Thailand trapped by rival oligarchies

Thailand continues to be wracked by bitter divisions between the pro-Thaksin ‘reds’ and the anti-Thaksin royalist ‘yellows’. This is not a struggle between a champion of the rural poor and Thailand's urban elite, but a bitter feud between two rival factions of the country's elite.

Tom Fawthrop

AMIDST all the clouds of tear-gas, confusion, and the sight of angry red-shirted mobs that tried to seize control of Bangkok at the end of March, one thing clearly emerged from the smoking debris of burnt-out buses. The mindless violence of the 'red-shirts' agitation, fanned by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in exile, has demolished any claim they have to being a movement dedicated to restoring democracy.

Thaksin's carefully cultivated  image as a 'persecuted democrat', based on being a victim of the 2006 military coup, has been massively dented by his inflammatory calls  for a 'people's revolution' and 'national uprising', egging on the red-shirted mobs that transformed the capital into a battle-zone  as the army tried to enforce a state of  emergency.

There was no 'national uprising' but there were thuggish attacks on the prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's car by a red-shirted mob screaming for him to resign. The anarchy in the streets pushed the leader of a weak coalition government to invoke a state of emergency. The embattled prime minister was obliged to call on the military to intervene and restore order, but accompanied by orders to use restraint and to avoid loss of life.

The  attempted assassination of Sondhi Limthongkul, one of the leaders of  the yellow-shirted People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), by heavily armed gunmen is a further block to any chance of a reconciliation  between the two movements - pro-Thaksin ‘reds’ and the anti-Thaksin royalist movement of 'yellows' - that have so totally polarised the nation.

Sondhi, a media tycoon and ultra-royalist, had  openly courted military intervention to get rid of Thaksin in 2006.The high-profile assassination attempt on Sondhi was used by the government to justify the continuation of  emergency rule which provides a temporary ban on public demonstrations and protests.

The current coalition government led by Abhisit, the Oxford-educated leader of the Democrat Party, is seen by the pro-Thaksin movement as the 'illegitimate' creation of Thailand's traditional ruling elite which combines the monarchy, the military and the courts reflecting the old moneyed class versus Thaksin's  clan of  nouveau riche corporate power. The judges who are considered to be very much in tune with the Privy Council - the advisers to the king - have found some pro-Thaksin parliamentarians guilty of electoral corruption and ordered their party to be disbanded. These court rulings are widely viewed as highly politicised verdicts that have favoured the Democrat Party.

There are some valid grievances that the coalition government has to address to break the elite stranglehold on politics and to empower the millions in the countryside and the urban poor who feel their voice is never heard in Bangkok's  ruling circles.

However,  billionaire Thaksin, the Berlusconi of  Asia, who has built up for himself a rural constituency through networking, clever marketing and corruption, is hardly an authentic representative of the rural population. But, rather like a huge advertising corporation, he has sold a political brand.

In this protracted power play, both wings of the ruling class have mobilised mass street protests. The 'yellow-shirts' are motivated by fanatical support for their ailing and octogenarian king Bhumibol Adulyadej, and total opposition to the return of Thaksin.

Last December the 'yellows' seized Bangkok airport and disrupted all flights in and out of the country for a whole week, devastating the nation's trade and tourism. That helped to precipitate the defeat of a government based on pro-Thaksin politicians and led by the ousted billionaire's brother-in-law.

In March it was the turn of  mobs of  the 'red-shirts' to show that they could more than match the achievements of the 'yellows' in wrecking the economy and damaging Thailand's standing in the world.

Their invasion of the ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) Summit in Pattaya which forced its cancellation, and the subsequent street violence in Bangkok, was far more lethal and much less disciplined than the airport takeover. Thailand has suffered a massive loss of credibility in the eyes of its ASEAN neighbours.

There is growing evidence that many erstwhile sympathisers with the ousted prime minister, who had espoused populist politics and a cheap medical scheme to woo voters in the countryside, are becoming disenchanted with the recent orgy of violence and Thaksin’s disruptive role in exile since the 2006 military coup.

The most recent opinion poll conducted by Assumption University in Bangkok reported that most Thai people are weary of the confrontations, and 71.5% supported the prime minister's emergency rule to restore peace and order.

But even before the recent mayhem in the streets of the capital, the simplistic   media perception that billionaire Thaksin, a telecom mogul, only wanted to see democracy restored and that he has democratic legitimacy on his side reflected more spin than political truth.

Thaksin had used profits from his huge telecom empire to hire some of the world's top PR companies to promote his 'democratic image', including the services of the Bell Pottinger Group, owned by Lord Timothy Bell. 

Another PR guru in Hong Kong, Samuel Moon, a big mover and shaker in the world of international conferences for BusinessWeek and the Economist, has set up a new website for Thaksin’s Building A Better Future Foundation (http://www.buildingbetterfuture.org).

This is the kind of name which might fool the gullible into believing that Thaksin has turned over a new leaf as a budding philanthropist, intent on making the world a better place.

However, many Thai citizens who are neither part of the ‘red mob’ nor the royalist frenzy of the 'yellow-shirts' are getting upset that too many in the international media have forgotten or been persuaded to gloss over Thaksin’s not-so-democratic record as an elected leader.

Independent Thai filmmaker Ing K (that is the name she goes by) queried in an email to CNN how it is possible for their station to interview the ex-prime minister and fugitive on many occasions without mentioning the infamous Thaksin-led war on drugs. [Ing K is the co-director of a new film about the Muslim conflict in the country's south, Citizen Juling.]

The drug war was launched in 2003 and resulted in police hit squads being given official licence to gun down suspects, many of the names of victims coming from a blacklist. Two thousand and five hundred alleged drug suspects were eliminated in three months.

In Thailand's conflict-ridden south, thousands of unarmed Muslims have been killed in massacres and military operations. Former Thai Senator Kraisak Choonhavan, now an MP for the Democrat Party, was one of the few politicians who dared to challenge Thaksin's increasingly authoritarian rule, and led a senate investigation into one such massacre by the Thai military.

Thaksin’s alleged legitimacy has to be measured against his anti-democratic actions, his contempt for minimal standards of human rights and justice and the systematic erosion of Thailand’s constitution.

During his reign as prime minister from 2001-2006, press freedom was bullied and threatened into oblivion, critics were slapped with criminal libel cases, and human rights activists disappeared. To suggest that getting rid of Thaksin was a straightforward attack on democracy, as so many commentators have done, only shows their ignorance of his systematic abuse of power. 

It was precisely his arrogant CEO-style leadership that eventually provoked a wave of peaceful demonstrations from the end of 2005 until he was finally ousted by the military in 2006. He was later convicted in a normal court of law on charges of corruption and sentenced to two years in jail in absentia.

Thaksin has never believed in democracy any more than other Asian strongmen of the last few decades like Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Cambodia's Hun Sen, who have all used the ballot box to legitimise their political domination.

That is not too say the embattled current coalition government is much better in terms of its democratic mandate. It has not been elected, although the Democrat Party has a strong representation in the National Assembly.

What is happening is not a struggle between the champion of the rural poor versus the urban rich elite, but rather a bitter feud between two rival wealthy elites: the traditional elite of the monarchy, old moneyed classes and the military versus Thaksin’s new oligarchy of Chinese-Thai businessmen.

They are both able to orchestrate disruptive mass protests, bankrolling days and weeks of agitation. Rival camps are warily peering into the future of what may be a messy royal succession and the political destiny of the country up for grabs.

Neither under Thaksin in his rule of the country, nor under the current coalition government backed by the advisers to the ailing king, the military and the traditional business elite of old moneyed classes, has Thailand enjoyed  real democracy.

Despite Prime Minister Abhisit’s elitist origins, his commitment to democracy and dialogue means he may hold the key to bridging the gap between the ‘reds’ and the ‘yellows’.

The only peaceful solution is if he can wean people in the countryside away from the toxic legacy of Thaksin, and deliver social justice for the whole nation, regardless of his patrons. A mountain of a task for a young Oxford-educated prime minister.

The Asian Sentinel, an online news service, noted that 'If there were ever a time for Abhisit to emerge from the shadow of the elite, the time is now. He needs to make constitutional reform a priority and start standing up for his stated principles instead of saying “it's not the right time” to make changes.'

Thaksin and his red-shirts have suffered a serious setback but they have vowed to return to the streets in the future. Thaksin, his Thai passport cancelled, has now obtained a new passport from Nicaragua, and become a financial adviser to the Bahamas and the Central African Republic, while still keeping his base in Dubai.

Abhisit is facing the unpleasant prospect that Thaksin will never give up, and the 'red-shirts' have vowed to be back on the streets. The stability of the old order in Thailand is over. There is no going back. The monarchy's role will change with whoever is the new king. Abhisit’s survival depends on his ability to reach out to the poor and enact social reform so that he will be relevant to a new politics.                                  

Based in Thailand, Tom Fawthrop is a journalist and filmmaker covering the developing world. He directed Swimming Against the Tide, a documentary on the Cuban health system, published a book on the Khmer Rouge tribunal and is working on a documentary about the Mekong and threats posed by dam projects.

*Third World Resurgence No. 224, April 2009, pp 28-30