After its deadliest and costliest political crisis that claimed 89 lives, more than 1,800 injuries and the torching of Bangkok’s gleaming shopping malls and run-down shop houses, Thailand appears no closer to peace and stability than when the protesting red shirts took to the streets two months ago. The relative calm in Bangkok is a needed reprieve but it belies more turbulence and tumult unless reconciliation and reform efforts are undertaken to address the grievances of both sides of the deepening divide.
The post-mortem so far does not bode well. Polarised stakeholders have taken away what they wanted to hear and see. Ordinary Bangkokians are haunted by the charred remains of Central World, one of Southeast Asia’s largest shopping malls, as much as the rank-and-file reds from the North and Northeast regions and their underclass brethren in Bangkok have bemoaned their fallen. Government-run and army-owned television and radio stations have played up the arson and looting of downtown Bangkok, while the reds’ alternative media and tens of thousands of local websites critical of government responses and army operations are closed. International media are castigated by English-enabled Bangkokians for an alleged bias in covering the reds’ grievances, whereas the domestic media appear tame and one-sided.
To be sure, the reds’ riots and army suppression in Bangkok are not new. After the reds protested and rampaged in April 2009, the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva promised reconciliation and reform. The consequent parliamentary recommendations for constitutional amendments made little headway. Abhisit catered to his patrons in the Bangkok establishment, and antagonized and alienated the reds to the extent that they retook the streets of Bangkok. He had the entire year in 2009 to bridge Thailand’s rural-urban divide and structural disparity and to bring the red shirts on side, but the result was the opposite. The Abhisit government has become a tainted source of Thailand’s problems rather than its way forward. As he is a principal party to the conflict, Abhisit’s stewardship of reconciliation and reform is suspect from the outset.
For the reds, nothing has changed. They rioted twice in the past two years. Their extremists are a disgrace for burning central Bangkok. But the grievances of ordinary reds remain unaddressed. Their claims of systematic injustice and disenfranchisement that featured judicial dissolutions of their poll-winning parties twice, the banning of their elected politicians, the street-based ouster of their elected governments in 2008 by opposing yellow shirts, and the army’s brokerage of the Abhisit government in the barracks still persist. Unless these claims are considered on their own merits, as opposed to being lumped into the wicked manoeuvres of convicted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the reds may well resort to underground activities, including a potential armed insurgency, and establish their own Thailand away from Bangkok in enclaves of the North and Northeast.
What the reds need is an alternative leadership away from Thaksin and his lieutenants in the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD). As ordinary reds have nowhere to turn, such an alternative leadership can be found by allowing the 220 banned politicians from May 2007 and December 2008, excluding Thaksin, to re-enter the fray and contest in the next round of polls. Most of these politicians are old-style, pork-driven vested interests. But a fraction of them are capable and can manage Thailand in a competitive world economy and challenging geopolitical environment. The military-supported constitution of 2007 must also be amended to do away with clauses that weaken political parties and restore the one-voter, one-vote principle. The ‘guided democracy’ model whereby rules are rigged and outcomes are shaped by judicial manipulation must be abandoned.
After all this turmoil, Abhisit should go through the electoral test at an earliest opportunity. He has withdrawn the early election offer, and set up panels for constitutional amendments and investigations into the death toll only to be headed by pro-government individuals critical of the reds’ movement. The efforts of these two panels in promoting reconciliation appear doomed from the start because they do not represent the interests of one side of the divide. Yet these efforts will buy time for the Abhisit government to roll out more populist measures to placate the reds and for the army and state agencies to conduct pacification campaigns in the countryside using royalist symbols. As these policies and campaigns were not enough to stop the reds last year, their prospects are similarly dim this time around.
The longer Abhisit waits for new polls, the more the reds’ seething fury will fester. The longer it takes to open up and level the electoral field, the more Thaksin can manipulate the reds to regain his confiscated wealth and power. If ordinary reds’ grievances are accepted as genuine, the way forward is to provide them with alternative leadership, fair rules and referees, and a new contest. Otherwise they may well reappear in greater rage and rampage.
Thailand stands in uncharted territory. Its ailing and aging monarch presides over a convulsive body politic. The rigidly constructed Thai identity based on a monarchy-centered socio-political hierarchy is coming loose at its seams as development, democratization and globalization seep in from below and the side. As the core weakens, the peripheries run amok. The Malay-Muslim insurgency in Thailand’s southern border provinces has been one deadly manifestation. Another could be a rural-based insurgency aimed at Bangkok unless recognition and accommodation take place.
The reds rank-and-file need to dissociate from Thaksin’s corruption and manipulation, and Abhisit’s patrons and backers should accept ordinary reds as democratic aspirants for opportunities and upward mobility. It requires concessions and reforms of the established order in the coming years but it is the best course for Thailand’s future. A country famous for its compromising ways has the capacity to navigate out of its democratic dead end. A self-enlightened establishment as fronted by Abhisit that can embrace and bargain with ordinary reds and their alternative leadership to reject Thaksin is Thailand’s way forward. Otherwise the topsy-turvy violence and mayhem seen recently may lead to an implosion of a once-vibrant democracy in the developing world.
カテゴリー:Thailand
