A RETROSPECTIVE OF THE RECENT POLITICAL CRISIS IN THAILAND

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 23 Dec 2008

Chaiwat Satha-Anand – Dec 1, 2008

This insightful and informative analysis was written before the Supreme Court ousted the (Red) PM. The newly appointed PM is Yellow. (TMS Editor)

Let me explain the problem we face in Thailand and let me do this in this order: Conflict, Nonviolence, Prognosis, and Solutions.

Three Conflicts:

1) Conflict of Goals: one side (Red shirt-Thaksin) wants a strong government that can deliver policy promises; the other side (Yellow shirt – Peoples Alliance for Democracy PAD) wants a weak government, because they think it is corrupted, e.g. Thaksin and his nominees, and therefore what is needed are strong monitoring measures – hence the conflict between the Constitution of 1997 (coming out of fighting against a coup for strong government) and the 2007 Constitution (coming out of the Sept.19, 2006 coup for weak government).

2) Conflict of Means: one side (Red) believes that political conflicts should be decided through elections. This is democratic and it is their legitimation basis. The other side (Yellow) believes that the elections themselves are corrupted with money and with local influence, among other factors, and that democracy does not mean elections only. The Yellow faction does not accept elections as a solution to political crises; hence proposal for dissolution of the House and a new election does not hold water with them.

3) Conflict of Imagination: in the process of confrontation, though claimed to be nonviolent, hatred and demonization have been used, weapons have been used, killings occurred. This has turned ugly because each side, especially the Yellow, accuses those who are not with them as not being Thai, perhaps traitors. The Yellow is pushing for the use of the power of the King, or those close to the monarchy, to intervene in some forms, to put an end to the parliament, come up with a government headed by a "neutral" person, appointed by the King, an impossibility under the present constitution which says that the PM will have to be a member of the House of Representatives.

So they must find a way to amend the Constitution, but they don’t want to do this by the House, controlled by the party that is said to be of the Thaksin’s nominee. The track they seem to push for is the intervention by the military. But the military came out and insisted that they won’t stage a coup and wanted this to end peacefully, perhaps by calling dissolution of the House. This option the Red dislikes because they feel that without the House of Representatives with their side in the majority, the legislative power will rest in the hands of the Senate, a little more than were appointed, and therefore could opt to amend the constitution for an appointed PM.

These conflicts co-exist and result in a deeply divided Thai society, something quite unprecedented: from within families to workplaces, public areas, and the media. I got a note from a former student, my first assistant, who liked me all this year, saying she was disappointed with what I said in public, when I refused to be partial and said something along the lines that to practice civil disobedience one has to accept the penalty. She said everyone is mad at me: my colleagues, their wives and others.

When I went to my usual mosque, sometimes no one wanted to talk to me because the Yellow faction criticized what I said. I said that no one is either totally evil or totally good and therefore the use of violence and killings cannot be justified. PAD (Yellow) said that in the garden of good and evil one has to take sides. And the (Red) Thaksin side has been painted with lots of truth, but to be made totally evil. The Red, on the other hand, painted the Yellow as an obstacle to democracy that will turn back the clock of the country.

Nonviolence  

Perhaps the most difficult thing for me is that I do not know what to feel about all this since all sides claim to use nonviolence, including the police and the military, especially at the moment. The Yellow announced from the beginning that their campaign was through nonviolence and civil disobedience. Using immense power, based on popular support, they took over the government house and two airports, effectively making the country almost ungovernable; again, through the immense power of nonviolence.

When I called the PAD’s actions nonviolent, a lot of people were angry at the PAD and me because they don’t see that occupying airports and the government house could be anything but violent. I said that there is a difference between sending tens of thousands of people, largely barehanded, to take over these places, and sending in an armed group to do the same. But this nonviolent action is not totally pure.

The group had armed guards and sometimes they attacked the other side with clubs or whatever they could find. They even accepted donations of golf clubs and were sent hundreds of them! But then there are almost no pure forms of nonviolent actions, without any weapon whatsoever, anywhere. Given the three conflicts taking place, I would like to add two more components that will help us see the prognosis: class and rural-urban backgrounds. The Red represents a rural-lower class composed of peasants and others who have benefited from the populist policies of the governments. The Yellow represents an urban-middle class who dislikes corruption by the government and don’t need the populist policies but fairer deal in business and economics.

Prognosis:  

Judging from what has happened, violence has been used by fringe groups associated with both sides and sometimes by the police, while claiming to be nonviolent. It is spreading throughout the country because if one looks at election results, the makeup is like this: 14-16 million for the government (Thaksin, Red side), 10-12 million for the opposition (PAD, Yellow side). In terms of space, the Red is popular in the North (Thaksin’s area) and Northeast (poor and in need of development), while the Yellow is popular in Bangkok and the South (high political awareness and the Democrat’s stronghold).

What we are looking at is also local powers on the ground supporting politicians with their bases. On Friday, a MP (Red) said that if there was a coup, each MP would bring 10,000 people from their constituencies to block roads, use cars to block the tanks, fight against the coup nonviolently!

The confusing thing is that the Yellow, who claims to use nonviolence, and have used powerful nonviolent actions to make the government ungovernable, is waiting for power outside the democratic process, including a military coup and the King’s power, to settle the conflict, while the Red, which is with the elected government, will be fighting against the coup with nonviolent actions. They are in support of Thaksin and his nominees, whose policies have sunk Thailand deep into the global capitalist system.

What these conditions imply is that violence could spread, civil war not being out of the question. I spoke recently on TV that normally a conflict is between two groups of people and the state machine intervenes; or between two sides of the military and the people intervene; but this time people are divided and the state apparatus is also divided. Therefore the prognosis is dangerous.

Solutions

There are two levels: political and tactical. Political solutions are difficult, we could propose but they do not reach the PAD since they listen only to their media and leaders. Their position is the PM has to resign and the PM does not want to resign, pending the constitutional court decision this week [of Dec 1/08]. In the past weeks I have been discussing these with politicians but do not feel very hopeful.

Tactical, we are thinking of how the siege could be lifted nonviolently. I have spoken out for the nonviolent arrest, my colleagues suggested that when the police come, the protesters who are now holding the airports should simply sit down and allow themselves to be arrested.

Right now, I just spoke with a coordinator for this and suggested that for the arrest, to save peoples lives, it needs to be done in a very public way, including cultural forces (monks, imams, priests, what not), media (foreign and local), lawyers, international witnesses (EU, US embassies, Human Rights Watch, ICJ, etc.). Make this a public event with high level of participation under the global gaze to minimize the violence. By the way, we are talking about tens of thousands of people at the airports and number of witnesses and police will have to be high as well.

About the Buddhist factor, I spoke about this on Saturday and yesterday people who rallied at public parks failed to persuade any monk to come out and join them. I just told my colleagues to try again to declare that one will not use violence as a way of merit making for the King’s birthday. It would be a wonderful gift to the Monarch we all claim to love.  

We are trying hard to prevent a calamity from taking place. We have tried, but God knows what lies ahead.

Peace be with you.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 23 Dec 2008.

Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: A RETROSPECTIVE OF THE RECENT POLITICAL CRISIS IN THAILAND, is included. Thank you.

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