On Sunday, the PAD held a rally on Sanam Luang in Bangkok, showing loyalty to nation and monarchy. This event was attended by about 35,000 people, mostly dressed in colors with royal affiliation. The main tone of the rally was rousing patriotism. National flags dominated the visual scene. Retired General Preecha Iamsuphan gave a fanatical speech calling for a war against Cambodia. Both Thaksin and Hun Sen were attacked on the stage. The crowd was asked, for the foreign media, to recite in English: “We Love The King! We Love Thailand!” Often the foreign media was mentioned on the stage. The event would be seen all over the world.

When Sonthi Limthongkul came on the stage, he talked mostly about protecting the monarchy and how, if the PAD would not have fought for the monarchy last year, nothing might have been left over. In the middle of his speech suddenly a loud blast occurred, maybe 150 meters behind the stage. I saw a small column of smoke rising just opposite from Wat Pra Keow, and rushed to the scene. A few lightly injured people were there, and soon rescue workers arrived. One of the injured was a small boy, about 10 years old, with a puncture wound from shrapnel in his upper leg. Another was a PAD guard. I saw two more injured. Altogether 15 injured were reported. A small melee happened when enraged PAD protesters attacked a young man who was arrested, but was most likely not involved.

The rally closed about 10.30 in the evening, when the Royal anthem was sung while protesters held candles.

[Click on the images for larger versions. Hover on images for captions.]

Saturday Red

Sunday Yellow

State within the state

This concept does not appear in progressive political science literature or research. It was used earlier to refer to the situation in Thailand during the period of the Cold War.

In fact, those who look into the structure and characteristics of the Thai politics and administration will know what this really means. This is not new knowledge. It was since the formation of the Thai Rak Thai party, when Thaksin became the Prime Minister in 2001 that we had tangible evidence that the “State within the state” in Thailand really exists. The evidence also indicates that people no longer have ownership or equal rights in this country as portrayed by current propaganda.

“State within the state” means that there is one “government” on top of another government in Thailand or Thai state, according to international legal definition. One is elected by the majority of people while the other never goes through any election process.

The real  [behind the scenes] “government” is composed of the following elements:

1. Senior government civil and military officers nurtured under the patronage system of the previous authority. These officers take turns to be in power, sharing wealth and privilege. They sometimes compete and even fight among themselves. 
2. Mechanism of absolute control by the state as among certain bodies and authorities such as Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), Special Branch of Royal Thai Police, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Royal Thai Army, Thai Airways, PTT, etc.
3. Income and revenue responsible groups including both the new rich and the old establishment rich as well as development of centrifugal networks to draw either old or new capital into the center.
4. Elements of academia, in particular those who know how to control the nation-state through the process of law – as among those academics with knowledge and skill to draft a constitution and other minor laws that have a hidden agenda or clauses that allow the status quo ante powers and elite privilege to continue.
5. Agreement with the superpower nations, in particular the USA in regards to protecting mutual benefits and to make sure areas of authority/interest doesn’t overlap.

This kind of persisting interest “government” is therefore the real government of this kingdom because it has the absolute power to seek and maintain its power.

The elected government is only there for the sake of the country’s image. It’s like a mask that hides the real image hidden behind. The orders for the elected government will be made through telephone conversations or messengers, the same way as ordering a pizza delivery.

From the origination of PAD, formerly “we love the king” group, the judicial review, the adjudication to null the election on 2 April 2006, the car bomb to assassinate the PM of the elected government [Thaksin], the 2006 coup, the council for national security, the dissolution of TRT and PPP  and most of all the lèse majesté cases were the products of the real  “government” of Thailand. These are but a part of a much wider circuit of interests or products!

There is no possible way that the elected government will be able to fight against the real “government” that is resilient and works in clandestine ways. Besides, an elected government has real work to do and has to face various problems daily and has to bear all sorts of criticisms from all directions. 

The apparatus of the real power or “government” in Thailand exists above electoral interests; bestowing enfranchisement or empowerment to voters through public referendum and a fair court system. From time to time this real “government” will come out to act like a guru to give a lesson to the elected government.

The missions of the real “government”, the “state within the state”, are quite clear. It will never allow a situation to occur where it will lose its power and benefits to democratic competition. Some other main duties of the hidden “government” are:

1. Create a distorted image for the political system; making the electorate feel that they cannot rely on a democratic system in place, for example because of vote buying.
2. Make the democratic government incapable, worthless and deserving to be destroyed, and if it appears worthy and gaining authority, the accusations are immediately raised on corruption, “dictatorship” and lèse majesté which can be deployed immediately to annihilate any oppositional voices.
3. Make the bureaucrat system  [the khaa-ratchakaan system], the real operational system of the hidden “government”; higher in power than the population of the whole country and engender conditions to make people more ignorant and backward than the elite bureaucrats.
4. Constantly reinforce power by creating a competitive condition among the underlings and their operational staff; the ones who fail will be disposed of, while favorites are promoted without credibility or due responsibility to the feeling of others.
5. Constantly promote positive propaganda to build its self-image, as a standard of the morality and good virtue for Thai society; even if there are no productive outcomes, previous outcomes that were accepted will be repeated to familiarize the public so that they dare not challenge it.      
6. Severely punish those who dare to challenge the status quo in public; as in “slashing a chicken’s neck to keep the monkey away” [Thai proverb].
7. Never disclose oneself no matter how much pressure; the leader of the hidden “government” would instead act indirectly when necessary to allow underlings to use their imagination to interpret what is wanted and how; any subversive orders will be passed down through codes and “boys” to avoid traces to the source.
8. Promises to the US, Chinese and British governments that as long as the real “government” is able to maintain its power, mutual benefits of all the three countries will be assured; this principle may be referred to as “I Live, You Live; I die, You die”. Therefore it is clear that the full extraordinary Thai ambassadors to these three countries have been selected carefully and often given special tasks after their retirement too.

Currently, Thai politics is dictated by the hidden government, the “state within the state”. The elected Abhisit Vejjajiva  is also trying to take good care of itself like the meat in a shell fish, and unable to undertake any productive activities. The elected government that people truly wanted has been suppressed and unable to make itself an alternative choice. If people can choose their own government the real behind-the-scenes “government” will experience the moral law of impermanence; it will no longer be able to exist in the Thai state anymore. We may place blame on many petty details that caused so much suffering for the pro-democracy faction; however, in reality, this is all dog’s shit. The real problem is the behind-the-scenes “government” that places self-interests first, that is regressive and outright wicked and cruel. It is clear that the heart of the Thai political problem is the “state within the state”.

Nick is the first to admit that his reports are only one angle on the presentation of Thai political positions.

Over at the UDD Today website, there are thousands of pictures from Red Shirt rallies, and from Thaksin’s recent years in exile.  Most are taken from angles on political events that few, if any, of us have good access to.  They provide insights about the types of events and people that matter to the Red side of the political chasm.  There is also a list of over 4,000 “Red Members” with accompanying profiles and graphics, and there are hundreds of videos (mostly Thaksin-centric).  It all comes together to give a sense of the way the Red Shirt movement is presenting itself these days.  And it is all contributing to an increasingly sophisticated online battlefield for Thailand’s political warriors.  As I type, @uddtoday is holding its own (among, I might add, many other Thai activist/commentator voices) in the Asia Semi-final of the Mr Twitter competition.

These components of the Red-Shirt self-portrait are worth highlighting because, as the third anniversary of the 2006 coup looms, New Mandala readers who follow Thai political matters will be keeping one eye on the obvious faultlines.  Red-shirt leaders have, not surprisingly, decided that Saturday 19 September will be a good day for a mass rally.  Of course, the September/October window is, we are often told, one of Thailand’s traditional times for political strife.

Chatter about what will happen next — mostly informal and speculative at this stage — is well and truly underway.  It reminds me, in some key senses, of a previous period of uncertainty when many of us were grasping around for a clear analysis of what was going on.  That period of uncertainty ended on 19 September 2006.  When will this one end?

“I am quite worried our country is going into ruin because people have done things their own way”

- Extracted from Bhumibol Adulyadej’s speech, quoted in “King calls for unity in polarized Thailand”, Reuters, 23 August 2009.  Some more details on the speech, and the campaign to “blacken” Privy Council Chairman Prem Tinsulanonda’s upcoming birthday, are available here.

The festivities began with a Brahman ceremony.

Songs were sung on the stage; Red Shirt leaders danced and sang along.  On Sanam Luang a large rectangle was fenced off for the procession.

Red clothed boxes containing the signatures were brought into the fenced-off area. Red shirts with national flags and monks formed up in the procession. I spoke with a construction site laborer who took a day off work to take part. He pointed out that he and his family came by themselves, and were not paid. While his wife breastfed their youngest child, he explained that in his home village in Buriram about half of the people were still supporting Newin Chidchob, the other half were not supporting him anymore.

Soon after Thaksin’s brief phone-in, the procession commenced. It rounded Sanam Luang and stopped in front of the Grand Palace. The boxes with the signatures were lined up at a small stage. One woman fainted – the heat and humidity was almost unbearable.

The Red Shirt leaders went to meet the officials of the Office of the Kings’s Principal Secretary, and handed over the petition. There was a huge crowd of photographers and videographers, and only two small points where we could take pictures. I was lucky to get the image – snapped on my out-stretched arm over the heads of several of my colleagues.

The boxes with the petition were stamped and signed by palace officials, and loaded by police officers into 5 trucks. The count was 383 boxes.

The Red Shirts dispersed. After I heard that at the court nothing happened, and no Blue Shirts appeared, I went home as well.

When I passed ASTV at Phra Arthit Road I saw a small commotion, and parked my motorcycle. 20 to 30 PAD guards in front of ASTV and opposite at Ban Phra Arthit shouted at passing taxis, vans and busses with Red Shirts. Some of the PAD guards shot with slingshots at the vehicles, and threw stones. At first they wanted to chase me away, but after I insisted that I would stay and take photos, we came to some sort of agreement – I could take images, but without showing their faces.  At least, while I was there, they let Red Shirts in tuk-tuks and motorcycles pass, and only fired at the cars and buses. One of the guards said that they did not want to hurt anybody, but just scare them.

Soon police arrived – one car and several motorcycles. The guards went back into the ASTV office and the situation calmed down.

Never before in Thailand has a large political movement filed a petition to the King – this was a historic day. The stakes of the conflict have been raised clearly, and it is difficult to predict where this will lead. The opponents of the Red Shirts are enraged by what they see as an attack on the monarchy and, as I could see already at the end of the petition day, further violence is probable.

Thailand and many scholars of Thailand have long resisted comparative perspectives on that history. The latter have squandered the potential of those perspectives to serve as the bases for a reconceptualization of Thai history. For adoption of comparative perspectives would challenge the myths — along with some fairy tales — of uniqueness whose invocation has long served as national placebo, obviating clear-eyed diagnosis of national pathologies.

The full article is, of course, well worth a look for anyone hoping to understand Thailand’s recent political history.

In a recent posting about Thaksin Shinawatra’s birthday, there were some marvelous pictures of monks taking part in the festivities.  One pair showed some monks removing a curse, with their begging bowls used to signify the removal of the curse.  Other pictures showed live monks in conjunction with pictures of Thaksin (Actually, Mr. Thaksin was not just in conjunction, but looking down on the monks beatifically.  I’m not sure which was more striking: the cut out of Thaksin standing behind the senior monk, or the pictures of Thaksin overlooking a group of chanting monks, hand raised in the sign-language gesture of “I love you.”).  Regarding these monks, one of the comments pithily noted simply, “Rentamonks.”  This was not an unreasonable comment, I suppose, but also troubled me.  Why can’t monks support Thaksin?  What do most monks think about the recent troubles in Thailand?  And what does their relative silence say about Buddhism and politics in Southeast Asia more broadly?  This is not the place to discuss this comprehensively, but it’s interesting to note there have been no four-letter word essays about this central (?) yet silent (?) figure: the monk (auspiciously, if we Romanize the word from both Thai and Dai-lue (ie from Sipsongpanna), we get phra and dubi, both 4-letter words).

For the most part, monks have been largely absent from the public discussion of the colored shirts. This absence is especially noteworthy because within several months of the coup that started the current phase of Thai politics, there were several significant demonstrations by monks over the status of Buddhism in Thailand, and in particular whether or not Buddhism would become an official religion.  To the best of my knowledge, the conversation about the status of Buddhism as the de jure as well as de facto national religion of Thailand was not finished, rather it went private, something to be talked about within monasteries between monks, but not in public, in much the same way that monastic opinions about reds and yellows seems to be taking place.

In June of this year, I was in Bangkok talking with both monks about their views on politics, and also with non-monks (mainly taxi drivers) about monks and politics.  The official line, and that espoused by most lay folk that I spoke with is that monks (and in this context, I mean lifers, not the men who have ordained for a month or a rainy season) in Thailand do not have political views.  I was told that the Supreme Sangha Council has told monks that they are not allowed to express their views on politics (despite the fact that the constitution guarantees this right for all Thai citizens, lay and monastic), and that they should stay away from political rallies in particular.  Those that do go to these rallies (birthday parties, airport closings and so forth) are not exactly committing a sin, but they are in a place inappropriate for monks.  They also open themselves up to criticisms of being “copy monks” (or “rentamonks”). 

There is then a lot of pressure on monks in Thailand to shut up about the political world, and many that I spoke with are just as happy not to be dragged into the discussion.  At the same time, though, there is tension.  Many monks would like to be allowed to vote, and at least some would not mind being able to speak more freely about politics.  Although the monks that I met at the red shirt rally on June 22 looked uncomfortable, they said they weren’t doing anything wrong, and that they weren’t false monks.  They were there, they told me, “because they love democracy.” 

Monks have of course long (always?) been involved in politics in Thailand (as well as other places).  This used to be framed in terms of monastic legitimation for the king and/or state (think for example of the Sinhala monks saying its okay to kill Tamils in the Mahavamsa, or Phra Kitthivuttho saying it’s okay to kill communists).  More recently, there has been a tendency for scholars at least to pay attention to monks as liberal figures, figures who ordain trees or preach against the excesses of modern capitalism.  The reality of course is that the Sangha is filled with monks on both sides of the aisle, and always has been, because monks do not cease to be people with connections and ideas when they shave their heads and take on the saffron robes.  What I think we need to pay more attention to is when it is okay for phra to edge into the political realm in Thailand and how they do so.

Monks throughout the Buddhist states of Southeast Asia of course have different roles in the civil society of their respective communities.  Moreover, I would suggest that what is considered to be appropriate activity for monks changes over time, both in and out of politics.  Monks in Sri Lanka can vote, in Thailand they can’t.  The Burmese Sangha tradition of political protest which flowered under the British means that they can act in ways that the Thai Sangha cannot or will not.  This does not mean, though, that Thai monks aren’t any less political than other monks, or other Thais.  Rather their position constrains (most of) them from making certain kinds of statements in public.  In other words, I would suggest that there is a monastic idiom of political expression.  This idiom is much more muted than lay political expression, and it only rises to public attention in certain contexts.  When monks speak outside this idiom, they risk censure.

I went at 9 am to Wat Kaeow Fa first. Thousands of Thaksin’s supporters gathered there. The event was hosted by former Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat and his wife, Thaksin’s sister Yaowapa. There were many elaborate rituals, such as protecting Thaksin, and lifting curses laid by his opponents.  One ritual, for example, countered a curse laid by the PAD some time before. Four upturned bowls on a table were, after chanting by four monks, turned around. This was to symbolize the lifting of the spell.

An amusing episode was when Somchai was to feed a few bulls with grass. One of the bulls was aggravated by the crowd wearing Red Shirts, and broke free. I think I made not the most courageous impression when I had to jump over several chairs to escape the mad bull running after me. If anyone thinks of going to attend the bull running in Pamplona – don’t!

The ceremonies ended with a phone-in by Thaksin, and the crowd sang ‘happy birthday’.

In the later afternoon, after some heavy rainshowers, I made my way to Bang Na, to the Mangkorn Luang Restaurant, a huge Chinese restaurant styled after a Chinese temple, with tiled roofs, walkways, a lake, and a tall pagoda. There were many pretty reception girls and beer girls, and waiters on roller skates. The venue was sold out in advance – a table for 5000 baht, a single seat for 500 baht. Organizers said that they expect to make a loss of at least several hundred thousand baht, so they could keep the dinner cheap enough.

Attending were many Pheua Thai MP’s and stars, and members of Thaksin’s family, including his sisters Yaowapa and Yingluck.

I had no chance to taste the food – the dishes brought to the journalist’s tables were attacked by my colleagues like hungry wolves (I managed though to snatch a small piece of the cake behind the stage – very nice!).

After many speeches Thaksin appeared in a video-link. The candles of the cake were blown out by Yaowapa and Yingluck, with Thaksin in Dubai simultaneously blowing out the candles of his cake there. The party ended with fireworks and songs by several stars, such as plaeng look thung star Takadaen Chonlada. The crowd cheered when it was announced over the microphone that the Pheua Thai Party-supported candidate won a Provincial Adminsitration Organization election over the Democrat-supported candidate in Surat Thani. 

I went last to Wat Uthaitharam, hosted by Veera Musikapong, Dr. Weng Tojirakarn and Shinawat Habunphad from the taxi radio station. Many thousand Red Shirts had gathered there.

It seems that Thaksin Shinawatra together with his family might play a much larger role again in the Red Shirts, as was indicated by his increased presence during the Songkran riots and its run up, and in many of the new Red Shirt publications. It remains to be seen if this is a turn towards personality cult, or if the aspirations for a more open Democracy in Thailand will still be the main focus in the Red Shirt movement.  Clear though is that Thaksin and the Red Shirts still have massive support, and show no inclination of giving up their struggle. The birthday celebrations were a PR victory for Thaksin over Abhisit, whose strategically well laid football game of government vs. foreign diplomats may have stolen some of the media attention, but did not get much interest from the Thai population.