MAY 25 — Relative calm has returned to Thailand after the turmoil of April – but all is not what it seems. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva may have won the latest round against the “red shirt” protesters. Yet he is surrounded by the tightest security for any premier in recent memory – and it is handled by the army, not the police.
Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya rarely sleeps in the same place every night, and his security too is handled by the army.
These are but the outward signs of a complex conflict over power, justice and democracy that many say could last for years. Professor Michael Nelson of Germany’s University of Passau, for instance, speaking recently at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand, thought that the country was in the midst of a “latent and sometimes manifest conflict between monarchism and democracy that has not been resolved since it (began) in 1932”.
In 1932, Thailand changed from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy. Fifty years later, in 1982, political science professor Chai-anan Samudvanij wrote of “a conflict between two alternative bases of legitimacy, one emanating from traditional hierarchical traditions, the other based on popular sovereignty”. Prof Chai-anan is today an ideologue of the yellow-shirted, royalist People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD).
The tension he wrote of has grown, not lessened, since 1982, squeezing bit by bit the room for measured discussions of the future.
The PAD believes politicians buy votes to get into power and are beholden to their financiers. The masses, it contends, are ill-informed, easily bought and therefore not ready for democracy.
It cites former premier Thaksin Shinawatra as the most potent example of a politician who subverts the system for his own ends, and wants to restore the status quo ante – the “balance” it claims existed before Thaksin upset it.
The Democrat Party seems to want the same thing. A senior government insider told The Straits Times: “We have no choice but to restore (the balance).”
Thaksin’s manipulation of the system disrupted what Chulalongkorn University’s Thitinan Pongsudhirak refers to as the “consensus” of the Thai elites. The last time Thailand was “normal” was in the 1990s, he said, when “there were certain parameters and consensus among Thai elites about how things work and who calls the shots. This consensus has broken down”.
Part of the reason has to do with the widening wealth gap between Bangkok and the rural poor, a gap which Thaksin exploited.
Western-style democracy does not work in Thailand, PAD argues. Therefore, the country must revert to a semi-appointed parliament, with the traditional elites in charge. The monarchy must be protected from the likes of closet republicans like Thaksin, it adds.
Prime Minister Vejjajiva has begun a review of the Constitution to address controversial clauses that render political parties vulnerable and governments fragile. But the process may take months to complete, leaving him open to accusations that he is stalling for time.
Meanwhile, the PAD’s rivals, the red-shirted United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), is planning a mass rally in the capital next month. The UDD wants the old elites to respect the outcome of elections.
What inflames the UDD’s supporters is a sense of injustice. In their eyes, it is unjust that elected pro-Thaksin governments have been thrown out by the army or by “judicial coups”. Every dismissal of their grievances by the establishment, every example of favourable treatment of the yellow-shirts or the blue-shirted vigilantes deployed against them in Pattaya last month, fuels their resentment.
The assassination attempt that same month on PAD leader Sondhi Limthongkul adds a new twist and may lead to unexpected political realignments. There is speculation that elements of the military were behind the attempt.
Interestingly, Mr Sondhi has told foreign journalists that the UDD and PAD do have one thing in common – the desire for change. In the event of an attempted military takeover – which cannot be ruled out, given Thailand’s history – the two movements could find more common ground.
Indeed the UDD is about more than just Thaksin; he is just a rallying point for broader grievances. A leading intellectual, Mr Prawase Wasi, argues that the fights over Thaksin and the supposed plots to destroy the monarchy are “distorting the complexity of justice, simplifying it to a single-dimension issue”.
“In a pluralistic society...there are people who worship the monarchy and those who don’t – it is natural. The key is how to channel the differences towards creative collaboration and output. Justice is the only common ground,” he says.
In Thailand’s polarised environment, however, expressing opinions freely is like negotiating a minefield. Tellingly, as Prof Thitinan sat on the same Foreign Correspondents’ panel with Prof Nelson, friends sent him text messages advising him to be careful.
“We live in a tightening box of space for intellectual honesty,” he says, and it “is shrinking”, warning that it “is dangerous...that we have this tightening because Thai society is pent-up”.
“What you don’t know – the undercurrent – is more dangerous and more combustible,” he points out. – The Straits Times
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