Public protests will not help

via Khmer NZ

Published: 10/08/2010

It is easy to understand why Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is leaning over backwards so far to try to stress agreement with the noisy protesters making an uproar around the issue of the Preah Vihear temple. On the positive side, the premier succeeded in tamping down the threat of yet another street protest and security confrontation by the self-described Thai Patriots Network. He gained some goodwill by going to last Saturday's indoor rally, and he made a couple of points about the temple issue in a televised discussion on Sunday morning. But Mr Abhisit is on the edge of lowering himself to the level of the so-called patriots. He should now cease pandering to this arm of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD).

The issue of the Preah Vihear temple and the disputed border - especially the disputed border - needs careful government attention. The attempt by the PAD and some of its members to take the issue to the streets is wrong-headed and ultimately harmful. Bangkokians who answered a Suan Dusit Poll on the issue realise that. A majority of respondents disagreed with the public campaign, worried about the national image overseas, and feared that the old temple dispute would divert the government's attention from real national problems. An important minority of more than 35% want a government crackdown against the protesters.

This largely silent majority of Thais is right. The issue of the temple ownership was settled in 1962. The disputed border, in particular the issue of 4.5 square kilometres of land, will never be settled by public protest. Calm and prepared diplomatic action will place the Thai land fully in the hands of Thailand. The PAD succeeded in placing one of its strong supporters in the post of the nation's chief diplomat. They should let Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya attend to this matter.

Ironically, the simmering issue of Preah Vihear temple also proves that it is past time to end the state of emergency in Bangkok and all provinces. The PAD and Thai Patriot leaders are wrong about the temple and the need for public protest. But they deserve the right to exercise free speech, which is guaranteed by the constitution but removed by the emergency law. The state of emergency forbidding any political gathering by more than five people, makes it impossible. The PAD has already broken the law once, by holding a demonstration in front of the offices of the UN cultural organisation. They did so without so much as a threat of prosecution or intervention by security forces.

By failing to enforce a provision which had earlier resulted in the detention of hundreds of other Thais, the government looked weak, divisive and hypocritical. The emergency law, contrary to the fatuous claim of the PAD, provides no exceptions for those who are more patriotic, or whose issues are more important than anyone else's. Instead of negotiating and seeming to ask for favours from the PAD, the premier can take the easiest way out of all to prevent illegal demonstrations and possibly bloody street battles with security forces: Make protests legal again by lifting the state of emergency.

Before he felt forced into negotiating with the PAD protesters, Mr Abhisit had announced a plan to handle the disagreement with Cambodia centring on the border dispute. He correctly stated that border demarcation is directly tied to the specific problem over management of temple grounds and land claimed by both countries. The prime minister should disengage from the PAD, proceed with his one-year road map about the temple region, and get back to serious national issues like the economy and the lack of freedoms due to the state of emergency.