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Pathway :: Home
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Thailand's red shirts are not who you think they are |
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Written by Trish Elliott
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Sunday, 30 May 2010 |
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Because I have journalistic and research connections to Thailand, a number of friends have asked me about the red shirt protests that rocked Bangkok for several months and are now spreading underground around the country. Many are surprised when I mention some of the extreme right wing
language used by the protest movement’s political leaders.
Most Canadians have come to understand the crisis by following western media coverage. For the most part, this coverage has presented a political crisis stripped of its politics. Instead, we’ve been given a broad-brush, easy-to-explain narrative of ‘rich versus poor.’ As a result, many of my progressive friends assume the recent protests fit under the same tent as Tiananmen Square, Burma’s democratic resistance, or Thailand’s pro-democracy movement of the early 1990s. The reality is far different.
 A closer comparison would be the U.S. Tea Party movement (albeit with the notable difference that Obama's government doesn't fire back with live ammunition).
At the height of the protest, cheers greeted fugitive ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra as he told the protestors via video that current prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is a foreigner surrounded by ‘people in purple’ (gays).
To understand the undercurrent, replace ‘Washington elite’ with ‘Bangkok elite.’ In the quest to regain power, Thaksin’s political supporters have stirred a calculated culture war that has some unsettling, under-reported elements.
(photo: Thaksin Shinawatra)
Thailand’s free trade cowboy
Thaksin himself has been loosely portrayed in the west as a billionaire with a heart of gold. Yet his political record contains some deep contradictions to the established story.
Thaksin entered office in 2001 with an agenda of privatization, deregulation and free trade, much of it carried out by cabinet and executive order rather than full parliamentary debate.
Despite his reputation as a champion of the poor, while in office his approach was lucrative for private corporations – including his own family telecommunications business – but hard on the working poor. Wage levels that had dropped eight per cent during the 1997 economic crash never recovered under his watch.
Moreover his government’s hastily concluded free trade pact with China rocked farm incomes. In response, he pushed banks to increase lending, leading to rising rural debt, which he dealt with by declaring a highly popular four-year debt moratorium.
One of the free trade casualties was a much-vaunted opium crop substitution program, as small-scale farmers in the north were suddenly forced to compete against a flood of onions, garlic and other speciality crops grown in China on a mass agribusiness scale for export.
Amid growing poverty, a rising drug trade merely provided fodder for Thaksin’s tough-talking war on drugs.
While his policies widened Thailand’s income gap, he proved adept at managing and winning over potential dissenters.
Spinning hard times into votes
Although some economists argue ‘Thaksinomics’ stabilized Thailand’s economy, the country’s Human Development Index world ranking – a measure of social equality –dropped from 66 in 2002 to 73 in 2005.
The $64,000 question: how on earth does this scenario translate into a rural and urban poor support base?
In media reports, much has been made of Thaksin’s ‘30-baht health care scheme’ to explain his popular appeal. Citizens who joined the scheme were issued a card entitling them to a consultation in a public hospital or clinic for the price of 30 baht (about $1 CD).
But critics note his government didn’t increase funding to the health care system, leaving hospital administrators to find a way to pay for the program. The response was a new industry, medical tourism.
On my most recent trip to Thailand, I was astounded by the number of Americans I met who were there not for the beaches, but to receive the health care they couldn’t afford at home. Not surprisingly, queue-jumping by wealthy patients and brain drain from the public system have become issues.
Yet however flawed in execution, the idea of cheap health care stands as simple short hand for Thaksin’s love of the poor. It has become the symbol, an easy explanation.
Thaksin’s rural popularity has other roots, though.
It works for Sarah Palin, too
(Photo below by T. Elliott: Media reformer Supinya Klangnarong, sued by Thaksin, receiving a pro-democracy award.)
In the mode of George W. Bush or Sarah Palin, Thaksin is a master of folksy tough-talking charm and calculated blame throwing. The scapegoats for rural distress include the usual suspects: ethnic minorities, migrant workers, liberal-left media, city folk, gays, the judiciary, human rights organizations and academics.
In office he launched a war on drugs that resulted in 2,275 deaths, according to Human Rights Watch. He banned migrant workers from driving motorcycles or using cell phones. He launched a war on terror that ramped up the use of state force against Muslim citizens, and hampered investigators from examining mass graves in the south. .JPG)
Amid public criticism, Thaksin used his influence with media owners to muzzle the press and, when that failed, launched libel suits against journalists, including Supinya Klangnarong, secretary general of the Campaign for Popular Media Reform.
When human rights organizations and social activists complained, he dismissed them as citified academics and outside meddlers.
The approach played well with an already disgruntled rural base that knew full well it had been left behind in a rush for wealth.
With a deft hand, Thaksin undermined the rural economy while simultaneously fanning the flames of resulting rural discontent into two successive ballot box victories.
Enemies of the people include the Thai mainstream media and an over-educated prime minister. Just as U.S. President Barack Obama’s Harvard degree is often invoked for its whiff of elitism, the phrase ‘Oxford-educated’ sticks to Abhisit like burr.
Ironically, Thaksin holds a Ph.D. from Sam Houston University in Texas, trumping Abhisit’s master’s degree. But Thaksin’s education doesn’t get the same play because it doesn’t fit the narrative of a salt of the earth character schooled only by hard knocks.
Grassroots power usurped
(Thaksin's rival, Sondhi)
In the end, Thaksin’s personal business dealings caught up with him, leading to charges of tax evasion and personally profiting from the sale of national assets to international corporations. As happens all too often in Thailand, street protests against his government led to the military stepping in to ‘restore order.’
Just like recent events, the protests leading to the elections were not exactly grassroots uprisings. Leaders of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (later called the ‘yellow shirts’) included rival telecommunications mogul Sondhi Limthongkul.
Sondhi himself was no stranger to charges of corruption, including complaints that his inter-company dealings amounted to tax evasion. Ironically, his major business dealings included the sale of a cell phone handset company to Thaksin.
Although the PAD included many progressive anti-Thaksin elements, including labour union leaders, Sondhi’s fame and media access vaulted him to the forefront. From the podium he added some flag-waving pro-monarchy rhetoric to the mix, and floated the idea to ‘balance’ rural ballot box power with designated seats for professional groups.
After a period of military rule, elections were held through which the current PAD-leaning prime minister was able to form a coalition, relegating pro-Thaksin supporters to the opposition benches. Although all the current MPs, including Prime Minister Abhisit, are elected, the thorny issue is the backroom nature of the coalition’s formation. The coalition included prominent Thaksin defectors and bore the fingerprints of the country’s top generals.
Meanwhile, legal proceedings against Thaksin slowly made their way through the court. The case examined his approval of national bank loans to Burma for purchasing services from his family’s telecommunications firm, Shin Corp, as well as a series of changes to tax laws that favoured his firms at the expense of state corporations.
Enter Rambo
On Feb. 26, the courts ordered the seizure of 46 billion baht from various Thaksin bank accounts. As well, the Revenue Department moved to recover 12 billion baht in unpaid capital gains taxes and fines from his son and daughter.
Although Thaksin denies a link between the court ruling and the protests, the red shirt ‘Million Man March’ was announced just days after the trial ended, with a clear warning from senior UDD spokesperson Jaran Ditthapichai: “If the government suppresses us, then they will have declared civil war.”
“While many of the general public supporting both factions believe they are fighting for justice, the real behind-the-scenes skirmishes are about the Bt76 billion (in seized assets) still under the government's control,” states a commentary in The Nation, a national Thai daily.
For many of Thailand’s disaffected rural population, though, it may well have seemed the only movement paying serious heed to their sense that the country was being run by Bangkok for Bangkok, with little regard for the rest of the country.
Five months into the protest, as a dwindling protest camp hunkered down for a showdown, rebel UDD general Khattiya Sawasdipol told Globe and Mail reporter Mark MacKinnon that Thailand’s top generals were gay, and therefore unfit for duty.
“They play golf. I am a warrior,” he told MacKinnon. “I am Rambo.”
When Kattiya was mortally wounded by a sniper, it clear how volatile and dangerous the standoff had become for participating citizens and local residents in the protest zones.
(Photo by Nate Robert: Red shirt army)
Red shirts and yellow shirts don’t translate into white hats and black hats
Meanwhile, current PM Abhisit faces his own problems. It seems his hand does not extend to all corners of Thailand’s governing institutions.
In the middle of the red shirt crisis, the Election Commission recommended his Democrat Party be dissolved, following complaints that the party received more than 258 million baht in illegally undeclared donations from TPI Polene for use in the 2005 general election. The party was also accused of misusing the Politics Development Fund, worth 29 million baht.
Abhisit had already offered to dissolve his government at the height of the red shirt crisis. He provided an election roadmap that was initially accepted by the UDD’s leadership as a victory that would return their parliamentary supporters to power.
But the deal foundered in discussion with the red shirt’s more hard line elements, who argued over post-protest bail conditions and which office Abhisit’s deputy prime minister should turn himself in to for answering charges of loss of life – the department of special investigations, or the police.
None of this of course justifies using deadly force against civilian protestors.
The ups and downs of Thai political parties are nothing new. In fact, Thaksin’s first-term government was the only one in modern history to complete a full mandate and leave office by normal democratic means. Abhisit will not likely join him in that honour.
Just like the red shirt camp, Abhisit’s rhetoric is growing more hard-line by the minute. Charges of terrorism have been laid against the red shirt leaders and Thaksin. Political desperation is fuelling both sides, likely with unfortunate results.
Out of such manoeuvres, it becomes difficult to assign white hats and black hats, as tempting as it may be to do so for the sake of simplicity.
Yet there are genuine grievances at stake in a country where the income gap has been steadily widening for years.
Culture wars: What Canadians can learn from Thailand
 In the 1990s, Thai students, academics, journalists and civil society activists effectively linked arms with low-income citizens to gain democratic reforms. Workers, farmers, professors, writers and artists together helped forge a 1997 ‘People’s Constitution’ that included key democratic reforms, such as freedom of expression and public access to the airwaves.
Successive governments successfully dragged out reforms to a state of frustration and stagnation.
Now, wedge politics have carved rural issues away from wider civil society, where once there had been solidarity.
It’s unfortunate. The rural and urban poor have legitimate grievances that deserve the support of all Thais. For more than a decade, they have borne the brunt of an economy that has enriched the business class while depressing wages and farm product prices.
In this context, simplistic accounts of recent protests deny us historical lessons we can learn from.
We can learn, for example, that widening income gaps breed unrest. And that unscrupulous politicians manipulate unrest to their own ends.
We can learn that culture wars drive wedges between citizens that take years to heal, and that overheated rhetoric leads to violence.
Moderate voices retreat, replaced by hardliners who see negotiation as weakness. Geographic divides open up, isolating farmers from city dwellers, even when their interests are shared.
As Canadian politicians contemplate short-term political gains to be made launching their own culture wars, these are important lessons.
In contrast, we gain little from simple narratives that tell a good story but obscure the details.
Patricia Elliott is a former news reporter for the Bangkok Post and the author of numerous articles dealing with Southeast Asian politics and popular movements.
Related:
For a more detailed critique of media coverage read Thailand Reporting Lacks Important Context by Patricia Elliott on J-Source.ca: Canadian journalism facts, opinions, tools, advice, connections.
Grassroots movement or fascist front? Get both sides: Debating the Crisis in Thailand on Democracy Now:
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Thailand crisis
Written by dunchoke on 2010-05-30 18:00:12
Thanks, Trish
This helps me a lot to understand how complex it really is. | Thailand
Written by Nora on 2010-06-01 10:35:38
overwhelmed by the peoples' struggle... appreciate the diversity of sources used to tell this story |
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Last Updated ( Monday, 31 May 2010 )
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