It gets hot in Thailand at this time of year. In recent years this has tended to be the season when the political temperature also rises. 2012 is set to continue that pattern.
New Mandala readers hoping for an update on recent events can start with this piece in The Economist, followed by this one. Once again, all attention is on deposed former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s efforts to return to the kingdom. He is nibbling at the edges: first from Laos (where he made merit) and then this weekend from Cambodia (where he will make a big speech).
As Thaksin told Al Jazeera when they caught up with him in Vientiane, “I feel like coming home, even though I am not in Thailand yet”. He is clearly readying himself for re-entry to the kingdom. But this will not be straight-forward. There is already talk of plots to kill Thaksin (and this at a time when เชคสเปียร์ต้องตาย is still in the news).
If you watch the Al Jazeera video of Thaksin at the temple in Vientiane you get a pretty clear sense of the comprehensive security effort mobilised by the former Prime Minister’s team, and the Lao government. Thaksin and his people look serious and motivated – in other words, Prime Ministerial.
Which brings us to the question of the moment: when do you think Thaksin will return from exile island?
June, and happy Songkran!
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No one builds Thaksin up more than the royalists. These royalists are their own worst enemy. They make him so important. Ignoring him would do more to lessen his impact upon Thailand.
My opinion about him hasn’t really changed: he a bigger threat culturally than he ever was as a corrupt politician. He’s upstaged the wrong person.
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Oh yes. Thaksin will return for sure. The whole poltical drama follows this sequence: Returning of the A team (the banned TRT members)
-> new constitution -> a reconciliation deal which “makes everyone happy” (quote Thaksin) -> Happy Happy Amnesty -> Thaksin’s Grand Homecoming!
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If only Taksin were all he purports to be, he could have had a profound and positive influence on Thailand and the direction it takes. However most of his positive deeds were to strengthen his political base, and his personal greed and megalomania created the fissure to remove him. It does seem the ground is being laid for his return, hopefully the country will survive it.
For all that what politicians anywhere offer any inspiration? Obama or Romney, do you prefer your war mongering with a left or right bias, either way the Treasury is being raped? Gillard and Abbott, do you prefer unsustainable lower or middle class welfare? No positive choices, just your perceived lesser of evils.
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Could have?
I think Universal Health Care, the Expanded HIV drugs acess program, the new airport, the BTS, and underground, are things that have indeed changed Thailand for the better.
The new mimimum wage will have additional effects as the buying power of mimimum wage earners start comsuming more telephones, microwaves, TVs and the like.
Also it seems that the ‘war’ with Cambodia is over.
I follow these events quite closely and most of my Thai friends were asking me after the election how soon Thaksin would come back. Believe me, they want him here.
Yes, Thaksin has problems but perhaps if the Democrats had put forth programs, and ideas, and criticised him correctly; they might have benefited at the ballot box. Instead they alligned with the most reactionary of the conservatives and lost their legitimacy through pettiness.
In any real liberal democracy, AV would have taken the shellacking as evidence of his own inadequacys as party leader and relagated himself to the some obscure committee and let whatever other competing wing existed in his party take over the leadership.
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It would seem that his return is imminent. This could be a positive step if it is managed in the correct manner by PT and the UDD. A triumphal procession is not the correct way to go about things, but I fear that is what we will get.
I think the army will stay out of it, unless there is a direct threat to their power. There will be a few of the fringe lunatics and criminals from the PAD and other assorted groups who will try to drag the army in, but I don’t see there being any meaningful mass organised demonstrations that will threaten the government.
The only matters to be decided on are the timing [June just after the banned ones come back] and the mechanism [which the Democrats will try to stop in some token way].
Thaksin can contribute in very positive ways to Thailand, but he does need to take stock and manage his ego. His ego contributed to his removal from office (only contributed – there were many other factors, mostly not his making). I only see problems if the process is managed in a ham-fisted fashion, but that is the usual way in Thailand.
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Thaksin is an ambigious challenge to royalist traditional authority: othe the one hand, is his rationalism in which yje market is sovereign not any monarch but on the other hand his embracement of ‘sayasart’ supernatural politics to legitimate his would be rule!
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