Thailand's Incomprehensible Tangle

It is almost impossible to understand the folly into which Thailand, Buddhist kingdom of tolerance and smiles, has descended.

The country's two main airports have been closed for the past 5 days affecting over 100,000 international travellers and inflicting incalculable damage on this nation's once effervescent economy.



The People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) flaunts the law and taunts the government with impunity. It's control of vital infrastructure smacks more of insurrection than mere 'protest'.

The Nation newspaper reported today that PAD guards had arrested a plainclothes policewomen who narrowly escaped being lynched by angry demonstrators at Don Muang airport. It is a strange reversal of roles when the security apparatus of a protest movement starts arresting police officers.

Earlier in the day police retreated when confronted by PAD security guards at checkpoints on the road to Suvarnabhumi international airport.

Both these events underline the impunity with which the PAD can now act; publicly undermining the credibility and authority of the police and government while adding to a growing sense that the country has slipped beyond the effective control of the state.

Since its emergence in 2006, the PAD has moved a long way beyond its original mission to remove former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra (ousted in a military coup in September 2006) and his cronies towards something more akin to a conservative revolution.

The PAD's inappropriately named New Politics proposal outlines a system where only 30% of government would be directly elected by the people. This would shift Thailand away from its existing 'one man one vote' system throwing the nation's democratic evolution into reverse.

It is hard to comprehend how the PAD, a movement that currently mobilises perhaps 30-40,000 supporters in Bangkok, has managed to take Thailand's economy and political system hostage.

The protesters occupying Suvarnabhumi airport number 3-4,000 people (at the lowest points), composed mainly of ordinary middle class folk, many of whom are women. Security is provided by a thin crust of highly motivated PAD guards who are referred to as 'Sivichai fighters' ('Nak Rop Sivichai' in Thai).



The PAD has a seemingly inexhaustible supply of funds and appears to benefit from some very highly placed support, creating a sort of force field of judicial immunity. The movement's legitimacy was given a major boost when Queen Sirikit attended the funeral of a PAD protester killed in the riots outside Parliament on October 7th.

Holed up in the northern capital of Chiang Mai, an hour's flight from Bangkok, the government of Somchai Wongsawat, though defiant, appears weak and indecisive. Somchai's reluctance to return to Bangkok, the epicenter of political life, reinforces the image of a regime that is literally losing its grip on the levers of power.

Similarly, the government's inability or unwillingness to take action against PAD activists occupying strategic locations suggests either that it is simply too weak to act or that it believes there is some strategic political advantage to be gained from letting the PAD take control of such key facilities.

A measure of the government's insecurity was that it did not dare launch a police action without declaring a State of Emergency at the airports and gaining the explicit support of the courts. In any normal situation an incumbent government would be well within its rights to expel protesters from a strategic facility such as an international airport.

The role of the nation's armed forces also remains unclear. Despite calls by the PAD leadership, the army has refused to step into the fray. Its commanders are aware that military intervention would provide a temporary halt to hostilities but would not address the fundamental divisions fuelling the current crisis.

The government at one point announced that the navy and air force would be used to help disperse protesters at the two airports but they have so far taken no action.

The military is possibly waiting for a more significant deterioration of the situation that would enable its commanders to argue that the country is completely ungovernable, giving the military an excuse to assume a more permanent expanded role in Thai politics.

Meanwhile Thailand is in a state of suspended animation. The streets, though abuzz with coup rumours, bear testimony to a strange dislocation between the sporadic violence and growing intensity of Thailand's crisis and the banality of everyday life which continues virtually uninterrupted.

But if Thailand's streets remain clogged with traffic and its local markets continue to bustle, the nation's balance of international credibility is rapidly evaporating. The short and long term outlook for Thailand's economy, already buffeted by a global downturn, is grim. Much of Thailand's appeal as an investment location has resided in the relative reliability of its infrastructure, the convenience of its geographical location as a flight hub and its ability to insulate the economy from the shenanigans of its politicians.

The current situation bears little ideological analysis. Thailand's elites are engaged in a cynical battle of interests, the outcome of which will likely determine the nation's political future, most particularly in the period following the passing of Thailand's much revered monarch who has become the traditional arbiter in times of deep crisis.

Hell bent on advancing their own agenda's Thailand's political leaders seem so blinded by their ambition that they cannot, or prefer not, to see the huge damage they are inflicting on the country. The principal losers, sadly, will be the Thais themselves, whose genius for finding smiles amidst conflict has, till now, seen them through so many dark times.

Future Looks Bleak for Thailand

The situation in Thailand continues to deteriorate with no sign of a solution to this nation's increasingly bitter political impasse.

Anti government protesters of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) have now succeeded in shutting down Suvarnabhumi international airport, cutting the nation's principal transportation link to the rest of the world.

PAD protesters are preventing Ministers and Senators from attending meetings in Parliament and the government's temporary offices at Don Muang Airport to the north of the city are surrounded by yellow-clad supporters of the PAD.

Meanwhile thousands of PAD sympathisers continue to occupy the grounds of Government House. Sporadic clashes between rival political groups are taking place throughout the capital, Bangkok.

Faced by this situation the police, cowed by criticism of their violent response to protests outside parliament on October 7th, which resulted in several deaths and hundreds of injuries, have chosen to stand by and allow the PAD to pursue a strategy aimed at creating a situation where Thailand is ungovernable.

Under the magnifying glass of the media, which delivers images crammed with PAD protesters clad in yellow, it looks as though we are witnessing a popular revolution against an impotent and unpopular regime.

Yet the demographics of Thailand's political conflict actually favour the incumbents.

Few doubt that if the government were to be dissolved and new elections held, the People's Power Party (PPP), or any other anointed representative of ousted Premier Thaksin Shinawatra, would likely be returned to power.

On the surface, the PAD is a movement driven by a profound disillusionment with the state of Thai politics which, as society and the economy have modernised, have remained ossified in a state of 'Third World' corruption.

The PAD's support base is an unlikely alliance of hard-line conservatives, liberal intellectuals and members of the urban middle class. Its leaders' incessant tirades against the corruption of the political elite and its goal of delivering what it calls 'New Politics' (of which more below) resonates profoundly among these groups, who are hungry for an upgrade of the political system.

Among those who support the government there is, paradoxically, a deep felt resentment that the PAD is actually seeking to roll back Thailand's political development. That the PAD represents the forces of old rather than new politics.

Many of those who voted for Thaksin, of whom most live in rural areas particularly in the North and North East, see Thaksin and his PPP as their best chance for flexing their democratic muscle.

Exploiting the rural bias of Thailand's political demographics, Thaksin and the PPP have played the populist card, offering a policy platform tailored to the interests of the rural majority who have faithfully returned their champions to power.

Like the PAD, Thaksin built his support on a platform that promised political renewal. The slogan of his now-banned Thai Rak Thai, the vehicle which he rode to an electoral landslide in 2001, was Kit Mai Tham Mai which means New Thinking, New Methods.

Beneath the surface of these powerful political currents, however, is the reality that Thailand's traditional political establishment faces the challenge of a traumatic succession when the much-loved and revered King Bhumipol Adulydej, 81 and in poor health, passes from the scene.

The King has served as an ultimate incarnation of legitimate authority in Thailand and has, through his judicious intervention in times of crisis, been able to contain most destructive forces within Thai politics.

Aware of the impending vacuum and of the huge stakes at a national level, conflicting poles of power have already begun competing and it is their struggle that is today being played out on the streets of Bangkok by equally disillusioned segments of the population.

The PAD, which relies heavily on royal symbolism (yellow is the colour of the King) is seen as the political expression of the traditional conservative elite. The PAD's New Politics proposal outlines a political system which would do away with the current one man one vote democracy replacing it with a model that would see only 30% of government representative elected through popular suffrage. The remaining 70% would be appointees.

The pro-government movement, whose supporters wear red, is seen as an expression of the populist democratic energy unleashed by Thaksin.

Thaksin Shinawatra's 'success' in political terms was to have opened the pandora's box which is the dislocation between the interests of the rural majority, who were largely passed by during Thailand's boom years, and those of the growing urban middle class who benefitted massively from the nation's 'miracle' economic growth. It is ironic, and represents a cynical triumph of political marketing, that one of the nation's wealthiest tycoons should become a hero for the poor.

As Thailand's political opponents square off, as the nation's economy and government slide into paralysis, there is no obvious solution to the current impasse.

For while each interest group possesses powerful leadership there appears to be no unifying figure, beyond that of the King, that can offer the Thai people a vision of what could lie beyond this crisis.

The reality is that for a nation to be able to move into the future it must first of all have a clear vision of what that future might consist of. Until a leader emerges from the fog of Thailand's political turmoil, Thailand's future looks bleak indeed.

What a Difference US$ 685 Billion Could Have Made

This morning I read in the IHT:

"In 2008 the Pentagon's spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan reached US$ 685 billion."

Normally a piece of information like that would snag in my mind for a few seconds before the next fact shunted it into the oblivion.

But let's stop for a moment and imagine what that US$ 685 billion represents. Let's pause to think about what these wars, which have cost America so dearly, are about.

Let's imagine, too, what might have been if such a fortune had not been poured into war.

US$ 685 billion spent more creatively might have saved countless lives, educated millions, fed millions, contributed to research into curing the diseases that afflict millions, been invested into solving one of the most pressing challenges the planet faces: that of developing sustainable energy technologies that are not dependent on the finite pollutants disrupting our fragile ecosystem.

How did such a huge sum of money come to be spent on wars that we all know are un-winnable, especially when the very definition of victory in these conflicts eludes us? Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, our military tells us, now means not being defeated.

The story of our recent warlike folly, and America's decline, began on a clear September morning in 2001, when a group of Al Quaeda fanatics flew passenger jets into the World Trade Center in New York. Some 4,000 died as a result of that tragic gesture of hatred.

Like an enraged giant, goaded by a vengeful and insecure political elite, America lashed out. The attacks of 9-11 triggered a global War on Terror which has seen the Western world pour billions upon billions (many more billions globally than the US$ 685 billion America has spent in Iraq and Afghanistan) on fighting Terror.

Today the War on Terror is an integral part of our lives. Our leaders tell us that we must keep up the fight against Terror. Almost daily our troops lay down their lives doing battle against Terror.

But what a strange thing the War on Terror is. For Terror is not a State. It has no insignia. It has no borders. It's more like an emotion than an object you can lock your sights on and shoot down. Yet we have poured billions of dollars into the bombs, bullets and lives which are the price, we are told, of defeating Terror.

When coalition bombs resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq we did not call that Terror. We politely called that 'collateral damage'. For how can one fight against Terror if one is the perpetrator of Terror oneself.

The reality, of course, is that the Terror we are being told we are fighting against is our own Terror. It is the West's Terror of the intense and incomprehensible fury of the Islamic world, of an enemy that is so full of hate that its foot soldiers are ready to detonate themselves as living bombs to further their cause.

In February 2003, Colin Powell, a man of honour we believed, stood before the UN Security Council, and an incredulous planet, to tell us that Iraq, contrary to the reports of UN inspectors, did indeed have weapons of mass destruction. Our Presidents and Prime Ministers, grim faced and solemn in their tone, looked us in the eye and told us that Iraq was a threat, that we had to act.

That these declarations, that Powell's earnest expose of Iraq's menace, were pure lies are facts that have already become blurred in our minds. Our governments have pummeled our consciousness with the message that Terror is still out there, that the war must continue, that victory is in sight.

When we sit down with friends over a drink and talk, we all know that none of this makes sense.

How is it that America has spent US$ 685 billion on a war that was justified with a lie - a sum almost as vast as that recently mobilised to bail out America's financial institutions?

How is it that the more we fight against Terror, the more afraid we are that Terror will come and get us; on a plane, in the subway, on holiday in some far off land? The more we fight for our security the less secure we feel.

The real battle is not one which sees us pitted against our fellow men. The war the West must win, I believe, is that which would allow us to vanquish our own fear of our enemies (for enemies there are) allowing us to view our planet, with all its beauty, in a new spirit of creativity and optimism.

After such dark years, it is tempting to see America's new President elect in a messianic light. Just a year and a half ago, the thought of Obama becoming President seemed about as likely as a meteorite striking Earth.

But now that the meteorite has struck, there is a glimmer of hope that America and its 'coalition of the willing' may now invest their energy in more constructive pursuits than the folly of war.

Thaksin: The Man Who Refuses to Go Quietly

Thaksin Shinawatra is the man who refuses to go quietly.

A coup d'etat in September 2006 removed him from power but left his popularity, at least in large swathes of the countryside, largely undented.

By 2007 Thaksin's banned Thai Rak Thai party had mutated into the People's Power Party (PPP) which won elections trumpeted as Thailand's return to democracy. Despite being banned from politics, Thaksin was understood to be the dominant force behind the PPP and was widely perceived to be ruling the country by proxy when the party's nominal leader, Samak Sundaravej, became Prime Minister.

His opponents then turned to the courts. Widely publicised corruption trials resulted in jail sentences for Thakasin and his wife, Khunying Pojamarn. To escape the ignominy of a prison cell Thaksin and his family fled to London.

A coup, conviction and exile should have been enough to marginalise Thaksin for good. Yet he still refuses to yield, retaining unprecedented levels of popularity and casting a shadow over the entire political landscape.

How is it, then, that this former policeman-turned-tycoon-turned-politician managed to achieve such notoriety and influence? To become the man who will perhaps one day be credited with (or blamed for) re-shaping Thai politics and upending the nation's social equilibrium.

A glance back in time reveals that Thaksin's political star was not always so bright.

In 1996 as a Deputy Prime Minister in the government of Banharn Silpa Archa, he famously, and foolishly, promised to solve Bangkok's notorious traffic problems in six months.

His initial involvement with the Palang Dharma Party (PDP) at this time, into which he was inducted by Chamlong Srimuang (now one of the leaders of the PAD and a sworn enemy), also ended in failure and the dissolution of the PDP.

Just three years later, however, Thaksin had miraculously reinvented himself and was already being cast in the role of the nation's saviour in waiting.

Marking his return to the political limelight in July 1998, beaming proudly before a battery of jostling photographers, Thaksin inaugurated the Thai Rak Thai (Thais love Thais) party, the political vehicle he rode to a landslide victory in January 2001.



He did so in the shadow of an unprecedented economic slump. A year earlier, in July 1997, Thailand's central bank had devalued the Thai baht sparking a crisis that snowballed into an Asia-wide economic crash that temporarily de-clawed the region's so-called 'tigers'.

In the aftermath of the crash, which marked the end of a decade of double digit growth, Thaksin rose like a phoenix from the ashes. His telecom business AIS (Advanced Info Services), which had boomed on the back of government concessions and an insatiable local appetite for mobile phones, emerged largely unscathed.

With his fortune still in tact and his reputation burnished, it was not hard for Thaksin to garner, and where necessary purchase, the backing he needed to give new momentum to his political ambitions.

Meanwhile Thailand found itself in a rare period of reflection and self-analysis.

After a decade of breakneck economic growth in the 1990s, the pace of life had visibly slowed. New emphasis was given to self-sufficiency, to Buddhist moderation and to improving the quality of Thailand's democracy.

In September of 1997, after intensive public consultation and a hotly contested referendum (pitting traditional conservatives against reformers), a new constitution was promulgated. It promised improved checks and balances to counter the corruption which had become synonymous with Thai politics. The new constitution stipulated that the Prime Minister must be an elected MP and replaced an appointed senate with elected representatives.

The 1997 constitution was just one symptom of the change which had taken place in Thailand's political culture.

Reflecting society's growing obsession with wealth and materialism, the nation's political icons were now no longer drawn solely from the traditional military and bureaucratic elites.

Thailand's new heroes were the businessmen and women (mostly sino-thai) who had amassed huge and ostentatious wealth during the boom years. In the eyes of many Thais these business 'heroes' had helped Thailand become 'charoen' or modern. Compared with the glitter of businessmen like Thaksin, the traditional military and bureaucratic elite, once proud defenders of the nation against communism, appeared increasingly dull and out of touch.

In this political and economic context, Thaksin naturally embodied the material aspirations of millions of Thais. The implicit message was that he would work the same magic which had proved so succesful in business in the world of politics.

Thaksin's brilliance, if it can be called as much, was his ability to spot a gap in the political market and capitalise on the opportunity he saw. He understood, perhaps more clearly than any other politician, that the Thai public was hungry for a new kind of politics.

Thaksin used his marketing savvy to promote his Thai Rak Thai party under the slogan of 'Kit Mai Tham Mai' (new thinking, new ways of doing things'); a slogan which bears an uncanny resemblance to the 'karn muang mai' (New Politics) chant of his opponents in the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD).

The combination of modern communications and marketing techniques took Thaksin's policy platform further and deeper into the hearts and minds of the electorate than any politician before him. His message, dripping with nationalism and populism, appealed both to the urban middle class and, most importantly, to voters in rural areas, particularly in the North and Northeast of the country.

Though he has been accused of merely amplifying money politics and buying his way into power, the resilience of Thaksin's popularity is evidence that he has gone further than his predecessors in appealing directly to the aspirations of the electorate.

His political campaign and later his government went beyond the usual charade of empty promises by proposing a detailed platform of significant change; including easy credit for debt laden farmers, cheap healthcare, bureaucratic reform and CEO-style governance.

As a leader Thaksin disappointed, demonstrating ultimately that beneath the veneer of slick marketing he was, in fact, little different from the corrupt politicians he had replaced.
Indeed, the scale of his wealth and the power he wielded in office as a result enabled Thaksin to scale new heights of corruption and nepotism.

When this reality became evident, primarily as a result of his evasion of taxes on the sale of AIS to Singapore's Temasek group, his support among the middle class collapsed fueling support for the PAD-led protest movement that culminated his ouster.

Despite widespread disenchantment among the middle class, however, Thaksin has remained popular in rural areas mainly because his marketing efforts and a number of his policy initiatives were directly aimed at the rural majority. Indeed, there is much irony in the fact that a billionaire populist's most fervent advocates should be drawn from among the poorest segments of society.

The inability of Thaksin's opponents to unseat him in the hearts of his supporters partly reflects the PAD's own failings. As it struggles to rid Thailand of what it calls the "Thaksin System", the PAD plays on fears that the monarchy is under threat from Thaksin and his cronies and warns that only a change in the system can limit corruption.

The PAD's answer is new system whereby 70% of representatives would be nominated 'good people' while only 30% of the government would be elected through popular suffrage. Such a proposal naturally has little appeal to the rural majority who would be effectively disenfranchised.

Thus the PAD has been more successful in creating a rural-urban political divide than in unseating Thaksin.

Unless his opponents can tune into the genuine aspirations of the majority, Thaksin, the man who refuses to go quietly, is likely to be with us for many years to come.

The Dream is Sweet Reality

What a sweet, sweet moment.

Barack Obama is to be President of the United States.

He will be the first African American to achieve such high office - scaling a mountain that many must have believed unconquerable.

What a sweet, sweet victory for the descendants of America's slaves; for those so recently segregated, discriminated against and abused.

It is incredible to think that in 1963 Martin Luther King pronounced his 'I have a dream' speech.
And that today his dream, whatever shade of black you consider Obama to be, is a reality.

Millions of Americans have chosen to transcend race, setting an example for other parts of the world where politics and life are too often defined by ethnic discrimination.

Obama's victory is a victory for America; over its fears and its prejudices. It is, without doubt, a cry for change and a recognition of the miserable failure of his predecessor (and for that matter his opponent).

In electing Barack Obama, the United States can restore some dignity to its battered reputation, tarnished by unnecessary war, unbridled greed and unparalleled arrogance in the international arena.

This was also a victory of optimism in the face of the negative, fear driven, politics of the Bush era.

Americans have dared to hope that with a new leader they can repair some of the destruction of these past years.

Meanwhile, the rest of the planet is breathing a sigh of relief. For Obama, unlike Bush, is a man of the world...literally.

With his roots in spanning from Kenya to Kansas and his formative years spent in Indonesia, Obama cannot help but bring a new world view to the office of President. And for this the planet cheers, knowing, or hoping at least, that under Obama America may, once again, balance its might with justice and reason.



The challenges facing the new President are simply colossal. One man alone, even with the momentum of support Obama has generated, cannot quickly change the course of the most powerful nation on earth. Like a vast Titanic unable to swerve, the US will surely have to live through a severe crisis in the months, and perhaps years, ahead.

Obama must now temper the euphoria and explain to his constituents that the road ahead, even with a man of his quality at the wheel, will be difficult and perilous.

But now is not the time to wax serious, nor to douse the joy with realism. Now is the time to party, to celebrate a great and historic moment - a victory for hope. The hope that Obama will be the man he has portrayed himself as and that his successes will be as dramatic as George W. Bush's failures.

Picture Credits:

Top Photo: A building adorned with a vote Obama sign in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. By Jesper Haynes

Second Photo: Obama Supporters Celebrate in NYC. By Jesper Haynes