, business-mafia links and public life (thanks to media propaganda). Prem and his Democrat’s grand Orwellian schema for total social and political control has finally succeeded…Red Shirt leaders are now closely monitored and it is only a matter of time before they are imprisoned on some fake charge.
Goodbye Democracy

By: David Brown

David Brown — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:52:14 +0000

Nga…. I dont give you much in the way of a direct response about Thaksins bad side…

a. because I think most of Thaksin’s “bad side” is not true, its just wild
ravings from our mate Sondhi and other paid lackeys of the senior
military and the rich families…
all of the specific cases I have checked have yielded manipulation of the law to get a conviction of Thaksin and Samak, or no evidence found (despite heroic efforts by all those against them)

b. if Thailand stuck with a one-person one-vote democratic system all
these things would be sorted out by the system where the people get the chance to choose whether their representatives stay in power or not…
so whether Thaksin is corrupt or not is not really relevant in the bigger scheme of things

c. corrupt behaviour IS important when governments are not accountable to the people, like now when all the deals are being done by the Democrats … Prem, the senior military and rich families will decide whether the government will stay in power not the ordinary people of Thailand so as long as they are part of the deal everything will be OK

lets clean up the judicial system…

all judges must be elected by elected MPs!
criminal cases should be judged by juries not judges!
all special case laws like lese majeste and laws for political office-holders, etc should be scrapped!

especially and first, lets get rid of the lese majeste laws so we can speak freely!

By: Portman

Portman — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:25:31 +0000

Marty> The Democrats are now in a similar situation to where they were in 1997, coming to power as a result of a crisis, dependent on unreliable, corrupt coalition partners and the economic situation likely, as before, to be much worse than anyone imagines. It will be hard for any government to look good in this situation. It will be interesting to see what PTP does and whether it remains largely Thaksin orientated in terms of its appeal and funding or not.

Now that the seeds have been sown there is clearly an opportunity within the next generation for reds or others to form a party that appeals to rural voters by offering genuine social reform and to urban voters by offering good governance and clearing out corruption in the police etc. Somehow I don’t see the mainstream PTP ever maturing into that role. Its vested interests run too deep and, if Thaksin stays abroad and fades into insignificance, it may just revert to its pre-Thaksin roots as a collection of bickering provincial chao phors.

By: Whatsinaname

Whatsinaname — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 08:20:02 +0000

Here, here Portman.
I agree with nearly all you say.
Your thoughts are clear.
I also have “strong” family association with rural/farmer people from the North East.
They are not poor (by current Thai rural standards), but they could do better.
Further, their priorities are like those of people all over the world.
They want to care for their families, now/today – that’s number 1.
Number 2, they want to “build a better future” for all – especially their own children.
That they have voted for Thaksin/TRT and its now several incarnations doesn’t worry them – as long as the points just mentioned are attended (or seemingly attennded) to.
My family voted yesterday in the bi-elections. But, they didn’t vote for Thaksin – they voted for the party candidate who promised them hope, to attain these things.
In this way, I would say real democracy is moving forward, in the areas where it is most needed.
Perhaps we are entering a phase in Thailand’s long developing democracy, where social reforms are going to pick up pace and be of more substance.
That the new government is stating loudly, it will maintain and where needed, improve the “populist” policies of recent years, to me, is an indication of this. Let’s hope they do it.
But, more, this political wakening ( inadvertantly created by Thaksin) will eventually make it much harder for “Thakisn-style” politicians (of any colour) to rise to a position of such enormous power, once the social and democratic reforms get to a critical tipping point.
That, of course, is the hard part.
I agree with with Portman, the real development of a proper democatic social movement, really aimed at achieving these goals and not as the vehichle(s) of and for, self-serving politicians, head men and so on – as still appears,to often be the case – will make this move forward so much more effective. Only time will tell if this come about .
In the meantime, I think all us “outsiders” need to to be very carfeful not to back “paper horses” of any colour.

Whatsinanme (formerly Another David – but changed to avoid confusion……with “other” Davids!

By: Marty

Marty — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:18:19 +0000

I have to agree with you on the “sowing the seed” issue.

I was thinking before the By-election that if PTP actully won big it would just rollover as what we have now. I feel that the PTP will now have to rethink and possibly reorganize their party. They already have a good grass roots organization and if they can bring in the less militant parts of the Red movement they could prove to be very formidable in the next election. Being in the opposition is probably a good position to be in at the moment. The government will have huge pressure to do something about the economy and as it gets worse the factions in the coalition will be under even more pressure as the poor constituents in their ridings will start to gurmblwe more and more.

By: Portman

Portman — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:54:05 +0000

Marty. I appreciate the explanation. The pictures are excellent but I felt a little uneasy about the angle of the commentary on the piece about the police action firing the copious explosive tear gas grenades at the PAD. On reading the red shirt piece here, this all fell clearly into perspective.

I am also sympathetic to the plight of the rural poor and have some close connections in the rural Northeast as well as but I find it too hard to stomach the low quality and self serving nature of the Thaksinite politicians and the man himself. They don’t have the flavour of people who care about the ordinary people at all but rather seem to view them as a resource to be manipulated for their personal benefit. I don’t see anything resembling a social democratic movement in Thailand that is genuinely interested in social reform. Ironically, Thaksin may inadvertently have sown the seeds for this to happen in the future, since he raised the stakes surrounding the rural vote. However, he and his crony capitalists would certainly hate to see the logical result of this in form of higher and more rigorously collected taxes for the rich, including estate tax; better education for the masses; better labour rights and generally an enhanced return on labour at the expense of the return on capital; and finally rule of law applied uniformly to the wealthy and influential on the scale achieved by South Korea, meaning an end to easy corruption and no further raison d’etre for Thai Rak Thai, Prachachon Thai, Peua Thai or any of their future ugly sprogs.

By: Portman

Portman — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 04:34:11 +0000

To Susie Wong. Sorry I don’t get it. You could equally argue that Aung San Suu Cyi is a fascist because her father sided with the Japanese in the Second World War.

Anyway I see Thaksin having far more ideological similarities with Pibul than with Pridi, e.g. de-empasis of the monarchy and emphasis himself, his power and personal financial benefits; control of the media to stifle all opposition; extrajudicial killings and disappearances as tools of government policy etc. If he had been around in the 40s, it is most unlikely that he would have been posing as a champion of democracy, risking an undignified end in a ditch, and much more likely that he would have been busy downplaying his Chineseness like Pin Choonhaven and trying to get aboard the Pibul bandwagon.