Thailand's Hollow Elections

By Yvan Cohen

As Thais prepare to go to the polls, political observers are fretting over what the outcome may be and, perhaps more importantly, what the result will mean for the future of this nation.

Making sense of the complex, ever shifting and sometimes downright bizarre forces of Thai politics is an unenviable task.

In all probability, Thailand’s next Prime Minister will be Yingluck Shinawatra, the youngest sister of Thaksin Shinawatra, the populist telecoms tycoon who won two consecutive mandates but was ousted by a military coup in 2006 and subsequently found guilty of corruption.

Just 44 years old, with youthful energy, a telegenic smile and a CV that includes precisely no political experience, Yingluck’s most convincing political argument is that she will serve as the dutiful ‘clone’ of her elder brother.

Yingluck’s nemesis is incumbent Prime Minister Aphisit Vejajiva, 46, who leads the Democrat party. Smooth-faced, smooth-talking and Oxford-educated Aphisit also has a telegenic smile but unlike Yingluck he is a career politician who, on paper at least, should make mincemeat of such a seemingly lightweight opponent.

At times the campaign has veered close to farce. One candidate, Chuwit Kamolvisit, had himself photographed clutching a baby while declaring that politics is like diapers: the more changes the better! Chuwit, a kind of super pimp-turned-politician who built his fortune running massage parlours, created his own party called Love Thailand. His political aspirations have undoubtedly been funded by a lot of ‘loving’.

Neither in their speeches nor on the thousands of party placards that line streets throughout the country has any politician spoken of his or her vision for the nation.

There have been promises of tax cuts, of higher economic growth, of new roads and even a high-speed train. And there has been much finger pointing as the Democrats in particular heap blame on Pheua Thai, Thaksin and the Red Shirt movement he spawned for the violence that saw Bangkok and other parts of the country descend into deadly anarchy in April and May last year.

Somewhat incredibly, and with tears in their eyes, Democrat leaders claimed that government troops didn’t kill any of the 91 people who perished in the fighting last year. Arguments that will do little to foster the reconciliation the Democrat party says the country so desperately needs.

With so much recent bloodshed and such deep polarization within the country, the stakes at this election seem particularly high. The future form of Thailand’s democratic landscape may depend on the actions and respective visions of the politicians standing for office.

Yet not a single politician has explained how they hope to restore the institutions – an independent judiciary, a free press and a neutral bureaucracy - that should serve as the pillars of Thailand’s democracy but which have been all but demolished in the past decade.

The demolition work began in earnest in 2001 when Thaksin Shinawatra became Prime Minister after being cleared of a charge he had illegally concealed assets. That ruling, despite convincing evidence of Thaksin’s guilt, was seen by many as a political decision, reflecting establishment support for Thaksin’s unprecedented popular mandate.

It was a first and crucial blow to the credibility of Thailand’s judiciary.

In the ensuing years, the judiciary has been used repeatedly, more or less blatantly, as a political tool, with the only significant difference being that since 2006 when the establishment turned against Thaksin, none of the judiciary’s rulings have been in his favour.

In May 2007, Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party was found guilty by a Constitutional Tribunal of electoral fraud and disbanded. The Democrat party, by contrast, was cleared of all charges. A total of 110 Thai Rak Thai politicians were banned from politics for 5 years.

In December of that year, the People’s Power Party (PPP), which was sponsored by Thaksin, won a convincing victory at the polls. Samak Sundaravej became Prime Minister but was considered a nominee for his political master, Thaksin.

Less than a year after coming to power, however, in September 2008, the judiciary struck again; bringing charges against Samak that he was in a conflict of interest because he received money for appearing in a televised cooking show. Samak was found guilty and forced to resign.

Political bias within the judiciary became even more evident in the wake of the October riots by yellow shirt supporters of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) and their subsequent occupation and closure of both Thailand’s main airports in December 2008.

Despite the violence and flagrant violation of multiple laws, none of the PAD’s leaders have been brought to justice or imprisoned. Indeed, one of their supporters who got up to address the crowds at the airport, Kasit Piromya, went on to become Foreign Minister in Aphisit’s government.

By contrast, in the wake of the Red Shirt demonstrations and their violent suppression hundreds of Red Shirt sympathisers and their leaders have been imprisoned - a policy that has poured oil on the fire of Red Shirt claims of ‘double standards’.

Disregard for basic democratic institutions seems almost to have become an item of faith across the entire political spectrum in Thailand.

During his time in office, Thaksin famously used his popular mandate to establish what has been described as an illiberal democracy. The press was muzzled, opposition was quietly suppressed and the independence of key institutions was undermined.

Thaksin’s mandate though blessed by the support of a democratic majority became an opportunity to dismantle many of the safeguards put in place by a reformist constitution promulgated in 1997.

It is ironic that, ostensibly in defense of democracy, the erosion of Thailand’s democratic institutions was accelerated by the military with the drafting of a new, more conservative, constitution a year after the coup of 2006.

Today, the very factions who evicted Thaksin from office, charging he had become a virtual dictator, are wielding State power to suppress dissent, manipulate judicial decisions and stifle the media.

In this context to assume the colour, vibrancy and diversity of Thai politics is the expression of a true democratic system would be a fundamental mistake.

In the preceding decade Thailand’s political elite have hollowed out this nation’s democracy leaving the shell of democratic process – elections – but none of democracy’s flesh and blood – a system of independent checks, balances and ethics - that give the empty form credible life.

The sad reality is that whoever wins Thailand’s elections will garner an affirmation of support that is more an expression of the deep rifts within Thai society than a transition towards a more mature, more honest, more ethical and more reliable democracy. Instead, we are left with the anxiety of trying to guess what elite shenanigans will be triggered by a popular mandate.

America's Love Affair with the Gun Feeds its Fear

The debate over America’s gun laws chimes like a recurring refrain.

The aftermath of yet another shooting spree has become the grisly closing act of an all-too-familiar drama.

Same story different people.

We know the plot too well. An individual who should never have been able to purchase a gun opens fire on unsuspecting innocent people. The killing seems random. Children often lie among the dead.

America and the world is shocked. There are outpourings of grief. Opinion columns are penned. Candles are lit. Tears roll down the cheeks of uncomprehending mourners. The politicians don black and wear appropriately somber expressions.

How could this have happened?

And, like a familiar chorus, the old debate is trotted out. Should Americans be as free as they are to purchase and carry guns?

A few timid intellectuals proffer sensible arguments explaining that if people are allowed to carry guns then other people are likely to end up getting shot.

Cause and effect.

Across the philosophical aisle voluble, power-wielding gun lobbyists point to the Second Amendment, which enshrines an individual’s right to keep and bear arms.

Little matter the second amendment was drawn up in 1751 when America was surely (one would hope) a far less sophisticated, far less modern, far less crowded society than it is today.

Little matter that in nations where guns are strictly controlled such tragedies are few and far between. Little matter it stands to simple reason that a nation without guns is likely to see far less shootings (even if violent crime remains).

Looking in from the outside, America often seems like a bizarre and confusing place, a place of stark paradox living in direct contradiction of its own ideals.

In the post 9-11 era America has been at war with Terror. It has been on a mission to bring freedom to those who don’t have it; an obligatory ‘gift’ handed over at gunpoint.

America’s war against Terror has taken its troops into battle in Iraq and Afghanistan: wars being fought, ostensibly, to protect America’s national security, to make Americans feel safer at home.

Yet Americans seem to feel less and less safe, its enemies are multiplying and victory, however it may be defined, seems as elusive as ever.

In the years since 9-11 Americans have learned that fighting Terror means being alert. It means living in fear of an armed enemy, foreign and most probably Muslim, who may strike at any time.

Yet, as America has also learned, more often than not Terror doesn’t come from a dusty village in Iraq or Afghanistan. It lives next door. He or she carries a gun concealed in a glove compartment or snuggled under their jacket, loaded and within easy reach.

Terror lives at home and is very likely American.

As Michael J Moore so poignantly illustrated in his documentary ‘Bowling for Columbine,’ America’s is a society built on fear, a society whose very momentum, fuelled by the media, is driven by fear. Fear and Terror live side by side.

The statistics speak for themselves.

In 2009 more than 9,000 Americans were murdered in crimes involving firearms. Extrapolate that number out over the past ten years and we can estimate that close to 100,000 Americans may have been murdered with a gun. Even if the exact number were 50% of this figure, the magnitude of gun related violence in such a modern nation is astounding and shocking.

There are those who would argue that for all its guns America is still far from being the most violent nation on the planet. El Salvador and Mexico are way ahead in the homicide charts. But for a nation of such wealth, with such ambition and whose politics are often infused with such moral fervour, America’s sea of firearms and its dramatic homicide statistics can only be a source of shame.

In the end, what separates the gun toting American from the gun toting Afghan? Law? Wealth? Morality? Religion?

While the positive language of freedom, progress and democracy is the brand America would sell to the world, the reality is that its own society has proved unable to move beyond an amendment drawn up in 1751.

For all America’s sophistication, for all its laws, for all its political rhetoric, for all the safety norms that are imposed in every facet of American life, you can still be shot tomorrow on the street, or in your school, by a guy with a gun.

And no it’s not about freedom, its not about principles or rights as gun advocates claim. It’s not about feeling comfortable and safe with a gun on your hip.

Peel away those spurious claims and you are left with the raw reality that guns are designed to kill and maim. To carry a gun is to empower yourself with the immediate click-of-a-trigger power to destroy life.

Almost exactly 100 years before the Second Amendment was penned, it was the English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes who pointed out the need for individuals to yield up a part of their freedom to the State without which society would return to what he called ‘a state of nature’ which in turn would lead to a ‘war of all against all’.

His ideas formed the based of the social contract whereby civil society is based on the rule of law.

His point, an obvious one today, was that freedom in and of itself is not a good thing. There needs to be balance and there needs to be some areas where the individual agrees to yield up a part of his or her freedom to the State and the rule of law.

The right to bear arms in America is a clear example of excessive freedom, the bloody side effects of which are there for all to see. Without controls on gun ownership, America slides towards Hobbes’ ‘state of nature’, cloaking its society in fear.

The Freedom America so loves cannot exist in a nation condemned to live in fear.

If Americans believe in their own State, if they wish to build a truly civil society as an example to the rest of the world then they must impose laws curtailing gun ownership.

In Remembrance of My Father

The man on the horse is my father. He is seen riding across a snowy landscape in Lesotho, Southern Africa. This image epitomizes how I would like to remember him: laughing as he gallops forwards, full of energy as he leans into the wind; keen for adventure, thirsty for the thrill of life, a little bit wild.

An only child, Nicholas’s story began in Cape Town, South Africa, where he was born on April 9th 1938. It was fate, and some rather bad holiday planning, that brought him to England. In 1939 his parents found themselves trapped in London at the outbreak of World War II. Apparently unaware of the impending conflict, they had arrived in the UK just two days before Churchill’s declaration of war.

Nicholas’s father, Solomon, worked as a surgeon in London’s hospitals, patching up the maimed and wounded while the family took up residence in a hotel. Nicholas’s earliest memories were of room service and of German bombs raining down on the British capital.

After a traditional English education at Westminster School and Trinity College Cambridge, where he obtained a First in Medicine and developed a love for literature, Nicholas seemed set to follow in his father’s footsteps and enter the lucrative world of private medicine.
The Cambridge Graduate in the late 1950s

He had other plans.

After brief spells at Guys Hospital in London, which he described as an “endless soap opera of pretty nurses and paunchy consultants with fob watches and gold chains”, and the American Hospital in Paris, where he nurtured his early love for France, Nicholas began to move further afield.

He was keen to escape the life his parents wanted for him. And he was about to begin a lifelong journey, one that saw him traveling the globe, forever seeking a place where he might belong, that he might call home.

Perhaps his was the curse of the exile? His ancestors had fled Lithuania. His parents, perhaps still traumatized by their past, sought stability, comfort and status. Nicholas on the other hand was looking for something more. He wanted to give his life a deeper meaning.

Though he became the doctor his father wanted him to be, and though he never abandoned his Jewish roots, he seemed always in flight. Always caught in the paradox of being proud of his status and yet always wanting to transcend the banality of social labels. He resisted being defined. He wanted to be a doctor and a scientist and an artist and a bohemian too. He wanted it all.

His life choices seem, with hindsight, like a series of mini rebellions. Statements that said, I am not my parents, nor my ancestors. His love affairs and his marriages were always with non-Jews – to the chagrin of his parents and especially his mother who committed suicide while he was on his honeymoon (with my mother) in 1967.

Nicholas never wanted to be seen as English nor, god forbid, as South African. And he was, in truth, neither of those. In many ways, his was a restless, searching soul - a spirit that belonged fully to no nation.

Behind his grey-green eyes, which sometimes resembled glacial pools and sometimes glowed with such warmth, there were, I sensed, always the shadows of solitude and doubt; legacies, perhaps, of the many contradictions in his life. At times these shadows would eclipse his sparking spirit, plunging him into periods of torment and darkness.

But in 1968, with a golden future to play for, with good looks, intelligence and a first class education to thrust him forwards, the opportunities must have seemed endless.

It was in that year that a three-line advert in the Lancet caught Nicholas’s eye. A 35-bed hospital in Lesotho needed a doctor.

Thus, shortly after I was born, and just a few years after his marriage to my mother, Nicholas left England (without my mother or myself) to begin a life of travel and adventure. It was at this point that he effectively exited my life until I was 18 years old.
Nicholas outside the hospital in Lesotho

For the next two years, a missionary group called the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel employed Nicholas. He lived in a remote place called Mantsonyane and was the only doctor in a tiny rural hospital.

When the missionary priest was absent, the youthful Jewish physician extended his duties into the realm of the spiritual, conducting church services for the local Christian congregation.

Living rough in stone huts with thatched roofs and traveling to see patients over rugged mountains on horseback, he discovered the realities and hardships of life in the Third World.

Nicholas outside his hut in Lesotho

In his own words he “learned what it means to live on one meal of maize flour a day, what it feels like to go barefoot, clothed only in a blanket in the freezing winter days, and how many children die of diseases that elsewhere are entirely preventable.”

He began to ponder how improved nutrition and health could be delivered in places where resources were desperately scarce, resolving under an African sky to use his life “to improve health and survival for poorer communities in Africa and Asia”.

This was the purpose he had been searching for.

Nicholas found himself pulling teeth, dressing wounds resulting from alcohol-fuelled violence and even performing cesarean sections - with the help of a few textbooks and some advice from his father. Payment for his services was often in the form of live chickens.

When he ventured into South Africa proper, he made a point of displaying his opposition to apartheid, carrying bags for black African women and using his camera to document the regime’s injustices. He was eventually banned from South Africa, a status he wore as a badge of honour.

By 1970 Nicholas had met Therese Blanchet, with whom he was to share his life for next twenty or so years. In that same year, during a freak snowstorm in the highlands of Lesotho, their first child, Natasha, was born. She was also given an African name, Melehoa or “Mother of Snow”.

A year later Nicholas moved back to England where he read Epidemiology and Medical Statistics at the London School of Hygiene. He then traveled north to Nottingham University to work alongside Professor Maurice Backett at the recently founded Department of Community Health.

Ever the traveler and always determined to spend as much time as possible in the field, in 1976 Nicholas was on the road again, this time as part of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) smallpox eradication campaign.

Crisscrossing the remote and beautiful landscapes of Ethiopia in a yellow helicopter, Nicholas enjoyed the thrill of being on the frontline of medicine. His numerous photographs of that era depict a rustic society living in a manner that had changed little in centuries.


Nicholas in Ethiopia

A talented writer, Nicholas’s Ethiopian adventures are best and most evocatively described in his own words:

“We tracked smallpox from the green fertile slopes of Arussi, across the sand scarred start of the great African Rift valley at Awash, along the vertiginous eastern escarpment of Shoa and north west with the Afar towards the Danakil desert. Wilfried Thesiger trained his men on the same terrain before his crossing of the Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia, recounted in Arabian Sands.

Waking at night in village huts, schools or tents, I could sometimes hear the hoarse coughing of lions. The yellow WHO helicopter flew me over random herds of zebra, frightened ostrich, baboon on the move, nomads carrying Italian 1930s rifles and families of hippo bathing in the crocodile infested Awash river. On the high plateau, bright red circles of spicy pepper could be seen drying beside every village. The beauty, the quality of the light, the mix of so many peoples – Amhara, Agober, Afar, Issa, Oromo, Yemeni, Arabic – made the backdrop of the landscape quite majestic. I felt that somehow we were at the centre of the Universe. I have not known sights and days like that before or after.”

Having returned to the gray skies of the British midlands and just a year after the birth of his second son, Alexis, in 1978 Nicholas was again packing his bags this time to move to Bangladesh where he lived for over a decade, working first with the Save the Children Fund and then with Helen Keller International, for whom he became Country Director.

With Natasha and Alexis in Bangladesh

His interests had by now almost completely shifted from conventional medical practice to the realm of public health and epidemiology. The challenge, as he saw it, was to formulate and implement policies that would improve the health and well being of entire populations.

In Bangladesh Nicholas had chosen one of the poorest nations on the planet. The problems were gargantuan. Typically, he sought to understand his adopted home from the inside out. He learned to read and write Bengali and immersed himself in the cultural life of the country.

With his full ginger beard and traditional Bengali attire, Nicholas cut a striking figure. He became a popular, well-known and sometimes controversial personality in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka. A Jew living in a predominantly Muslim society he would sometimes explain that the letters M.D. after his name actually stood for Mohammed!

With Alexis on a trip to Calcutta

Determined to put his medical knowledge to good use, Nicholas also spent months at a time volunteering at Mother Teresa’s hospice for the dying at Khalighat in Calcutta, India. This was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with Calcutta, a city to which he returned to live briefly later in life and of which he always talked and dreamed.

Much of Nicholas’s most important work for Helen Keller International in Bangladesh focused on Vitamin A deficiency and its role in causing blindness among the most vulnerable and malnourished sections of the population, especially children.

His colleagues remember him as a brilliant and daring thinker. His suggestion, for example, that stopping Bengali fathers from smoking might have a positive impact on child nutrition was originally met with skepticism, though it was later proved that economic resources diverted away from tobacco were often used to purchase healthier food. Stopping smoking wasn’t just better for people’s lungs it could also lead to a better diet.

In 1988 Nicholas celebrated the birth of his third son, Louis Felix, and moved back to Europe to take up a position at the World Health Organisation in Geneva where he worked as a consultant for seven years. Although he did not take easily to the bureaucracy of the UN, he nevertheless battled to get his ideas accepted.

Rare sighting in a suit

One co-worker at WHO described Nicholas as a “genuine pioneer” in his quest to see Vitamin A widely administered to children at risk in developing countries. A policy, wrote his colleague, that “has saved the lives of countless infants and the sight of even more.”

It was while working for WHO in Geneva that Nicholas met Nancy Jamieson, an American public health consultant he was to marry in 1997.

Nancy shared Nicholas’ fondness for the quirky side of life, his thirst for adventure and his love of Asia. In Nancy Nicholas found a kindred spirit, a global citizen who had led almost as many lives as he – working on trawlers in the wild seas off the Alaskan coast and bringing relief to communities on Pakistan’s wild northwestern frontier - a woman who had committed the latter part of her career to educating communities about the risks of AIDS.

Wedding day to Nancy

Nicholas and Nancy spent a number of happy years living in Delhi, Calcutta and Jakarta. Both worked as consultants traveling in the region. They spent many long days ferreting out the most interesting corners of the cities they lived in.

But by the mid 90’s, Nicholas was already beginning to show clear symptoms of the Parkinson’s disease that was to afflict him during the latter part of his life. Nancy, whose own father had suffered from the disease, knew what the future would hold.

Nicholas confronted his illness with courage and good humour, refusing steadfastly to be defined by it. Even as Parkinsons gradually stole from him the ability to travel and move around freely, he remained as dignified, as fun loving, as curious and as determined to savour the poetry of life as ever.

In 2000, Nicholas moved to Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. After years spent in France – a country he loved – and after the colour, intensity and vibrancy of life in Asia, Nicholas initially found life in North America dull.

But if British Columbia’s seduction was not immediate, he grew to love his life in Victoria. It was among the immigrants of Canada, and most especially amongst Victoria’s cosmopolitan Jewish community, that Nicholas felt most at home.

With Nancy’s help he found an apartment with a spectacular view across the straits of Juan de Fuca, looking towards the majestic Olympic Mountains on the American coast. His daughter Natasha, her husband Mutang and his two grandchildren Noeli and Agan lived close by and became a source of vital support and a focus for his love.

Despite his declining health, Nicholas remained a man whose zest for knowledge and love of life never diminished. He read widely and embraced new technologies, using Skype and Facebook to communicate with friends around the globe. He studied Thai, Russian and Italian in addition to the Bengali, Hebrew and French he already spoke fluently. And despite his handicaps he was always planning trips, always ready for a new adventure.

In December 2009, Nicholas returned to the UK, bringing his life full circle. He entered a nursing home in the town of Thames Ditton, close by my mother, where he noted that the cosmopolitan staff seemed a perfect reflection of his globalised past. Characteristically it was not long before he cut a familiar figure among local librarians and café owners.
A couple of hours after arriving in the UK. "Let's go to the pub!"

In September 2010 Nicholas fell ill with pneumonia. When doctors at a local hospital examined him more closely they found extensive cancerous tumours and informed him that he had but a few days to live.

He faced death with the same courage and dignity with which he had lived his entire life. He called those he loved to his bedside and waited patiently and peacefully for the end to come, smiling on his family and reciting prayers in Hebrew.

Looking back on my father's life, one can only feel sorrow. Sorrow that such a wealth of talent, that such depth of knowledge and culture should be lost. Such loss is akin, I feel, to an amputation. A part of one's life is forever gone and one must learn to adapt to a new, seemingly incomplete, world.
With me in London earlier this year

Looking beyond the immediate sorrow of mourning, looking beyond Nicholas's achievements and his talents, it is his extraordinary charisma that defines him most.

He was a man blessed with that invisible spiritual electricity that lights people up. He could arrive anywhere and instantly turn heads and before long he would be making new friends.

It was this charisma, combined with his rich life experience that made him a mentor for so many young people. For if his body deteriorated over time, the energy of his soul was ageless.

It is this ageless energy and charisma, mixed with many beautiful memories and the enduring warmth of his love, which remains.

The Rough Road to Reconciliation

Credit: Kerek Wongsa/Reuteurs

The protesters have returned home and the streets have been scrubbed clean. The malls bustle anew and the traffic is jammed again.

It’s business as usual.

As painful memories of the blood spilled on Bangkok’s streets begin to ebb, Thailand’s suave Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejajiva, looks calm and confident. After two miserable months, the tide seems finally to have turned in his favour.

His Ministers are telling the world that the situation in Thailand has been restored to ‘normal’. His coalition government is busily setting about the task of post conflict reconciliation.

As if reconciliation were merely a navigational challenge, the government has revealed a road map. Reconciliation in five easy steps, says Prime Minister Abhisit; making a gargantuan challenge sound as easy as a drive in the country.

But has Thailand returned to ‘normal’? Will reconciliation really be that simple?

Or are we mistaking calm for normalcy, a lack of fighting for real peace, the appearances of an open democracy led by an urbane Eton-educated technocrat for the reality of a military-backed regime that is riding roughshod over basic freedoms; chasing down its opponents and muzzling its critics in the media?

While 20 or so provinces remain under emergency rule and while the government continues to be shadowed by the all-powerful Committee for the Resolution for Emergency Situation (CRES), it requires a considerable stretch of the imagination to believe that Thailand has returned to ‘normal’.

In the aftermath of the worst civil unrest in Thailand’s modern history, which saw 99 killed and 1,900 injured, the battle for Thailand’s future has, for the moment, shifted from the street and into the realm of media.

Information and spin constitute the new front line.

Having berated international correspondents for inaccurate reporting and failing to grasp the complexities of Thailand’s crisis, the Thai government is now driving home its own conveniently simplified storyline.

It goes like this.

The Thai nation is under threat from a ruthless former dictator, Thaksin Shinawatra, and must be protected. The Red Shirts have morphed from protesters with legitimate grievances into terrorists and anti-monarchists who must be stopped before they transform Thailand into a republic.

Many thousands of good folk, the ‘poo burisut’ or ‘pure people’ as the government calls them, have been subverted by unscrupulous power-hungry elites who are using the media to mobilize the masses, inciting hatred and social divisions.

The ‘pure people’, who face real problems in the countryside, may have gone home but the dangers are still there. The government must be vigilant – hence the continued State of Emergency in many areas.

Elections will be held, but not until the situation has returned to normal, whatever ‘normal’ is and whenever that may be.

As the government seeks to reconcile and reassure with one hand, it is repressing with the other.

In the north and northeast of the country, Red Shirt strongholds, police and military units are reportedly hunting down and arresting suspected Red Shirts.

Several Red Shirt guards have been mysteriously assassinated, raising concerns that extrajudicial killings now may be part of a shadowy unofficial campaign to stymie the movement.

Media and free speech have taken a hit too.

Thailand’s democracy is starting to resemble Indonesia under Suharto, when citizens were told to exercise their democratic freedoms ‘with responsibility’, a veiled warning that criticism of the government would not be tolerated.

The screws seem to tighten with each passing week.

Citing draconian lese majeste laws officials have already shut down tens of thousands of websites and silenced scores of pro Red Shirt community radio stations.

More than 100 prominent people have been publicly blacklisted for supporting the Red Shirts and their assets have been frozen. 417 people have been detained under emergency laws, which allow for imprisonment without evidence or a fair trial. Human rights organisations say as many as 50 people are still missing in the aftermath of the crackdown.

While the government’s tough line may play well to some sections of the population, it is profoundly antagonistic to others; most notably among those already sympathetic to the Red Shirt cause.

In an already polarized, partially traumatized, society such policies are hardly a recipe for advancing the cause of reconciliation. Instead of including its foes in the reconciliation process, the government seems bent not only on excluding them but on silencing and arresting them too.

In using the State to suppress and repress it is creating a climate not of trust, the only ground from which reconciliation can grow, but of fear and resentment. If the government continues down this path, the very divisions it seeks to heal will likely widen.

Reconciliation must be more than a public relations campaign. It must reach down to the roots of Thai society, to those areas where a sense of exclusion and discrimination have fostered deep anger and frustration. It must involve sacrifices and concessions that will be politically counter intuitive for a government that was, in May, literally at war with the Red Shirts.

Most important of all, the government must apply the law with justice and impartiality.

To do so would be evidence of courage and an significant step towards dealing with one of the most powerful issues fueling recent unrest - that of double standards.

To do so Abhisit's government must bring to justice those responsible for occupying Government House and the country’s two international airports in 2008, actions no less worthy of the label ‘terrorism’ than the Red Shirt protests in Bangkok’s commercial district of Rajaprasong.

Unless it acts against lawbreakers on both sides of the political divide, the government will be unable to generate the trust and moral authority it needs to transform sensible talk of reconciliation into a process capable of healing the still deepening rifts that threaten the peace and stability of Thailand.

Imagining Thailand's Future Without the T Words

REUTERS/Jerry Lampen

The T words, Thaksin and terrorism, have come to dominate political dialogue and analysis here. Their use has become so widespread as to mask the deeper structural causes of Thailand's crisis.

Lets start with terrorism.

For some time now the Thai government has been referring to elements within the Red Shirt movement as terrorists. Yesterday the government issued an arrest warrant for former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on charges of terrorism.

In classifying Red Shirts as terrorists, the government clearly wishes to delegitimise the movement, both locally and internationally.

While this may seem a logical step to some, in the wake of the destruction and violence witnessed in Bangkok in recent weeks, to many Red Shirt sympathisers it only emphasises feelings of exclusion and injustice.

Treating Red Shirts as terrorists adds weight to claims that the government is applying double standards, one of the key gripes among rank and file Red Shirt supporters.

To many Red Shirts it is a glaring injustice, symptomic of a system that discriminates against them, that yellow shirt leaders responsible for occupying Government House and for closing down the country's two international airports remain unpunished.

And then there's Thaksin Shinawatra, the biggest T word of all.

Thailand's obsession with the exiled former Prime Minister is such that he has become the spectre that haunts every political debate, the seeming be all and end all of Thailand's current woes.

A recent op-ed by prominent Thai journalist Karuna Buakamsri published in the International Herald Tribune described Thaksin as "the fault line that has fractured our country."

Ironically in placing Thaksin at the heart of the crisis, many analsysts and the government itself have become unwitting victims of Thaksin's spin. It is as if the government and intelligentsia were themselves being manipulated by the man they have often accused of manipulating Thailand's 'gullible', 'poorly educated' underclass.

For in emphasising Thakin's role and importance, in peppering every analysis and official announcement with his name, Thaksin's visibility is increased while the space he occupies in the nation's political psyche expands, and this even as he languishes in distant exile.

There are those, thankfully, who see beyond the T words.

Anand Panyarachun, a former Prime Minister and one of the architects behind the reform orientated constitution of 1997, outlined Thailand's challenges in an article entitled 'A Shared Future' without once referring to either Thaksin or terrorism. (click here to read full article: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/2010/05/24/opinion/A-Shared-Future-30130056.html)

In today's Thailand it was a laudable feat, evidence perhaps that Khun Anand is one of the few Thai leaders with sufficient neutrality, wisdom and moral authority to guide Thailand out of its current predicament.

In his article Khun Anand speaks of the dangers of "harbouring hatred", of the need to close "the deep and widening social divide", of Thailand experiencing a "political awakening" which has put the nation at "a point of no return."

Thailand's true challenge is not to rid the nation of so-called terrorists nor of the threat posed by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. It is, as Khun Anand writes, "to engage in a process of dialogue, which recognizes and respects the differences, interests and values of all concerned parties."

The government of Abhisit Vejajiva would do well to listen to Khun Anand's advice.

It should shift its focus away from chasing terrorists, suppressing dissentng voices and bemoaning the evil influence of former Prime Minsiter Thaksin.

Instead, as Khun Anand points out, it should "see the empowerment of the rural and impoverished sectors of our electorate as a critical and necessary step for the development of Thailand's democratic system."

Thaksin surely has much to answer for but, as Khun Anand so wisely leads us to understand, he should not be seen as the essence of Thailand's problems, even if he was the catalyst that brought them to the surface.

Thailand's current situation should not be seen as a conflict to be won or lost. Instead, as Khun Anand points out, it should be seen as an opporunity to be seized.

Scrubbing Away Memories and Covering The Fires

Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

For 'curfew' the French say 'couvre feu'. Literally it means to cover the fire.

The Thai government's curfew feels very much like the French version of the term: an attempt to cover the fire, or perhaps hide it.

It reflects a fear that while the government may have succeeded in snuffing out the Red Shirt protest at Rajprasong, the order it has imposed may be as fragile as it is combustible.

Many Bangkokians would rather wash the memories of these past two months away and move on.

It would be comforting to believe that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejajiva, ever the unruffled, ever the reassuring, has dealt with the 'problem' and life will now return to normal - whatever normal may be in this city of mysterious yet charming madness.

On Rajadamri Avenue yesterday, where days earlier soldiers and protesters had fought, where bloodied corpses had lain, a different kind of army was at work.

Platoons of cheerful volunteers, wielding brooms and brushes, could be seen scrubbing frantically at streets and sidewalks, desperately trying to remove any last trace of the Red Shirt protest. It was as much about purging the city of dark and violent memories as it was about a literal clean-up.

Like a dazed boxer gathering himself from the floor, dusting himself down and preparing to fight another round, Bangkok is already regaining its old momentum. The city's inimitable energy has begun to flow again.

Familiar traffic jams have resumed their slow, jolting procession through valleys of skyscrapers. The sidewalk vendors are trundling back to their allotted spots. Most important of all the shoppers have begun, gingerly, to reclaim their malls.

Apart from a few visible scars, where fires set by retreating Red Shirts still smoulder, Bangkok has begun to look just as it always has. One could even detect a smile, here and there.

But the kind of trauma caused by the intense street violence which roiled through this city in recent weeks can't be erased with a broom and some disinfectant. Thais can put on a brave face - something they're famous for. They can tell the world it's OK now, that the 'terrorists' are being rounded up, that pretty soon it will be business as usual in the Land of Smiles.

It would be tempting to do that - to pretend. To do so, however, would be to mistake order for peace, to mistake the government's victory at Rajprasong for the reality that the Red Shirts' losses and their brusque eviction may well have lit even fiercer fires among their ranks.

The danger now would be to apply the literal meaning of the French term for curfew and to simply cover the fires which are still burning.

In moves to imprison and stifle the Red Shirt movement, there are ominous signs that this government intends not to engage the Red Shirts but to suppress them, not to extinguish the fires of discontent through compromise and reconciliation but merely to hide those flames from view.

Tranforming Order into Peace

REUTERS/Kerek Wongsa

Just over two months after the Red Shirts of the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) began a protest calling for the dissolution of parliament and fresh elections, the Thai government has at last succeeded in restoring order.

It came at a price.

More than 80 people were killed and over 1,300 injured during clashes between government security forces and protesters.

Swathes of Bangkok, one of the world's most popular tourist destinations and the bustling epicenter of Thailand's high-octane economy, were transformed into battlefields.

Tonight Bangkok is under curfew. Heavily armed soldiers still patrol in 'sensitive' areas. Key public transport networks remain closed.

Around the city blackened buildings, pocked with the scars of gunfire, still smoulder after angry demonstrators rampaged Wednesday, looting shops and torching whatever they could. Department stores, cinemas, banks and even a TV station were attacked. In all more than 30 fires were lit.

If the mood isn't celebratory, one senses relief among Bangkokians that the darkest, wildest days of violence are now behind them. Public transport will resume limited services on Sunday when the curfew is also due to be lifted. Most people in Bangkok should return to work normally on Monday.

The barricades which served as frontlines in pitched battles between troops and protesters, and were vivid symbols of the divisions behind this crisis, have been dismantled. And the Red Shirt protesters, who had camped out in one of the capital's swishest commercial districts, have now either gone gone home or been arrested.

As Thailand begins to count the cost of its worst civil unrest in modern history, thoughts are beginning to turn to the future.

Though the fires have been extinguished and the protests quelled, there is concern that the anger and frustration which pushed Bangkok to near anarchy continue to burn.

In a televised speech a day after the violence, Abhisit vowed his government would seek reconciliation. "We will help each other rebuild our nation for the happiness of all," he declared.

He will need to be very serious about that challenge if he is to transform the order he has imposed into lasting peace.

Though their leaders have surrendered, many Red Shirts have said they are determined to fight on. At this point it is still unclear what form their struggle will take, but there are fears of more violence in the weeks and months ahead.

The spectre of an armed conflict, and the crippling instability it implies, is a real possibility. Although most of the Red Shirt protesters were expressing legitimate opposition to the government, the movement's most extreme elements are known to be armed.

The immediate challenge for Abhisit's government, amidst the bitterness and fury generated by so many deaths and injuries, is to build trust, credibility and a semblance of neutrality. The Prime Minister must demonstrate that he has the strength to step away from narrow political interests and govern for the good of the entire nation.

Caught in powerful political cross currents as he navigates between coalition partners and his military backers (to whom he owes his political survival), Abhisit will need to show that his government intends to quickly address gaping economic inequalities.

His Finance Minister, Korn Chatikavanij, revealed yesterday that Thailand has "consistent current account surpluses, record foreign exchange reserves and good fiscal space." It is imperative the government now use these resources to implement policies that will alleviate the effects of falling rice prices and a drought in parts of the Northeast, factors that have fanned discontent in disadvantaged rural areas from where the Red Shirt movement draws much of its support.

Abhisit must also show a willingness to tolerate political opposition that operates within the law and that he is prepared, as soon as possible, to announce a firm election date and subject his government to the scrutiny of the ballot box.

Ironically, Abhisit's best chance of building popular support lie in policies that will antagonise some of his closest allies.

The Prime Minister needs, for example, to take legal action against leaders of the Yellow Shirt movement (also known as the People's Alliance for Democracy or PAD) responsible, in 2008, for a three-month-long occupation of Government House and for shutting down the nation's international airports.

In doing so he would send a clear signal of personal courage and political neutrality.

Such a move would also expose him to dangerous political cross-fire, especially when one considers that his current Foreign Minister was a prominent figure among the Yellow shirts and supported their occupation of the airports.

By arresting Yellow Shirt leaders guilty of crimes no less serious than their Red Shirt counterparts, Abhisit would be showing a willingness to apply the law with equality and would undermine one of the Red Shirts' key criticisms of him: that in arresting its leaders while ignoring those of the Yellow shirts his government is guilty of double standards.

While Prime Minister Abhisit may be eloquent and well meaning, and though his government may have the material resources to impose order, the future stability of Thailand, and perhaps ultimately any hope for peace here, reposes on his government's desire to restore its moral, as opposed to physical, authority and legitimacy.

If in putting an end to the Red Shirt protests the government intends merely to affirm its power then it has simply won one battle in what could turn out to be a long and bitter war.