ASIA HAND Bloody desperation for Thailand's reds
By Shawn W Crispin
BANGKOK - Despite a made-for-television mass rally, rousing phone-in speeches from their exiled leader and a bizarre bloodletting ritual, Thailand's
United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) ultimately lacks the
means and legitimacy to force Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's 15-month-old
coalition government from power.
Intense media coverage of the red shirt-wearing protest currently assembled in
Bangkok's old town has often portrayed the rally as indication of former prime
minister Thaksin Shinawatra's enduring political clout. But as the rally loses
steam in its third day and stokes new tensions among prominent members of his
political camp, it now more accurately appears a reflection of Thaksin's
growing political and personal desperation than an organic pro-democracy
movement.
While the red shirt-wearing protest group has failed to mobilize anywhere near
the one million protesters its organizers had vowed to truck from the provinces
to the national capital to pressure the government to dissolve parliament and
hold new elections, it has succeeded in rallying Thaksin's popular support
base, which hails mainly from the poor northern and northeastern provinces.
A series of strategic missteps, including Thaksin's antagonistic alliance with
Cambodian Premier Hun Sen and his open association with rogue military elements
who have threatened to launch bombing and assassination campaigns across
Bangkok, has sown deep divisions in his disparate political camp, consisting of
the UDD, the opposition Peua Thai party and networks among active police and
retired military officials. Some in his camp have questioned the coherence and
relevance of the UDD's current drive to draw blood from weather weary
protesters to splatter in protest at Government House.
That said, the rally has at least temporarily remobilized Thaksin's populist
symbolism and served as a potent reminder to the sincere pro-democracy faction
in his camp that has angled to disassociate the movement from his personality
that they remain reliant on his popular, if not financial, pulling power. It's
unclear to analysts how many of the 100,000-plus protesters on Sunday came of
their own accord and how many were paid to participate, as certain news reports
and Thaksin critics have suggested. But Thaksin's likeness clearly featured
more prominently than pro-democracy or universal justice themes on protesters'
red shirts and signboards.
Based on the memory of last April's UDD-led riots in Bangkok and Pattaya, many
feared the current mass rally might tilt towards violence and that the military
would be called in to suppress it. Last year's riots were sparked partially by
Thaksin's call to his red-shirt supporters to launch a "social revolution"
against the government. Many analysts wonder if the exiled fugitive from
justice will resort to brinksmanship to push his agenda and restore his wealth
after a Thai court ruled on February 26 for the seizure of US$1.4 billion of
his assets on charges of abuse of power.
The government has strategically played up the threat, citing intelligence it
apparently received from the United States that the protests could turn
violent, as justification for pre-emptively invoking the Internal Security Act
(ISA). Abhisit has repeatedly invoked the draconian measure that gives the
military special powers to maintain law and order, since last April's riots.
That's raised UDD criticism that he is presiding over a slow but steady
militarization of Thai society.
Since the current UDD rally commenced, security forces have raided two
factories allegedly involved in the production of parts used in M-79 grenade
launchers. The weapon has been used in various unexplained but clearly
politicized attacks, including a blast last month that damaged a military
headquarters near army commander General Anupong Paochinda's offices and a
remote assault on Tuesday against Bangkok's 1st Infantry Division in which two
soldiers were injured.
A UDD core member, Weng Tojirakarn, told Asia Times Online that the government
has manufactured the attacks and weapons seizures to justify the suppression of
red-shirt demonstrators. Yet another UDD organizer confirmed in November - when
the protest group first threatened but later retreated from organizing a
self-styled "million man" march - that a Peua Thai parliamentarian from Bangkok
had organized and paid motorcycle taxi drivers to stir violence during the
rally.
Simple symbols
Against the backdrop of real or imagined threats, UDD leaders have proclaimed
throughout to be fighting non-violently for democracy and universal justice -
made clear to foreign reporters through the English language signboards posted
and strategically held by demonstrators at the front of the protest's main
stage. They have portrayed Abhisit as a puppet of the military and bureaucratic
elite, which they claim played a behind-the-scenes role in cobbling together
his coalition government.
Thaksin touched on those same themes during a phone-in address on Sunday night
in which he criticized the Supreme Court verdict that ruled to seize his assets
as an indication of the entrenched double standards in Thai society that favor
the rich and powerful over the poor. (Although he has publicly criticized the
verdict, Thaksin has yet to refute in detail why the verdict lacked legal
merit). He implied that a "bureaucratic elite" that opposes democracy and
conspired in toppling his democratically elected government in 2006 was behind
the verdict.
What strikes many long-time observers of the country's politics is the UDD's
apparent collective amnesia of Thaksin's own anti-democratic record, marked by
his efforts to bypass parliamentary processes, undermine checking and balancing
institutions and pressure the free press, and the benefits he reaped through
close relations with the bureaucratic elite, including the privileged
state-granted telecom concessions he leveraged into a multi-billion dollar
personal fortune.
While the UDD clamors for Abhisit to dissolve parliament and hold new elections
it has failed to give voice to the fact that a controversial Peua Thai
politician, Chalerm Yoobamrung, would most likely run as the party's prime
ministerial candidate. His son, Duangchalerm, was accused of murdering an
off-duty police officer in 2001 and many say Chalerm epitomizes the double
standards that favor the powerful over the poor. Duangchalerm was acquitted due
to insufficient evidence in 2004 and is now a father-propelled, rising
political star.
Those glaring oversights to the UDD's self-styled pro-democracy agenda have led
many royalists to the conclusion that group leaders have a hidden anti-royal
agenda - a charge UDD stalwarts deny. They believe the pressure group's
sustained criticism of previously untouchable royal advisory privy councillors
is the front edge of a campaign to diminish the royal institution's role after
the eventual succession from the highly revered Bhumibol Adulyadej to his
heir-apparent son, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn.
As the UDD ratcheted up tensions in the run-up to Thaksin's asset case verdict,
including a never-realized threat to march on a local hospital where the ailing
82-year-old monarch is recuperating from a long spell of ill-health, Bhumibol
resumed several of his ceremonial roles, including a symbolic meeting with
local judges whom he encouraged to rule with "righteousness" in the cases in
which they adjudicated.
Ahead of the current UDD rally, local newspapers ran on their front pages a
portrait of Abhisit sitting with Bhumibol and the monarch's adopted stray dog.
One palace insider claimed that Bhumibol called the meeting to assure the prime
minister that under no circumstances would Thaksin be given a royal amnesty -
similar to the one granted to restore stability after the military's bloody
crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in 1992.
The lines of democratic division are less clear now and Thailand's grinding
political conflict is best understood as a power struggle between competing
elite camps with divergent visions for the country's post-Bhumibol future.
Thaksin's and the UDD's calls for democracy and social justice mask a game of
non-ideological power politics that his side is clearly losing to the
conservative forces that have coalesced against him. It's thus perhaps symbolic
that the blood the UDD plans to pour in protest at Government House will spring
from self-inflicted wounds.
Shawn W Crispin is Asia Times Online's Southeast Asia Editor.
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