April 2009
Junya Yimprasert
This article was first distributed at a Consultation on
‘Gender, Development and Decent Work:
Building a Common Agenda’,
OECD Headquarters, Paris, 27th April 2009.
Some errors in the initial draft have been corrected. A fully accurate account of the chaos and turmoil of the recent weeks, months and years in Thailand is not possible.
FOREWORD
After the September 2006 military coup that deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra we pointed-out that whatever the justifications used to legitimise the Coup, the action of the military was as disloyal as always to the legitimate demands of the people, and we made a simple observation: “. . if there is going to be anything resembling sustainable development in Thailand, the emphasis in Thai politics must be on making sure that the political demands of the new, urban classes are satisfied without further undermining the livelihoods and life-styles of the agrarian community upon which the future of Thailand depends.”.
Part One
80 years of struggle for democracy
End of absolute monarchy 1932
At dawn on 24 June 1932, the tiny People's Party Khana Ratsadon carried-out a lightning and bloodess coup d’état that abruptly ended 150 years of absolute monarchy under the Chakri Dynasty, and opened the way to democracy for Siam (Thailand), but the road has been painful.
Khana Ratsadon consisted of an elite group of civilians, government officials, aristocrats and military officers. The coup was led by Pridi Phanomyong with Lieutenant Colonel Pibulsongkhram in charge of the military wing. Completely unknown to the people of Siam, within the space of a few hours Siam was changed from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy. The new but military-dominated Government introduced a Charter which did at least aim at some kind of democracy.
Khana Ratsadon came into power with the announcement of six primary tasks:
v To maintain absolute national independence in all aspects, including political, judicial and economic...
v To maintain national cohesion and security...
v To promote economic well-being by creating full employment and by launching a national economic plan...
v To guarantee equality for all...
v To grant complete liberty and freedom to the people, provided that this does not contradict the afore-mentioned principles and...
v To provide education for the people.
Royalist opposition to the coup was strong and the Permanent Constitution that was adopted in December 1932 returned some authority to the Monarchy, but in 1935 King Prajadhipok, tired of the power-play, decided to abdicate.
Thailand’s first ‘democratic’ elections were held in 1933 - for half of the 156-seat so-called People’s Assembly, the other half being appointed. This was the first time that women were given the right to vote and stand for election. (It took until 1949 for Thailand to actually elect a woman MP.)
The 1932 Constitution stated that sovereign power was held by the people of Siam (Thailand), but in practice, after 77 years, such times have still not yet arrived.
Pridi v. Pibun
Pridi Phanomyong is none-the-less regarded as the founder of Thailand’s still nascent democracy. Pridi was born in Ayutthaya in 1900 to a family of well-off rice farmers. He was an exceptionally bright student and completed law school studies in Thailand at the age of 19 and, with the help of a Thai government scholarship, completed doctoral studies in law, economics and politics at the Sorbonne in 1926. In Paris he founded the Khana Ratsadon with a group of Thai that included a young officer called Plaek Pibulsongkhram. In 1927 Pridi returned to Thailand and began a fast rise through the hierarchy.
Plaek Pibulsongkhram, known commonly as ‘Pibun’, was a graduate of the Royal Military Academy in Thailand and in France for advanced military tuition. After the 1932 coup d’état he fashioned himself into the first of a long string of Thai generalissimos, functioning as Thailand’s war-time Prime Minister from 1938 to 1944 and as an acting-Prime Minister or Dictator between 1948 and 1957.
Pridi worked assiduously for the six objectives of the Khana Ratsadon, and in 1934 he and others founded the University of Moral and Political Science, known today as Thammasat University.
Between 1933 and 1946 Pridi served as Minister of Interior, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Finance, as Regent and as Prime Minister. As Minister of Foreign Affairs (1935 - 38) he oversaw the signing of the treaties that revoked the extra-territorial rights of 12 countries, thus returning Thailand to (almost) complete independence for the first time since the Bowring Treaty with Great Britain in 1855.
In 1938, as Prime Minister, the strongly anti-Chinese Pibun, opposed by Pridi, changed the name of Siam to Thailand.
When the Japanese invaded Thailand in December 1941 and pro-Japan Pibun saw how easily they pushed the British out of Malaysia, Pibun declared war on the Western Allies - in January 1942.
Pridi refused to sign the declaration of war and was removed from Government. With Thailand’s still un-crowned King Ananda Mahidol being schooled abroad, Pridi was given the symbolic rank of Regent, and it was as Regent that the thoroughly anti-Japan Pridi turned to building the underground Free Thai Movement (Seri Thai).
With the war coming to a close the out-of-favour Pibun was ousted by the Seri Thai Movement, and Pridi became Thailand’s 7th Prime Minister in March 1946 - for a few months.
In September 1945 an exhausted Thailand was glad of a visit from their young King-to-be, who was studying law in Switzerland, and in May 1946 they also welcomed-in Pridi’s new Constitution, this time with a fully-elected 176-member House of Representatives.
On 9 June 1946 young Mahidol, still only 21, was found in bed in the Grand Palace in Bangkok with a bullet through his head. Pibun the Dictator accused Pridi the idealist of being involved in the regicide, and Thailand descended into chaos. (The truth behind the death of the King has remained shrouded in mystery. The execution, on grounds of complicity in suspected murder, of two of the King’s servants and a Senator in 1955 satisfied nobody.)
In November 1947 a powerful group of officers (including Sarit Thanarat and Thanom Kittikachorn, both dictators-to-be) staged a coup. Armoured vehicles were dispatched to storm Pridi’s residence, but Pridi was already on his way to Singapore. Pibun, now a self-appointed Field Marshal, tore-up the 1946 Constitution and took-on the role of Prime Minister.
To neutralise the House of Representatives, Pibun replaced Pridi’s 1946 Constitution with a Charter that gave the Monarch a Supreme State Council, a 100-member Senate and many other powers, including the right to declare martial law.
After a failed attempt at a come-back in February 1949, Pridi fled alone to China, leaving behind his pregnant wife, Phoonsuk. This so-called ‘Palace Rebellion’, during which Pridi occupied the Grand Palace, was easily crushed by Pibun, but not without some hours of heavy, street-fighting between Pibun’s military and Pridi’s supporters - who included the Royal Thai Navy. Immediately after the Rebellion four socialist MPs (ex-Cabinet ministers) and many other leaders were caught and executed without trial.
In China, Pridi was well-received by Zhou Enlai. In November 1952 Phoonsuk and her eldest son Pal were charged with offences against the internal and external security of the Kingdom. During 84 days in detention, Phoonsuk slept on the floor of a small cell with two other women, but never requested bail. When freed in February 1953 she went in search of her husband, who she knew was somewhere in China. In December 1953 she joined him with 2 of their six children. Pal joined them in 1957, after his release from prison. In China the family was more than well-provided for, but, to be able to better connect with the world and with Thailand, in 1969 the family moved to a small house in the Paris suburbs, where Pridi died peacefully in May 1983. His passing was totally ignored by the Thai State. After years of work to clear accusations, eventually, in 1999, the UNESCO General Conference added the name of Professor Dr. Pridi Phanomyong to the list of the world’s Great Personalities, the third Thai commoner to receive that honour. In 2005, on International Women’s Day, Than Phuying Phoonsuk Phanomyong, President of the Pridi Phanomyong Foundation in Bangkok, received the ‘Outstanding Women in Buddhism Award’ for her peaceful courage in the face of grave personal hardship and political crises.
Pibun’s 1949 Constitution turned the Supreme State Council into the King’s own Privy Council, gave the King the sole right to appoint all members of the Senate and ruled that the House of Representatives required a 2/3 majority to over-rule a royal veto.
In short the model of royalist-military control over the political life of the people of Thailand was cast for the next 60 years.
At the age of 23, Bhumibol Adulyadej, younger brother of the deceased Ananda Mahidol, was crowned King on 5 May 1950.
Coups, rebellions and popular revolts (incomplete):
1912 Palace Revolt (First movement for democracy)
1932 Coup d’État (end of absolute monarchy)
1933 Royalist coup (June)
1933 Royalist coup (‘Boworadet Rebellion’, October)
1935 Rebellion of the Sergeants
1939 Songsuradet Rebellion (royalists)
1947 Military coup
1948 Army General Staff Plot (anti-Pridi)
1949 Palace Rebellion (Pridi’s attempted come-back)
1951 Manhattan Rebellion (Navy rebellion, June)
1951 Military coup (‘Silent Coup’, November)
1953-55 Peace Rebellion (Uprising and crack-down)
1957 Military coup
1958 Military coup
1964 Air force Rebellion
1971 Military coup
1973 Uprising (October)
1976 Uprising and crack-down (October)
1976 Military coup (October)
1977 Military Rebellion (March)
1977 Military coup (October)
1981 Military rebellion (Young Turks)
1985 Military rebellion (Young Turks)
1991 Military coup
1992 Uprising (‘Bloody May’)
2006 Military coup
2009 Uprising (‘Voter’s Uprising’, April)
During the years of Pibun’s dictatorship, King Bhumibol remained a ceremonial figure, but as Pibun’s power waned and social unrest grew, Pibun was challenged by the man who had defeated Pridi’s coup - General Sarit Thanarat. In 1957 Pibun went to the King for support. The King refused him and asked Pibun to resign. When Pibun refused, Sarit seized power in a US-backed, pro-royalist military coup. The King imposed martial law and declared Sarit ‘Military Defender of the Capital’. Pibun fled to Japan, where he died in 1964.
Cold War and the ‘People’s War’
Since 1932 the people of Thailand have had to face more than 20 attempted or successful military coups. The people have had to deal with 18 constitutions and 27 Prime Ministers, most of them military generals. In the 77 years since 1932 only one elected Prime Minister has managed to complete the full 4-year term (the now self-exiled, convicted, embattled Thaksin Shinawatra).
In 1954 the Vietminh pushed the French out of Vietnam and fear of communist insurgency took hold in Thailand.
The dictatorship of Field Marshal Sarit, and of those that followed him, concentrated on building-up and promoting the role of the monarchy - mainly to legitimise their oppression of the poor (and their personal corruption). The military re-introduced palace ceremonies to the Affairs of State and used billions of public money to build palaces and royal projects all over the country, especially in the north, north-east and south where they faced strong opposition from local populations e.g. in the Phupan Mountains (1975) and in Songkla Province (1975) and in the Khaokao Mountains (1985).
In this civil war, sometimes called the ‘People’s War’, which raged on into the 1980ies, hundreds of thousands of poor people were mindlessly classified as ‘communists’ and a threat to monarchy. Thousands went ‘missing’, were imprisoned without trial and/or murdered.
Sarit the monarchy-builder died in 1963 and received a royal cremation. His death revealed the full depth of his personal corruption. Besides the 50 or so mistresses he retained, the squabbles over his fortune exposed the existence of wealth in terms of thousands of hectares of land, dozens of houses and hundreds of millions in cash. He was replaced immediately by General Thanom Kittikachorn, his long-time stand-in-dictator. In a public show against corruption Thanom confiscated 600 million Baht from Sarit’s ‘estate’ and returned it to Government use. Thanom then appointed himself Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Field Marshal, Admiral of the Fleet and Marshal of the Royal Thai Air Force etc., and continued Sarit’s pro-American, anti-Communist politics, thus ensuring himself massive US economic and financial aid during the Vietnam War.
Between 1950 and 1987 the US provided Thailand with more than 2 billion USD in military assistance.
From the early 1960ies Thai society was exposed, for the first time, to the full onslaught of mainstream western culture, especially American culture. The growing communist insurgencies in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia coupled with demands to modernise Thai society placed the people of Thailand under enormous new pressures. Huge amounts of foreign capital flowed into the country to support not only the military build-up but the development of new infra-structure - the roads, dams, irrigation schemes and administrative centres required to tame and control the provinces and promote the so-called Green Revolution. As well, to sustain itself as an independent nation-state, Thailand needed hospitals, schools and universities. Forest cover was reduced from 53% to a mere 28% between 1961 and 1989. During the same period the population doubled, from just over 26 million in 1960 to 54.5 million in 1990.
Millions of small farmers found themselves unable to cope with the Green Revolution’s cash crop imperatives and the rising cost of living. Millions left the land in search of money in the increasingly export-oriented industrial sprawl of Bangkok. The Cold War years in Thailand, dominated by Thai militarism, American military bases, Green Revolution and export-oriented industrialisation, introduced Thai society to the idea that - there’s nothing money can’t buy (50 000 GIs = 50 000 ‘GI-women’).
Extreme exploitation of cheap labour led to increasing industrial unrest and, as the level of education rose, increasing numbers of young people became increasingly critical of the Vietnam War, Thailand’s deep involvement with US imperialism and the immensely corrupt, autocratic character of the Thai state.
Uprising and crack-down - October ’73 & ’76
By October 1973, general public unrest reached a climax. Hundreds of thousands of students, workers, farmers and new middle-class intellectuals gathered in demonstrations on the streets of Bangkok - demanding an end to 10-years of despotic rule under Thanom.
On 14 October 1973, the students faced hand-grenades and machine-gun fire - from the ground and from a helicopter in which the son of Field Marshal Thanom (Lt-Colonel Narong Kittikachorn) manned the machine-gun. Around one hundred students died in the confrontation with the military on the campus of Thammasat University.
The King was forced to step into the open. Thanom was requested to leave the country and the King appointed a new Prime Minister. However, the pride of the Thai military, well-stuffed by the US and others, remained irked by the constantly increasing public unrest. By 1976 the military-controlled mass-media was letting it be known that killing ‘communists’ was OK - like ‘making merit’, and political assassinations became commonplace.
On 6 October 1976, in the name of “Nation, Religion and King”, a large force of military and para-military thugs (New Force, Village Scouts, Red Gaurs etc.) moved against students at Thammasat University who were protesting the return of Thanom. (Thanom, in the robes of a monk, had been welcomed back to Thailand by the royal family.)
According to official figures, on campus and in the adjacent Royal Grounds of the Grand Palace, 41 students were shot, burnt alive or beaten to death in an orgy of violence, with over 700 wounded. Unofficial figures say many more.
Many of the students not imprisoned on that day fled to the ranks of the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) in the jungle and villages, and hundreds of student leaders from universities all over Thailand followed them. They became known as the ‘October People’.
Three decades of fearfully destructive civil war led eventually to the issuing of an Amnesty by Prime Minister Prem in 1982. The CPT disappeared from the stage and many of the October People returned to political life - as university lecturers, human-rights activists, NGO leaders and entrepreneurs, to the Democrat Party and some eventually to Thaksin’s party. Thanom himself lived-out his life in luxury and was given a royal cremation.
Prem’s era
General Prem Tinsulanonda, Thailand’s current ‘Master-of-military-coups’, Prime Minister from 1980 - 1988, member of the Privy Council since 1988 and Chairman since 1998, loves to play middle-man between the Monarchy and the Government and the general public. He himself survived two attempted military coups - by the Young Turks - during his time as PM. (Note: All of the 18-member Privy Council are appointed by the King. About half are Army Chiefs of Staff and the remainder former Chief Justices, Prime Ministers etc.)
Prem managed the military coup of 1991 and the crushing of the May 1992 uprising, and enjoyed architecting the military coup that ousted Thaksin in 2006, for which purpose he went around preaching (effectively it seems) that military and civil service personnel are ‘Servants of the King’.
In fact Prem stands accused of kicking-out four elected Prime Ministers - Chatchai Choonhawan in 1991, Thaksin in 2006, Samak in 2008 and Somchai in 2008. Immediately after he had Abhisit, the current Prime Minister, in place in April 2009 he made a public address to explain what a good PM he will be.
After 40 years in politics ‘Pappa Prem’ continues to wield much power in Thailand.
For the tens of millions of people beaten-down by decades of military dictatorship, it required yet another bloody uprising in May 1992 to crack the walls so carefully built to exclude them from participation in governance.
The Bloody May massacre of 1992 saw 48 citizens shot dead in the streets of Bangkok.
In a by-that-time standard procedure, the King stepped-out (after the massacre) to mediate the uproar and appoint a new Prime Minister.
It took another 5 years of struggle after the Bloody May massacre to establish a so-called People’s Constitution in 1997, and another 8 years before an elected Prime Minister was able to complete a full 4-year term (in 2004).
Rise and fall of Thaksin (1994 - 2006)
Thaksin Shinawatra (59), of Chinese descent, was born into a wealthy merchant family in Northern Thailand, from Chiang Mai. He graduated from the Thai Police Cadet Academy in 1973, studied criminal justice in the US, and reached the rank of lieutenant colonel in the metropolitan police (in Thailand) before moving openly into business in 1987 and politics in 1994. Thaksin seemed to enjoy being on the front-line and, enormously ambitious, succeeded in becoming Thailand’s first-ever elected PM to complete a 4-year term in office (2001 - 2004).
Thaksin did not appear strongly anti-Royalist. He did his best to buy the acceptance and support of the monarchy, but no matter how many billions of private and public money he pushed in that direction it was never sufficient. His style and approach to governance was that of the corporate CEO, welcomed by some but alien and somewhat abhorrent to much of the hierarchy that perceived him as a threat to the established order. He ran fast over, around and under the Establishment when partnership did not suite his purpose.
On the domestic front he managed a ‘rural-poor populist strategy’ which gave him his solid majority in the electorate. In 2001 he kick-started Thailand’s first ever universal health-care scheme - the ‘30 Baht Scheme’. He oversaw the implementation of a ‘0ne Million Baht Village Fund’, a scheme that provided every village in Thailand with a one million cash bonus to be administered at will. He attempted to promote village productivity and assisted farmers in managing their debt burden. He introduced cheap loan programmes for low-income people to buy houses and even taxis. How much of all this was political opportunism and how much genuine concern is largely irrelevant. The rural poor, in the villages of Thailand, yearned to be respectfully acknowledged. They were grateful and gave him their support. He also promoted a vision of Thailand as the ‘Kitchen of the World’, not an especially flattering title, but one that did underscore the importance of the agricultural sector in Thailand’s future.
His ‘War on Drugs’ he did pursue with the most reactionary elements of the Establishment. The countryside was cleaned-up - for a while, but some 2 500 people, innocent and otherwise, lost their lives, often mercilessly. This brought him many enemies, especially amongst the NGOs and, needless-to-say, the drug trade is flourishing again.
With regard to foreign policy, his over-enthusiasm for neo-liberal globalisation and the right he bestowed upon himself to negotiate as well as sign Free Trade Agreements with less than minimal or zero consultation with those affected, was much less than welcome. The immediate and long-term damage caused by Thaksin’s megalomanic manoeuvring on the global stage will take years to repair.
Also, without reserve, Thaksin channelled money to his own family. He was perhaps no more crooked than the others, he just out-manipulated them at their own game - in business and politics. In other words, in the mind of the Establishment, Thaksin had to be got rid of. He has only his own super-ego to blame for his downfall.
In February 2005 Thaksin won a landslide victory with 67% of the vote (19 million votes), but in Thailand that still means next to nothing. His best enemies had already decided that he had to go. A military coup was staged for September 2006 - when Thaksin was in New York attending a meeting of the UN General Assembly. Despite the usual tanks-in-the-streets phenomenon, the coup that deposed Thaksin’s government turned out to be bloodless. Convicted in-absentia for violating political ethics Thaksin has yet to return to Thailand.
The King approved the military junta that replaced Thaksin’s government, and thus also the restoration of Thailand’s customary feudal order - for a few more months.
The 2006 junta began as the ‘Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy’ but, a little too obvious, the name was soon changed to the Council for National Security.
Part Two
3 years of PAD chaos
The People’s Alliance for Democracy, the PAD, was founded by the Bangkok media tycoon Sonthi Limthongkul in February 2006, for the purpose of bringing-down Thaksin.
Sonthi had been an ally of Thaksin - declaring at one time that Thaksin was the best PM that Thailand had experienced, but they parted company and, in mid-2005, with accusations of corruption and disloyalty to the Crown, Sonthi turned against Thaksin. When Thaksin shut-down Sonthi’s TV programme, Sonthi launched his own 24-hour Asia Satellite TV.
With ASTV increasingly effective as a tool for spreading negative gossip about Thaksin, Sonthi was able to ally the State Enterprise Labour Relation Confederation with members of the Democrat Party and with a wide assortment of NGOs, celebrities, intellectuals and civil servants. Decked-out in yellow, this assortment of mainly middle-class Bangkokians called itself the People’s Alliance for Democracy.
Claiming that Thaksin was the sole cause of Thailand’s innumerable problems, and completely ignoring the fact that, whatever Thaksin was not, he was a legally elected PM with a huge electoral majority, the PAD conjured-up some ‘new politics’ which included replacing most elected politicians with appointed “good people”. Appointed by who was left to imagination.
The Democrat Party boycotted the 2006 election and refused to acknowledge that 16 million Thai had voted for Thaksin. The PAD slandered Thaksin’s voters, mainly small farmers, as illiterate morons too ignorant to participate in democracy. The Democrat Party and PAD let it be known that they wanted the King to intervene and appoint a new PM, but the King considered that proposal out-of-order.
The PAD placed itself in a win-or-lose situation and, with slogans like ‘Thaksin out no matter what’, began to court the assistance of like-minded military.
The September 2006 military coup was sprung, as said, when Thaksin was in New York - a bloodless Coup with press pictures of pretty Bangkokians posing with flowers as chums of soldiers and tanks.
Immediately after the Coup many of the intellectual elite, whose feathers Thaksin had ruffled for one reason or other, came forward with the usual platitudes ‘. . although the Coup was wrong we could do nothing about it.’ . . ‘For the sake of the nation it is best for all to allow the Junta to arrange a new election’. Etc.
The Junta’s first step was to annul the hard-won People’s Constitution of 1997. The second step was to give General Surayud Chulanont, a member of the Privy Council, a list of tasks that included forming a new Government, writing a new Constitution, dissolving Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai Party (TRT), arranging a General Election, and increasing the military budget by 33%.
General Surayud became Thailand’s 24th Prime Minister in October 2006 and scheduled a General Election for December 2007.
Thaksin, wrongly or rightly accused of rigging the 2006 General Election, saw his TRT Party dissolved by the Constitutional Court on 13 May 2007.
Of the 377 elected Members of Parliament in the TRT Party, 111 of the leading MPs were banned from politics for 5 years. Those not banned had just enough time for a re-mould before the December election and stood for re-election as the People Power Party (PPP). The Thai Parliament has 480 seats.
The election of December 2007 was the third electoral contest between ‘Thaksin’s people’ and the Democrat Party.
With Thaksin in self-imposed exile and 111 of his leading MPs banned from politics, the way seemed clear for the Democrat Party and, with the eager support of the PAD, the Democrat Party campaigned vigorously with high hopes of victory.
But, alas alack, Thaksin’s people won the day, with the PPP taking 233 seats (with 14 million votes), leaving the Democrat Party with 164 seats.
Again the PAD leadership, which included a Democrat Party MP, refused to accept the result, and resumed their agitation: all traces of ‘Thaksin cronyism’ and his ‘family business’ must be wiped from the pure face of Thai politics.
Short on leaders, the PPP set up government under the large frame of Samak Suntornvej, best known for his interest in cooking.
By this time the PAD leaders were on their way to losing their cool altogether, clarifying their new democracy model with a proposal that 70% of MPs should be good people appointed by good people and only 30% elected.
The PAD’s actions became increasingly wild and lawless.
In May 2008 yellow-clad PAD demonstrators laid siege to Government House. The Royal Thai Army and Royal Thai Police informed PM Samak that they were unable to clear Government House. Reason, law and order began to disintegrate. After 3 months of siege, on August 26 the PAD mob (yellow-shirts) occupied Government House. It seems that the State Enterprise Labour Relations Confederation had promised a General Strike, but in the event only some sectors of the Confederation responded.
For three months Thailand’s Cabinet was chased around Bangkok by the PAD until the Chiefs of the Army and Police suggested to Samak that he dissolve the Parliament, but this didn’t suit the Democrat Party - who had no chance of winning an election. The PAD ‘strategy’ worked better with ‘Samak out’, but Samak was in no mind to give in easily, so he gave the Premiership to Thaksin’s brother-in-law, Somchai Wongsawat, which did nothing to please the PAD. Somchai achieved the distinction of becoming the first PM in Thailand to have never seen the inside of Government House.
The PAD became increasingly provocative. At the start of October demonstrators attacked National Broadcasting TV, the Ministry of Finance and several other government buildings, cutting their water and electricity supplies.
On 7 October the PAD mob attacked the Parliament House - and what a fiasco. Under Government orders the Royal Thai Police attempted to defend the Parliament but (without military backing) found themselves in a sticky situation. The PAD mob fought magnificently with ping-pong bombs, catapults, bricks and metal pipes, stabbing at police with flagpoles and staves and attempting to run them over with pickup trucks. Democrat Party leaders were cheered out of the main entrance of the Parliament House while PM Somchai & Company had to escape by climbing over a fence. In clouds of tear gas the police were beaten back and ended-up defending their own Bangkok Police Headquarters. Five police received gunshot wounds, one front-line PAD woman died and one of the PAD‘s own para-military leaders (an ex-police lieutenant) died when the bombs he was carrying in his own car exploded outside Parliament House. In total, according to the Public Health Ministry, 443 people were wounded.
The PAD leadership had frequently indicated that they had support in the Palace. This claim seemed validated when the Queen, a princess, members of the Privy Council and the military high command and leaders of the Democrat Party, including Abhisit, showed-up for the cremation of the dead PAD woman. For the Thai public this was their ‘Eye-opening Day’.
Never-the-less, Somchai, with his Cabinet in retreat in the north of Thailand, was proving a tougher-than-expected cookie and showed no signs of capitulation. Increasingly desperate the PAD’s actions became increasingly desperate.
On 25 November the PAD mob descended in free-style on Bangkok’s ultra-modern international airport (a successful Thaksin project). With strong indications that the Palace was supporting the PAD, the Police and Army did no more than shuffle their feet, and the PAD mob had no problem in taking-over and completely shutting-down both of Bangkok’s international airports and four other important airports including Phuket. Their action stranded more than 80 aircraft and 300 000 tourists and stopped all international and domestic flights for over a week.
On 26 November the Commander in Chief of the Royal Thai Army proposed that Somchai dissolve his cabinet and that the PAD stop demonstrating, but nobody agreed. And so, on 2 December, the Constitutional Court stepped-in once again and ordered the dissolution of the PPP and also the two other main parties of Somchai’s governing coalition. On 3 December the PAD left the airports and ended their demonstrations.
At long last Abhisit Vejjajiva, the Eton and Oxford educated leader of the Democrat Party and active PAD supporter, was able to proffer himself to the exhausted and depleted Parliament. On 15 December Abhisit finally acquired his much awaited Premiership, and proceeded immediately to reward PAD leaders for their efforts, most notably with the portfolio of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In the street fighting between May and December 2008 about 800 people were wounded and 8 people died. More than 160 legal cases have been filed against the PAD, but as yet no disciplinary action has been taken by any authority against any PAD leaders or supporters. (The Police are said to be investigating!)
All this has, naturally, contributed to a growing sense of disgust amongst the majority of the population, and also to a growing anger.
Already on 2 September 2008 there had been a street battle between PAD yellow-shirts and the red-shirts of the new United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) that was gathering strength to oppose them. In that battle 40 people were wounded and one red-shirt beaten to death.
Frustration boils over
When the UDD called for mass-mobilization a red wave of protest began rising over the landscape.
On 26 March 2009 people began to assemble outside Government House - this time in red shirts. By 8 April half a million protestors representing a wide spectrum of grass-root civil organizations were making their presence felt through peaceful assemblies, not only in Bangkok but also in about 40 of Thailand’s 77 provincial capitals.
After nearly 80 years of non-stop political corruption, uprisings, coups and violent oppression, it is obvious to most outsiders that the root cause of the failure of democratic procedure in Thailand stems from fear of the monarchist establishment’s carefully accumulated instruments of power, which, as each crisis of governance emerges, are used to execute whatever is required to ensure that the majority of Thai people cannot participate effectively in the political life of the country.
In Bangkok in April, the number of people protesting their frustration with the State administrators, in particular with the Privy Council, reached around 300 000, the largest number of protesters on the streets of Bangkok since 1973.
As usual, during times of direct confrontation between the people and their patrons, in April 2009 Thailand’s mainstream media failed to provide the public with accurate reportage on the scale or ferocity of either the uprising or crack-down, and, as usual, in the people’s hour of crisis, studiously side-stepped the real reasons why hundreds of thousands of people representing tens of millions of rural, urban and industrial workers, were demonstrating.
In this manner Thailand’s hamstrung mainstream media usually contributes to the confusion and, by default, to the deepening of social divisions.
ASEAN Summit violence
The eager-beaver Abhisit Government had planned an ASEAN Summit for 10 - 13 April in the east coast resort of Pattaya. Anti-Abhisit demonstrators went to Pattaya to deliver a statement to the ASEAN Secretary General - to underline the fact that Abhisit had no mandate from the people to represent Thailand.
The Statement was delivered to the ASEAN Secretary General in the Pattaya Hotel on 9 April, by about 1 000 people. However, some Abhisit aides had, foolishly, already given the green light to para-military royalist forces to disrupt the demonstration. As the protesters withdrew from the hotel they were attacked by about 500 thugs with ‘Protect the Monarchy’ across their shirts.
Thousands of people from Bangkok and Pattaya moved rapidly to support the anti-Abhisit protest in Pattaya. On the morning of 10 April several thousand descended on the Pattaya Hotel. The Summit was cancelled. Abhisit, his authority badly stung, fled the scene in a Blackhawk helicopter, vowing to restore law-and-order and declaring the red-shirts the "enemies of the nation".
To this point in time the somewhat divided Police and Army had kept themselves out of the play, but some units did respond to Abhisit’s call for help in Pattaya. The leader of the protesters in Pattaya was arrested by police in the early hours of 11 April and then handed to the Army.
After the arrest of the Pattaya leader, a former TRT MP, the confrontation between the Government and the protesters passed out of all control.
The battle for D-Station
On 11 April Abhisit declared a state-of-emergency in and around Bangkok, and issued orders for demonstrators to be cleared from outside Government House within 4 days, and for all UDD communication channels to be cut, especially their on-line satellite TV, the so-called Democracy Station, ‘D-station’ or DTV, that had been set-up in January (2009) to counter the PAD’s ASTV.
For UDD leaders responsible for the demonstration at Government House it was essential to be able to maintain communication with the vast number of demonstrators in different parts of Bangkok, with their tens of millions of supporters across Thailand e.g. in the provincial capitals of Chiang Mai, Udon Thani and Khon Kaen, with the Thai public in general, as well as with the international community. In other words ‘D-station’, their only communication channel, had to be defended.
In the afternoon of 12 April army units with tanks and armoured vehicles started to appear on the streets in different parts of Bangkok, moving in on Government House where red-shirts had set-up road-blocks. Exactly who gave the orders remains unclear. The movement of the troops appears to have been somewhat un-coordinated, some units displaying more resolve than others, with some covering the name of their units to avoid being identified.
Violent confrontation broke-out at Din Daeng, an important inter-section just north of Government House, with the military resorting to tear gas and live ammunition.
A 500-strong column of regular soldiers, commandos with automatic weapons and a humvee mounting a 50mm machine gun advanced to take control of a ThaiCom building in north Bangkok, where several hundred demonstrators had gathered to guard ‘D-station’ transmission.
In the still dark hours of the morning of 13 April a wide area around Government House was turned into a war zone, with chaotic fighting between red-shirts, army units, para-military gangs and also local residents that formed gangs mainly to defend local people and property. The battles raged out-of-control for several hours. From Din Daeng violence spread to other parts of the city. Banks and even a mosque were set ablaze, and there are reports of ‘non-red’ people being paid to commit arson and so on. Many innocent people were caught-up in the ruckus.
Withdrawal
Din Daeng fell to the army at around 07.30, Victory Monument at around 12.30. Army units with tanks and heavy machine guns closed-in on Government House. With red-shirt numbers dwindling UDD leaders, with arrest warrants on their heads, surrendered on the morning of 14 April - to avoid further bloodshed. They were taken to different army camps, charged for a variety of crimes and later released on bail for sums in the region of 10 000 euro.
Amidst the lies, cover-ups and exaggerations, accurate casualty figures take time to emerge - in Thailand often months or years. Two people were shot dead. At least 100 people were wounded, some by gunfire. About 20 soldiers were wounded. Some reports say more than 150 people are missing. In military crack-downs in Thailand, the military usually take care to remove the dead or near-dead from the battlefield e.g. as in the May 1992 uprising, when about 20 of the 46 bodies known to have been removed by the military were never seen again.
Exactly who was responsible for what will never be acknowledged, but the people ask - and the ASEAN and the International Community must ask - what in the name of hell is the reason why tanks and heavy infantry keep appearing on the streets of Bangkok?
Summation
It is not famine, poverty or money that is bringing the poor onto the streets in their hundred of thousands, nor a great love of Thaksin the business tycoon - although he did play a significant role with his ‘phone-ins’ urging revolution.
As poor people will do everywhere, the tens of millions of poor people in Thailand are rising in protest because they can no longer abide the autocratic double-standards of their patrons and administrators, a perfect example of which is provided by Abhisit, twice defeated in elections, active supporter of the long list of yellow-shirt major crimes, and now, as Prime Minister, himself throwing opposition leaders in jail.
The people came onto the streets demanding . .
- reinstatement of their hard-won People’s Constitution (1997);
- a General Election to bring back electoral justice;
- a stop to the non-stop interference of the King’s Privy Council under General Prem Tinsulanonda in the struggle of the Thai people for their democratic rights.
The military crack-down in April was all too familiar. Abhisit may have received some praise from above, but it will be the brave, grass-root women and men who stand firm for the democratic rights of the people who will be honoured in Thai history, not Oxford graduates who order tanks and commando units to confront the legitimate protests of the poorest citizens with live ammunition.
2009 is no longer 2006, no longer 1992 and no longer 1976. After 80 years of struggle and quasi-democracy, Thailand’s new generation pro-democracy activists have decided to stand their ground. As the new wave of democracy activists grows, the autocrats will find it harder and harder to paint their strategies with yellow and gold.
The UDD leaders were arrested and charged. The PAD leaders that vandalised Government House, attacked Parliament House and attacked and occupied international airports now sit smug in a royalist government.
How come the International Community finds playing-along with the sick games of the Thai power-elite so easy? How come it is still talking and wheeling and dealing with Thailand? Is the body-count too low? It would not be difficult for the International Community to condemn the forms of suppression and oppression practiced in Thailand. It would be so refreshing for all if they would.
Beneath the marketed image of Thailand, tens of millions of poor people are being actively, cruelly, and also artfully, prevented from realising their potential as citizens of the 21st century.
The ‘surrender’ of the people’s leaders in April 2009 marks not the end but the beginning of a new phase in the struggle of the poor to remove the corrupt hierarchies that block their road to equal rights, democracy, sustainable development and peace.
Part Three
The specter of civil war?
Besides the loss of just a dozen or so lives and a few hundred injured here and there, what has three years of PAD-inspired, Palace-supported, political chaos produced?
The September 2006 military coup had several objectives: to destroy the 1997 People’s Constitution, to weaken the power of elected Government and to strengthen the power of bureaucracy in the name of the Monarchy.
The recent years of political chaos have brought a raft of ugly, new legislation, for instance: Section 17 of the Emergency Decree of 2005 (introduced by Thaksin) exempts, in very loosely defined ‘emergency situations’, high-ranking persons, state officials and police from civil, criminal or disciplinary liability provided that their actions are ‘performed in good faith, non-discriminatory and not unreasonable in the circumstances’. In other words the decree openly breeches Thailand’s international obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Thailand’s archaic Lès Majesté laws (from the Latin laesa maiestas ‘injury to majesty’) are being increasingly abused, and the Democrat Party is attempting to raise the penalty for alleged disrespect for Monarchy from 3 - 15 years to 5 - 20 years imprisonment.
In Thailand today there is growing a miserable kind of sickness around Lès Majesté, as people have started to sneak information to the authorities about whom they think is being disrespectful, or not respectful enough. It is a sickness than can wipe the last real shine from the smile of the Thai - a very debilitating sickness.
With regard to international trade, after ousting Thaksin the military Junta just jumped straight into his shoes, adopting exactly the same non-democratic approach to negotiating Free Trade Agreements. (In April 2007 General Surayad signed a wide-ranging, far-reaching FTA with Japan that was already in force by November.)
When Abhisit finally reached power he distributed 2000 Baht (40 euro) to 8 million employed people as some kind of ‘stimulus package’, but somehow forgot the 23 million informal sector workers (small farmers, self-employed and un-employed).
The 2006 military coup and last 3-years of chaos have been thoroughly successful in increasing distrust of the state machinery and Monarchy, and in deepening the divide between rich and poor.
On the positive side the chaos has served to shake-up the grass-root sectors and the more enlightened sectors of the middle-class. Thailand is experiencing a new wave of farmers, factory workers, students, academics and grass-root movements that are determined to resist being bottled-up as pawns, fodder and bell-boys for the benefit of Thailand’s image, own greedy elite and multi-national corporations.
New wave fighters for democracy
During the 19 September Coup in 2006, Nuamtong Praiwan, a 60 year-old taxi-driver and life-long human rights activist, rammed his taxi into a military tank. He survived the impact but decided to complete his protest by hanging himself on 31 October 2006. His decision sent a shock-wave through Thailand’s grass-root communities, and a warning to Thailand’s increasingly self-indulgent middle-class that the ‘un-educated’ know and care about the meaning of democracy.
The name of Nuamtong has been raised again and again in the pro-democracy movement. Bangkok has over 100 000 taxi-drivers. On 8 April 2009 taxi-drivers came in large numbers to assist the red-shirt protest outside Government House. On 9 April many took action to jam the streets of Bangkok. On 10 April several hundred taxis were engaged in transporting people from Bangkok to the protest against Abhisit’s ASEAN Summit in Pattaya. When the Army brought tanks onto the streets of Bangkok on 12 April, taxi-drivers risked their taxis and their lives to block the tanks and protect the people.
New wave cyber army
When all media channels were cut or tightly censored in the May 1992 Uprising, it was telephones and fax machines that mobilised people and kept them informed. In April 2009 it was the people’s cyber army that kept information flowing.
Calling for the Government to crush the red-shirts, the chat boards of conservative reactionaries showed their concern for the image of Thailand in relation to economic stability, foreign investment and tourism.
With Abhisit doing all possible to control the media, the cyber chat boards supporting the people’s protest played an important role in countering the absurd accusation that the red-shirts were wreaking havoc with Thailand’s fragile ‘stability’.
With little or no space in Thailand’s mainstream media for airing their thoughts and feelings, the new wave of people’s representatives in cyber space are working hard to by-pass censorship, and inform and warn their sisters and brothers of the dangers they face and why.
Through cyber space the irony of the military crack-down in April is identified as a clone of the 1976 crack-down - 33 years ago. Through cyber space the absurdity of needing mass demonstrations in the 21st century to oppose institutions of monarchy is discussed and analysed. Through cyber space people across the nation are being brought closer to discussion about why, when it comes to welfare and services, civil servants, academics and white collar workers receive preferential treatment.
How come the poor are accused of being a threat to ‘stability’?
The regular citizenry needs little help to understand that it is not they who have sent Thailand into recession, and it is not they who are the reason why Abhisit is now begging for 23 billion USD.
The poor know that it will be they who suffer in the struggle to pay-back Abhisit’s loans - the debts of the elite. The Thai know only too well that the wealth, privileges and splendour of the high echelons of Thai society are entirely dependent on the schemes the ruling elite maintain to limit the participation of the tens of millions of poor people in genuine, democratic procedure.
After the ‘surrender’ of the red-shirt leaders in April, the chat boards became a source of comfort, a space where poor people could share events as they had experienced them, and their frustration at being confronted with yet another military crack-down.
The cyber army plays an important role in helping to track and inform on the health and whereabouts of arrested leaders, and in the search for the dead and missing. In countering government-controlled misinformation the chat-boards throw up important questions. What kind of government blocks discussion on real issues and permits statements like ‘red-shirts are not Thai, not human and should be shot on sight’? How come the Monarchy, Army, Police and the whole academic community do not actively condemn such incitement?
The poor are becoming increasingly conversant with understanding that the ‘stability’ they are being accused of disrupting is, in term of sustainable development, a false construct.
In speaking to the crowd, a co-ordinator of the Farmer’s Network said . . “Farmers have been classified as illiterate fools when it comes to democracy, but we have always participated in the people’s demonstrations against dictatorship - in 1973, 1976, 1992 and 2006. We were never strong enough, but if the military crack-down on demonstrations this time, the farmers will block every road to Bangkok..”
The anger of poor working women was in evidence throughout the April uprising. Women took a leading role in the action at the ASEAN Summit in Pattaya. After Abhisit declared a ‘state-of-emergency’ in Bangkok it was women who found and chased him. It was women who commandeered public buses to block the roads against military tanks. In our struggle for democracy the stories of these bold working-women will be cherished.
Love or fear of monarchy?
Thai people are educated to love their monarchy unconditionally and unquestionably. The problem is that people face the 21st Century, not the 19th Century. The Thai have no other option than to question the repetitiveness of military crack-downs on the legitimate interests of the majority of the population.
As citizens of a world that has now identified and agreed to stand-up for universal human rights, modern-day Thai are duty-bound to question the use of Lès Majesté laws which, with origins in Ancient Rome, have always been related to the bolstering of political power. All phenomena can be connected but most people agree that the connection between Lès Majesté laws and love is tenuous and, in today’s world, nothing less than highly suspect.
It would be extremely foolish for the Palace and the Army to ignore the extent to which people all across Thailand (and across the world) are questioning the relation between their Monarchy and their Parliament.
Largely silenced by fear of Lès Majesté laws, Bangkok-based media is no longer able to represent the majority of the people of Thailand and, consciously or not, tends to aggravate rather than mediate the growing divide between the interests of the rural community and those of the new urban middle-class.
Some observers avoid confrontation with the, at present, increasingly odorous application of Lès Majesté laws, by saying they will fade with time. That’s for sure, but in the meantime, in both passive and active form, they continue to protect the vast, capital wealth and business interests of the Monarchy (by far the richest Monarchy in the world). Thailand’s Lès Majesté laws are an effective tool for constructing the image of ‘the land of smiles’, a cruel instrument that diplomatic missions love to compliment and multi-national sharks love to exploit. For them Thailand is Paradise.
If in the 21st century the specter of civil war rises over the horizon of a country that is endowed with all the natural resources that any society could ever hope for, there must be some substantial reasons.
All analysis of Thailand’s current domestic crisis places the Monarchy at the epicentre of debate, that is to say - the Palace and Privy Council face real problems - surely not because of the poor people but because of what they do.
Thailand needs a Royal House and the Thai want to love their King and Queen, and so can it be, when the Royal House recognises that it must make way for democracy. It would make life much easier for the Royal Household if it did.
In the modern world, military Juntas are an anathema, a truly ugly phenomenon symbolising retarded governance.
Are the ASEAN peoples going to allow their future prospects to be over-ruled by a resurgent militarism?
Together for democracy
The growth of the Port of Bangkok was no accident, and nobody has benefited more than the Crown Property Bureau - the wealthiest landlord in the world.
Nobody wants a yellow-red confrontation in Bangkok to drag Thailand any further into the mud, let alone to civil war.
Thailand’s rural communities and urban poor are just saying that ‘We’ve had enough . . of seeing our lives degraded. We are no longer prepared to vote for the interests and well-being of the urban mid
