Like this:

I’ve been remiss in writing these past few weeks, this past month in fact. Sadly, time passes too quickly and my duties have enervated me to the extent that writing seemed more like a chore than a outlet for experimentation and fulfillment. I am hoping that this respite will not repeat itself to quite this extent in the future. No promises though.

While I was up in Chiang Mai, at a advocacy workshop for Burmese environmental and human rights activists, we discussed at length some of the difficulties and paradoxes we live with every day in Thailand. Compared to neighboring Burma, Thailand is a paragon of democratic principles. Compared to Cambodia and Laos, Thailand seems quite developed, with an impressive infrastructure. Compared with Malaysia to the south, Thailand seems a hot-bed of liberalism and progressive values. Of course, these labels are all based on a relativism that belies the gravity of the problems that Thailand itself faces today.

For a country that looks stable compared to its neighbors, Thailand has had frequent, albeit bloodless coups. The latest coup in 2006 toppled the Thaksin Shinawatra government, which while popular in the countryside, was widely despised by civil society groups and the urban intelligentsia who despised what they saw as the phoney populist rhetoric of Thaksin who used his political clout to enrich his family and run the country like one of his corporations. The anti-Thaksin crowd is signified by the yellow shirts, the king’s color, and they accuse Thaksin of trying to marginalize the king. They have largely had the support of the military, which did very little to stop the yellow-shirts from running rampant over Bangkok and shutting down the city’s two airports last fall.

Thaksin’s supporters have donned red-shirts, also swear allegiance to the King and have rallied these past few weeks all over Thailand in an attempt to win a royal pardon for Thaksin, who addresses these throngs of crimson admirers via satellite phone from some undisclosed location – likely Dubai.

The yellow-shirts/red-shirt dichotomy presents a serious problem for Thai democracy and for Thai civil society. Thaksin was not a very popular figure in the human rights movement. His war on drugs led to a spike in the number of extra-judicial killing and his administration did a lot to quash the efforts of human rights groups to detail these events. At the same time, he was democratically elected and the toppling of his administration, despite its corruption, its crimes and its undeniable flaws, really dealt a blow to Thai democracy and has increased the likelihood and the expectation that reform can be brought from the barrel of a gun. The currently Prime Minister Abhisit is young, charismatic and seems to be a quite reasonable man. Unfortunately, his mandate is limited because he is dependent on the support of the military to exercise the duties of his office.

Of course the monarchy has a role to play as well in this current mess. Both sides invoke the King in attempts to curry favor with the Thai people, who still revere the old and frail King and who still support the anachronistic and arcane Lèse majesté laws still enforced today. The King, who holds no constitutional authority, has become embroiled in this mess and only his death is likely to change that. His heir does not have the charisma and it is hard to believe that his authority will command as much respect among these warring factions.

All I know is that I wore a red shirt when I arrived in Bangkok the first day, and I have avoided donning it since. I don’t have any yellow shirts either. While I do not have anything more than contempt for Thaksin and his self-serving populism, and I am somewhat sympathetic to the military which has handled these displays of discontent without mowing down their own citizens (for Southeast Asia that is sadly a rarity) my true sympathies are with democracy and human rights in Thailand, even when the two seem paradoxically at odds with each other as they do today.

Advertisement