Short summary on political situation

[Mark]

This post will try to explain the situation as briefly as possible. Many foreigners don't understand it.

In my political coverage to date on ThailandGuru.com , I haven't given much coverage to the so-called "Peoples Alliance for Democracy" (PAD), instead mainly covering political parties, elections, and political & economic developments. I now realize that I neglected coverage of the PAD. So this post will cover the PAD group better.

The PAD was formed in 2005 and its organization of street protests and other forms of opposition to the Thaksin Shinawatra government, due to the rampant corruption, abuse of power of the latter, and dismantling of the checks and balances system in Thailand, which eventually led to the 2006 coup and rewriting of the checks and balances system.

The PAD dissolved itself right after the 2006 coup itself.

At this time, the PAD consisted of mainly the Bangkok educated middle and upper classes of people in the intelligencia, academia, government civil servants, state enterprise civil servants, high levels of the Army, some members of the old Democrat Party, and a lot of southern Thailand people. They don't all believe in the same things, but they are allied against Thaksin.

The PAD formed again after the newly elected government in 2008 became a proxy puppet of Thaksin Shinawatra which openly declared itself as such, including its intentions to pass legislation to pardon the ex-PM of corruption convictions as well as lift the ban on allied politicians also judge guilty by the courts.

The PAD raised a crowd of followers who took over Government House (the Prime Minister's office and residence), blocked particular sessions of parliament which allegedly planned, and generally played the role of a protest watchdog.

In late 2008, the PAD became radicalized, and even many of its supporters in the media also distanced itself from what was seen as a cult which had attracted a lot of questionable people.

The PAD wears yellow shirts.

At the opposite end is the Thaksin Shinawatra side. I've covered this side since the first years of Thailand Guru before it had come to power (and when I was enthusiastic about Thaksin). As that's very well covered on ThailandGuru.com , I won't cover it here, except to summarize those writings in 2 paragraphs:

Thaksin Shinawatra is an extremely rich businessman turned politician who won the election in the year 2000 on a platform of helping the masses of the poor by giving nearly free health care at government hospitals and spending a lot of money on villages (in good ways). After wealthy Bangkok had neglected the poor for so long, it was very welcome indeed, and Thaksin delivered.

At this point, things were looking fairly good. Some Thaksin cronies had tried to intimidate the press and there were some other questionable things, but it was held fairly well in check.

In the next election, Thaksin won by a landslide. However, Thaksin and his allies subsequently abused their power to gross extents and the corruption and successful breakdown of the checks and balances system was shocking. Support for Thaksin plummeted in Bangkok power circles and even many within his own party, so he dissolved parliament despite his party holding 75% of the seats, so in a new election he could sweep out the disloyal and sweep in more cronies. The election was a farce, he was eventually ousted in a military coup, and his political party was dissolved by the courts for major election law violations. That was the Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party.

A new party was formed, the People Power Party (PPP), from the remnants of the TRT. In the next election, it won more seats than anyone else, nearly half those in Parliament, based on the poor voters in the northeastern and northern provinces. With a few small parties, it formed a coalition majority in Parliament.

As noted above, it openly declared itself a proxy of Thaksin and started to implement its plans to bring Thaksin back as leader, by pushing thru Parliament an amnesty for Thaksin and the executives of the former TRT party who were banned from politics for 5 years by the court judgement.

This was, of course, extremely divisive in Thai society, but the PPP did things only for itself, without regard to the best interests of the country. Society and politics quickly returned to a very hot state of affairs.

Further, the PPP nominated as Prime Minister a most salient person, and 7 months later when his self-destruction culminated, despite all these warnings, they went ahead and nominated ... out of all people ... Thaksin's brother in law as Prime Minister (husband of Thaksin's younger sister) to replace him. The People Power Party has done little to mend rifts in Thai society, indeed quite the opposite.

The PAD, on the other hand, has also been controversial from the start. It was founded by media magnate Sondhi Limthongkul (aka "Sondhi"), who had previously been a business partner and political crony of Thaksin, as noted in another post. Thaksin had taken in many of Sondhi's media allies into his government in high posts, including a banker who subsequently wrote off more than a billion baht of debt of Sondhi's.

However, eventually Thaksin rightfully cleaned out questionable people, such as the banker who apparently became responsible for around 40 billion baht of losses that some saw as questionable. Sondhi found himself out in the cold.

Sondhi almost immediately started posting sensational criticisms of Thaksin and his government in his online Manager website and on his satellite TV station. Given telecoms magnate Sondhi's broadcast resources, he could play a major role in the Thai sociopolitical dialogue. (It was also very profitable for business.)

Others became strategic allies of Sondhi, utilizing his popular media outlets.

One of these was Major General Chamlong Srimuang, who had a history as a maverick reformer in the military, was a reformist mayor of Bangkok, and a respected proponent of a Buddhist sect, himself celibate and vegetarian, altogether highly respected in many circles of Thai society.

Chamlong was Thaksin's mentor in politics, taking Thaksin into his own political party in 1994, moving him up the ranks, and eventually appointing Thaksin his successor as party leader, as discussed elsewhere.

Sondhi and Chamlong are co-directors of the PAD. They seem strange allies to me, with Sondhi's ego and love of the limelight, but that's the way it is. Sondhi owns the media outlets, so he is useful to the voices of some of Thaksin's opponents.

Sondhi has been an extremely rich person due to his media business since the early 1980s, though he went thru rough times after the 1997 economic crash, but recovered during Thaksin's first administration. Sondhi's allegiances have flip-flopped like many Thai politicians', apparently following their own self-interests rather than a consistent ideology.

The PAD, and Sondhi, have opposed free trade, a lot of foreign investment in Thailand, and privatization of state enterprises, promoting instead a sort of nationalistic Thai agenda of less materialism in society. These all fall in the category of economic policy.

In contrast, Thaksin and his allies have been strong proponents of internationalism, free trade, foreign investment, and privatization of state enterprises.

The PAD claims to be for good governance, against corruption, and the rule of law. Of course, you can see the contradictions in that already.

Many people support the PAD's aims to fight corruption in Thai politics and to reform the patronage system by demonstrations and broadcasting criticisms by the media outlets, but don't care much for the PAD's economic policies. The PAD did play a role against the privatization of electricity supply and some other things, but their power in the economic realm is very limited.

Indeed, the PAD seems to be a largely reactionary party against Thaksin, and their policies seemed to have formed as "whatever Thaksin is for, we are against". I would call it the Peoples Alliance against Thaksin, or PAT, like pat the back of anyone against Thaksin. Thaksin wants to privatize some state enterprises? There's a chance to get labor unions to join the PAD. Maybe they will strike to bring down Thaksin (and the economy). Things like that.

There are major differences between the PAD and most every political party on economic policies. All major Thai political parties are pro-foreign and pro-business.

The only thing they seem to have in common is what they are against, not so much what they are for. They are against Thaksin and his government proxies by the viewpoint of corruption and breaking down the checks and balances system. The PAD was one of the last check and balance.

In the month or so before the airport seizure, the PAD got more radical. Part of this was because their crowd at government house was getting smaller and smaller, partly due to the stalemate with the government and the need for people to get on with their livelihood and families rather than sacrifice forever, but also because of increasing violence, including attacks by grenade launchers.

The police have done little to protect either the PAD or the government. Both complain about the police, but the police have expressed that they want the two sides to negotiate and work out their differences.

It seems that the PAD realized, from their dwindling numbers, that the time had come for one last offensive.

Their remaining people consisted of a much higher percentage of hard core cult-like followers and True Believers. In the last weeks before their final offensive, more of their allies in the media became critical of the PAD and distanced themselves.

[continued in the next posting]

[Mark]

Prime Minister Somchai was on a visit to Peru and planned to return to Thailand on Tuesday, November 25. On the day of his planned return, the PAD crowd went to Bangkok's international airport, Suvarnabhumi. They had harrassed the Prime Minister at other airports before, and it isn't clear to me whether or not they initially planned to take over the airport, but in any case, on that day they went to the airport ... and they stayed when the Prime Minister didn't show up.

They also cannot be hit by launched grenades at the airport, much safer. Indeed, today, nearly a week after the airport seizure, Chamlong told the remainder to leave Government House and go to one of the airports because the police would not protect them at Government House. Chamlong had gone out and spoken with the police. The red shirt army also showed up en masse in Bangkok to deal with this endgame, and they would probably have stormed Government House.

So the airports are the last stand.

After taking over the airports, the PAD apparently lost most of their support, as taking over the airports hurts too many innocent people, both Thai and foreign, and especially businesses.

The PAD is now all alone and isolated.

It's not only a lose-lose situation with the government. It's everybody losing. After this incident is over, it will probably never rise up from the ashes. It seems as if most everyone has abandoned this sacrificial lamb.

The Thaksin proxy People Power Party has selfishly played the game of "divide and conquer" and is not in much better shape as regards image, but it can always count on a lot of seats in Parliament in any election thanks to the poor masses in the northeast and north.

It is such a shame because Thaksin is such a bright leader. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. He and his money and power have also attracted a lot of questionable people at the top. The kinds of people at the top look very different from the year 2000 when he first came to power.

What Thailand needs from here on out is better alternative "leadership", not "followers" of either the PAD/Sondhi nor Thaksin. Someone who can reach out to, and care about, all Thais of different socioeconomic classes.

The main worry now is whether street mobs, something new to Thailand, will escalate out of control. Thaksin and his allies have called out the "red army" in the form of tens of thousands of people from the poor provinces to come into Bangkok to oppose the PAD by street fights. After the PAD may come others.

Thailand is divided like never before.

Some leader(s), somehow, must provide some alternative leadership to defuse this situation.