The challenge for Mr Abhisit, a technocrat well disposed to democracy, is to deliver enough political reforms and start spending more money on health and welfare in the provinces to calm the Red Shirts down, without upsetting the elites. This will be easier said than done. The prime minister has no electoral mandate and while he has stared down the Red Shirt militia he dare not upset the other side, lest its Yellow Shirt supporters take to the streets and bring the army’s senior officers with them. His present plan, to crack down on Red Shirt leaders while promising to address economic inequalities seems the only conciliatory course.
All Thais should wish him luck. The alternatives to a political culture where everybody accepts election results are either chaos or another coup.
- Extracted from “Red and yellow signal trouble for Thailand”, The Australian, 24 May 2010.
Wishing luck on a no-win gamble would mean stupidity. Even if you wish to see Thailand peaceful, this plan of ‘to crack down on Red Shirt leaders while promising to address economic inequalities’ is Abhisit’s double speak at work.
The Reds has no reason to believe this Con-man from Eton, nor did he gave them any. Those who return home will bring their own accounts to Red territory, where the population’s anger awaits. More curfews and crackdowns will heal this rift? Sort of like a whip will heal a wound.
No sane man will bet on Abhisit curing Thailand’s plight. And if you do find one, check his drink. In case the country spirals further, and you need it yourself!
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It may be better option if the military comes in to neutralize the stalemate. The longer Aphisit clings on to power, the deeper the conflict. Using snipers killing its own citizens for wanting democracy is beyond any baseline. With Aphisit, the country would only move toward underground arms struggle. It’s time Aphisit should go so that the country still has the chance of healing.
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We should wish him luck ? I don’t think so. After killing so many people and refusing to offer even the smallest compromise, he is not going to be able appease the red shirts with anything he offers them.
Money is not going to solve this problem as few populist offers to give people free electricity or cheap train tickets is hardly going to do the job. The only offer wanted is his resignation. Then the country can move on and start talking.
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Another challenge is to increase the number of people sentenced because they violated the curfew:
36 arrested in Bangkok for violating curfew Sunday night
Thirty-six people were arrested in Bangkok for violating the 11pm-4 am curfew Sunday night, raising to 511 the number of arrests since May 20, the Metropolitan Police Bureau announced Monday.
Pol Maj Gen Piya Uthayo, spokesman of the Metropolitan Police, said 511 people have been arrested for violating curfew intentionally or without justified causes since May 20.
They were sentenced to two months in jail and a fine of Bt2,000 each. But the jail term was suspended and they were put on probation for two years, Piya said.
The Nation 24 May 2010
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Get real Mr. Aphisit. If you have ever listened to any suggestions or comments there would not be serial massacres in less than 2 years of your term.
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Abhisit seems to have assumed the persona of a pantomime villain in the minds of many. I can’t claim to have met Abhisit, and it’s hard to defend, however tentatively, someone who was at the helm when so many lost their lives; however, it is worth considering who might step into his shoes should the Democrats be defeated in the next election.
If we examine the political leadership of the Reds, we discover Chalerm Yubamrung as the likely Prime Minister in waiting. Perhaps I’m being unfair, but when I hear slogans like “end double standards” I tend to think of the Yubamrung family. (The fact is, if you are rich enough, you really can get away with murder in Thailand, and you don’t even have to be Prime Minister to do it). Suzie Wong (or anyone else), can you tell me, in all honesty, that replacing Abhisit with Chalerm will be a step forward for Thai democracy?
I feel a bit like a record that has stuck, but I can’t help repeating the same message as it remains relevant. Nearly everything that is written about the situation in Thailand seems to take for granted the fact that the Red Shirts really are underpinned by some kind of ideology. But what if this notion is wrong? In case anyone thinks this is only my personal fear, the following was written by Duncan McCargo in the Telegraph online:
“This has been portrayed as a struggle between poor farmers from the countryside and an undemocratic Bangkok elite. Yet despite the sympathetic coverage for the Redshirts in much of the international media, this is not a classic “pro-democracy” struggle between good guys and bad guys. It is a savage and dispiriting civil conflict, from which nobody emerges with much credit…..
……The central problem is that Thailand is torn between two rival camps, each led and directed by rich and powerful factions. Though ostensibly divided by ideological differences, in reality the anti-government Redshirts and the pro-government Yellowshirts are best characterised as competing patronage networks, bound together primarily by personal loyalties and emotional attachments. Supporters on both sides have been mobilised by intermediaries playing on local and family ties.”
My fear is this: that the Red Shirts, rather than being a progressive, grassroots democracy movement, may in fact be a reactionary group mobilised by regional strongmen to safeguard their interests. This seems to be consistent with McCargo’s observations and also with the kind of people we see leading the Peua Thai Party.
If this is true, the unfortunate fact may be that it does not matter what Abhisit does next. The only people capable of defusing this situation are the Red Shirt leaders, most notably Thaksin, but a rapprochement with the government is in almost everyone’s interests except these particular people.
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Abhisit should hold a conference on whether Thailand should have a strong government like Burma or a workers paradise like Laos because Cambodia just isn’t working anymore.
But seriously we already know what Abhisit will do, he will do nothing fundemental. Theer was talk of reconcilliation of a grand bargain and nothing happened. He had an opportunity a year ago after the shongkran riots to do something and he didn’t use it. A year from now we will have an even larger problem and Abhisit will still be looking good talking fine and doing nothing.
There is always a chance in politics that the weak leader pushed to the front as an outside compromise candidate grabs the reigns and surprises everyone with a dynamic leadership unfettered by the strings or loyalty to the existing political structure. But Abhisit is an administrator meant for peaceful times not a crisis.
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>Yet despite the sympathetic coverage for the Redshirts in much of the international media, this is not a classic “pro-democracy” struggle between good guys and bad guys. It is a savage and dispiriting civil conflict, from which nobody emerges with much credit
Just like any civil conflict. The need you have to find the ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ in the conflict are just an artifact of your own culture.
>Nearly everything that is written about the situation in Thailand seems to take for granted the fact that the Red Shirts really are underpinned by some kind of ideology. But what if this notion is wrong?
In the west the fixation on ideology is a hangover of the cold war where everything was seen through an ideological prism. When Thais say there is no ideology they just mean the redshirts don’t even know what they are fighting for. It’s a statement of contempt.
But all that is needed at the start of a civil war is long standing grievances and an other side that feels no need to do anything about them. Both conditions exist and are getting worse. The Thai upper classes are demonising the lower classes – people they already feel to be stupid and ignorant, and inequality will be increased by the plateauing of thai growth.
One of the self serving big lies in the west about revolutions in the cold war was that only the pure peasant lead revolutions are ‘real’. The fact is that they are always lead by middle class and upper class educated people. There are always politicians who throw their lot in with the movement or try to exploit the grievances to better their career.
Thailand is in a state before severe civil conflict has really started going. The upper classes are already surprisingly hardened against the poor, quite willing to see them shot in the streets but the poor haven’t decided yet whether destroying everything for equality is worth it yet.
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The challenge might also be trying to cover up just how bad his army is.
I mean, read this :
http://www.smh.com.au/world/is-it-ok-to-shoot-foreigners-and-journalists-20100521-w1ur.html
They shot civilians, they shot journalists and it also seems they wanted to shoot other farangs too.
Welcome to the LOS ( LAND OF SNIPERS )
.
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Nigel, over 200 from the TRT/PPP/PT was disqualified. You might want to go waayy back to before the coup to find what you’re asking for.
Back then Thaksin’s side has much better personals, both in quantity & quality. It’s the Judicial coup that has proven the most devastating to their camp.
IMO, the Democrats has a much lower quality to their side, if it took ‘Team 3′ of TRTs for them to be anywhere better. You ought to see why people voted for TRR’s ‘Team 1′.
Thaksin didn’t just assembled power, his players on the team were almost ‘dream team’ quality. That if you look at 30 yrs back, it’ll be hard to match, if at all. It’s easy to see why the Dems feared for their future back then.
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Thinking of Chalerm as prime minister, one does not need any horror movies! However, thinking of an alternative from the current coalition government does not provide for any “sweat dreams”! The question is, how come that it seems as if only the two equally irrational camps can be choosen from. What went wrong and made politics in Thailand void of sanity and reason?
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Sorry Leeyiankun, but whilst there were undoubtedly some very capable people in TRT, I would hardly call it a ‘dream team’. Thaksin didn’t assemble power? What do you call the merging of other parties into the TRT fold? That conveniently gave him a super majority which had no chance of being challenged in parliament (debates, no confidence motions etc..). The horse-trading, jockeying, and buying off that went on to help build the all-powerful Thaksin/TRT machine is well known. Yes, it’s something all parties and politicians have done, and do, to a greater or lesser extent, but the point I’m trying to make is that Thaksin was a master of political manouerving and this has had a direct bearing on how the UDD/Red movement has developed, even if can be argued that it has now become something bigger than the former PM.
And so, I’m more with you Nigel #6. Yours, mine and a few others are lonely voices on New Mandala who see things for what they are: a struggle between competing factions, with a good many unsavoury, and hypocritical characters working their magic behind the scenes. At least Duncan McCargo was able to get another viewpoint into the mainstream media, a good counterbalance to Andrew and Nich’s well-intentioned but sometimes myopic support of ‘phrai’ empowerment and the taking down of the monarchic-military-bureaucractic old order.
I can’t wait to see what all the pro-red, power-to-the-downtrodden-masses, commentators have to say if (when?) the Puea Thai party and its cronies are back in charge. Let’s see where your democratic development is then….
Charlem, Chavalit et al? You have to be kidding me. I just feel sorry for those genuine grassroots reds who do have those genuine greivances and now have such raised expectations for a brighter future…
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TRT dream team?
I am not sure about this. Many of the radicals and activists from the initial TRT party list, and those from the first government left…..out of concerns that Thaksin was reneging on election promises, undermining the constitution and of course, his widespread corruption.
But I also share concerns about party politics in Thailand, and the prospect of Chalerm as PM and a cabinet comprising politicians with a history of abuse of democratic process and corruption. Indeed – many of the same politicians who have represented Isaan and the North over the last 10 or 20 years, and who must therefore be held responsible for the failures of economic and social development, and lack of democratic progress.
As I have said before – we should not only be looking at elections and party politics as ways of promoting democracy (although of course these are fundamental). Whatever government gets in – we will need strong independent institutions that can act as checks and balances, and ensure that the state is accountable. Unfortunately no government in Thailand has actually supported these kinds of institutions, and while Thaksin owed much to the 1997 Constitution in getting into power – he launched a strategic and concerted attack on all these institutions. Even a popularly elected government is no guarantee that democracy will flourish.
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