What next in Thailand?

via CAAI News Media

By Frank G. Anderson

Published: March 16, 2010

Nakhonratchasima, Thailand — Monday night as my Thai wife and I watched Thailand’s former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s second call-in in two days to his Red Shirt loyalists, gathered by the tens of thousands in Bangkok to overthrow the government, we had to laugh. There were strong rumors that Thaksin was broadcasting from somewhere in Cambodia and not from Europe as he maintained.

As Thaksin spoke, behind him was a very Spartan room, nothing reminiscent of someone who was once the world’s 14th richest person. Thaksin was also wearing a winter vest. This he said was because there were rumors he was not in Europe; he had the vest on to prove that he was.

Besides the dubious nature of the claim – Europe has been cold to Thaksin lately and it’s not just the weather – Thaksin’s face seemed puffy. He also looked upset and frustrated. Why not? Having been deposed as prime minister back in 2006, to date he has not been able to engineer a counterrevolution that would restore his former glory. The reasons are more far-reaching than perhaps even he realizes or will admit to.

At the height of his power, Thaksin was very close to actually taking over administration of the country’s ever-present armed forces, the last vestige on his quick rise to national idolatry. But at the time rumblings were becoming louder and louder that his next step was the country’s most revered institution, the monarchy.

Thaksin had demonstrated through implication that he was indeed capable of either reforming or curtailing the influence of Thailand’s heart and soul. This capability, together with his popularity – which is still troublesome to traditionalists – was what did him in.

Elitists and others knew they could not afford to sit back and allow Thaksin sway over all else while he also bilked the country’s coffers – and worse, threatened their power. So they did the time-honored thing and ganged up on him.

Step one was to get him out of the chair. That accomplished, people in different quarters played a waiting game to see if perhaps Thaksin might reform himself and once again be someone they could live with. This did not happen.

Giving in to the inevitable, royalists, elitists, traditionalists and the military, together and separately, all worked out a game plan to institutionalize anti-Thaksin fervor so that the people themselves, at least a comfortable majority of them, would sympathize with the state rather than with Thaksin. This technique seems to have taken hold and to be working against Thaksin.

Many of his assets in Thailand – hard cash and properties – have been frozen and he is now a criminal fugitive. Groups that were mediocre in the past in their opposition to him have become part of a powerful web of deterrence that simultaneously guards the monarchy and stopgaps any attempts by Thaksin to somehow wheedle his way back into the fold – and into power.

In short, in Thailand push has come to shove. The proverbial unstoppable object has met the immovable one.

Thaksin has, it seems, been stopped. Any significant letup by his foes in Thailand would surely lead to a recurrence of increased support for him – meaning less for them – so efforts to keep Thaksin off balance and to rip his financial feet out from under him are ongoing, non-stop. Powerful people overseeing the country’s finances are paying very close attention to Thaksin’s financial resources and, where possible, are clipping the hedges very close.

With all this going on quietly behind the scenes, one might ask what is the potential for violence as thousands of Thaksin supporters gather in the streets?

Over the last few days the country’s government, at the very top, has offered well-intended assurances to the public that the state will not use violence against the protesters, but will use strong measures to ensure national security, public safety and the non-interruption of government. M-79 attacks notwithstanding – six grenades were thrown into an army compound on Tuesday, injuring two soldiers – this assurance will only fail if the so-called Third Hand or Red Shirt supporters instigate serious violence themselves.

This they have done in the past. The Thai public still recalls vivid images of an LPG truck brought into a Bangkok neighborhood by Thaksin loyalists, who threatened to explode it with burning tires. So the government and public are just an arm’s length away from picking up batons and bullets and chiming in against Thaksin’s gathered tens of thousands should they suddenly break out with their own violence. The potential is there – the question is whether there is a catalyst.

Is Thaksin enough of a catalyst? Is an unexpected violent act by the state going to turn the tide from peaceful demonstration to mayhem?

Most informed observers of Thai unrest are just watching and waiting. They don’t know. A few are confident that nothing serious will happen and that after this week the Red Shirts will disband. Even fewer expect violence, but just how far Thaksin and his loyal supporters will go in pressuring the government is unknown.

Does he want power so badly that he is willing to shed the blood of his power base in a likely failure, or will his ranks suddenly burst out of their confines and begin torching Bangkok? There is no gauging the accuracy of anyone’s predictions on how things will turn out.

As we wait for Thaksin’s next call-in and monitor the current situation, we also need to take a look at how Thailand has changed internally from what was once a country with tenacious democratic roots to one where those roots have been trimmed by state fascism.

--

(Frank G. Anderson is the Thailand representative of American Citizens Abroad. He was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer to Thailand from 1965-67, working in community development. A freelance writer and founder of northeast Thailand's first local English language newspaper, the Korat Post – www.thekoratpost.com – he has spent over eight years in Thailand "embedded" with the local media. He has an MBA in information management and an associate degree in construction technology. ©Copyright Frank G. Anderson.)