New Mandala

10 responses so far ↓

• 1 blogskeptik // Jul 30, 2009 at 1:26 pm

  Well it almost certainly a load of bollox from PAD, since I have yet to hear a Thai politician, businessman or leader who spoke anything else – Ji included.

  Ji is probably spending too much time down at his local discussing Daily Star articles by the sounds of things.

• 2 Susie Wong // Jul 30, 2009 at 2:12 pm

  Thank you Prof. Ji Ungpakorn for pointing out PAD’s external link.

  I feel PAD leadership and organization differ from how ordinary Thai people would go about doing things. Even the Communist Party of Thailand would not dare to mobilize the State Own Enterprises like the State Own Railways and the State Own Electricity, yet the PAD did. They made the Railways Union on strike a month or so ago. And half a year ago, they effectively shut the country from the outside world by closing down both domestic and international airports. Now they want to get rid of the Police Chief and they are pressuring Aphisit to do so.

  Reading Germany’s history during 1928-1933, I see the parallel between PAD’s ideology and organization and the emergence of the NAZI party at the time: seizure of the State, control of the elites and the masses. What do you think?

• 3 nobody // Jul 30, 2009 at 2:34 pm

  Ji seems to be getting a bit excitable. It is usually better to make your case in more measured ways. I actually wonder what his thoughts on the red shirts tending to be more pro-Thaksin than say pro-democracy these days. There is a difference as no true pro-democracy advocate would actually back someone with such an awful human rights record. They would at least if demanding his return also demand his trial on cases nobody has yet brought as protecting the democtic rights of those killed under his polices during his tenure is as important as returning a flawed but elected person with a hideous human rights record. This must be frustrating for any true pro-democracy activists on the red side. I hope Ji sticks to his previous beliefs of what Thaksin was and doesnt become an apologist. The alliances of politcial convenience, side changing and the selling out of ideals has been remarkable in this ongoing power battle.

  I dont think the yellows were the only ones to bring armed violence to the streets too.

• 4 Billy K. Roland // Jul 30, 2009 at 11:09 pm

  For someone who claims to be an expert on Thai labour, Ji once again shows how little he understands about the international labour movement. David Cockroft is the head of the IFT, and the IFT’s major Thai union affiliates are the Port Authority of Thailand union, the SRT Union, the Thai Airways Union, the Bangkok Bus Union, etc. Cockroft has probably been formally requested by his Thai affiliates for a statement of support for their struggle. This is not hard to figure out. Whether you agree or not with the ITF’s stand, the issue is that it is a membership organization and when its members (the affiliate unions) bring up issues, the ITF has to address them. Of course, the idea of membership organizations is not something that I think Ji is very familiar with — since as an ivory tower academic, his bread and butter comes from shouting the loudest and longest. Ji’s efforts to organize radical students and workers when he was in Thailand was always the biggest joke in the Thai labor movement — he was always lucky if he could manage any more than about 30 people at any of his “national” mobilizations. If Ji wants to raise issues with the ITF, then he should write a letter to Cockroft — and try to do some more advocacy and education with them directly (since they are in the UK, and Ji will be there for the forseeable future anyways), and less shouting on blogs that I rather doubt Cockroft or anyone else from the ITF is going to be reading any time soon.

• 5 nongmar // Jul 31, 2009 at 12:46 pm

  I still cannot understand why Prof. Ungpakorn continues to receive personal criticism and his work trivialised.
  A read of Pasuk and Baker’s “History and Politcs of Thailand” would inform any reader of the decimation of the union movement in this country and the replacement “unions” that were permitted to operate within the state organisations.
  Maybe the problem is the ignorance of the members of the ITF.

• 6 Les Abbey // Jul 31, 2009 at 3:48 pm

  Labour movements do tend to support each other… in fact that’s what they are there for. The problem was that Giles and the Marxist-Leninists couldn’t attract state organization workers and their unions to the red shirts after they split from PAD. The unions here might not be much, but they pretty well all there is in the way of organized labour.

• 7 Srithanonchai // Jul 31, 2009 at 5:00 pm

  If you click the link, the ITF site says that this page is not longer available.

  Anyway, Giles is probably just frustrated that he cannot organize the socialist revolution in Thailand from British soil…

• 8 sam deedes // Jul 31, 2009 at 5:02 pm

  Susi Wong, you have hit the nail on the head (again). The PAD logo has disturbing echos.

• 9 Billy K. Roland // Aug 1, 2009 at 4:56 pm

  Nongmar is well intentioned, but the fact is that there are plenty of private sector labour unions which did not join either Ji’s red cause or the majority (but not all) of the state enterprise unions that supported the PAD. In fact, the State Enterprise Labor Relations Confederation (SERC), the national labor congress of state enterprise unions, pulled out of the Thai Labor Solidarity Committee (TLSC) when the TLSC decided to not take a position on red vs. yellow, and to not align with SERC and the PAD. There are plenty of union area groups in various industrial areas that are continuing to organize and collectively bargain — such as in Rayong — and they are not involved in the national politics, but they do have strength locally. The point that I was making is Ji talks alot about labour, but he doesn’t have any following. He is the quintessential lefty gad-fly, and his remarks about the ITF are fully in line with that. In fact, most of the private sector labor leaders (who are neither red nor yellow) I’ve talked to — who had to put up with the hassles now and again of Ji’s Che-shirt wearing students trying to inject politics into labour union executive committees — are just as happy that Ji is stuck in England for the forseeable future.

• 10 blogskeptik // Aug 3, 2009 at 2:02 am

  Susie & Sam certainly figured that PAD is full of fascists. But one truly wonders what they were doing during the Thaksin years. Did I hear much complaint when Thaksin let his uniformed thugs loose (with Sondhi Lim’s friendship & support) to murder both innocent and guilty people alike? (A recently vocal relative is rumored to have ordered the death of an opponent quite recently. There’s no smoke without fire. In a free system he would be open to either prosecution or to defend himself. But no swinging dick here ever takes any real responsibility for his own irresponsibility.)

  There are NO relatively benign politicians, policemen or military men in Thailand. They’re pretty much all murdering fascists when push comes to shove. Added to which democracy has never been anything other than a farce here anyway. Thaksin most certainly didn’t preside over one. So why do otherwise clued-in people persist in cutting a corrupt & dangerous policeman a bit of slack as he continually breaks the law with complete impunity? Millions of people support the man only because they have been brainwashed with the strongman theory. It might be popularism, but it most certainly isn’t freedom. If you ask them what they really know about him, they either know very little or spend hours on end trying to defend him on the dubious grounds that only hardman strength can run what is undoubtedly a very weak country in political and law & order terms. It’s not even as if that so-called strength has ever really acheived anything other than a very fat, prosperous & lazy lifestyle for a very small minority.

  Come on! Say it like it is. The scenery is good. The food is good and plentiful. The culture is interesting And there are other positives. But in political terms, Thailand really isn’t that much better than basketcase Burma.

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