I arrived back in Thailand after my trip to Cambodia to find the country’s capital in turmoil. Before I left I had come across government buildings occupied by thousands of PAD (People’s Alliance for Democracy) protesters attempting to oust then prime minister Somchai Wongsawat, who they considered a stooge of his disgraced predecessor and former Manchester City owner Thaksin Shinawatra. But things had since stepped up a gear.
The majority of the population of Thailand lives in the vast, poverty-stricken, rural province of Issarn in the country’s north-east. High population density in this rice-growing region has meant the educated middle and upper-class residents of Bangkok have regularly found themselves on the losing side of the Bangkok–Issarn divide come election day. PAD has argued that vote-buying is rampant in rural areas and poor farmers regularly sell their votes to the ruling party for a kilo bag of rice or a bottle of fish sauce.
With successive governments collapsing or being forced from power amid claims of corruption and incompetence, protesters now feel that Western-style democracy simply does not fit in Thailand. Divisions have been exacerbated by disputed PAD claims that Shinawatra and his supporters plan to dethrone the revered King of Thailand, HRH Bhumibol Adulyadej – a figure who is worshiped by the Thai people. PAD wants to scrap the current one-man-one-vote system and replace it with weighted democracy and an appointed parliament dominated by bureaucrats and the military.
While I was off barbequing myself on Cambodia’s Occheauteal Beach, the PAD had announced that after months of protests, it was time for a ‘final battle’ with Wongsawat. Demonstrations were intensified, more government buildings were taken over and swathes of the city were shut down.
With the stakes raised, the government responded by announcing a state of emergency which permitted police and soldiers to put civil liberties on hold and resort to military force in policing when deemed necessary. Road blocks were thrown up and scores of protesters were detained for 30-day stints without sentence. Riot police were called onto the streets as events turned violent, and a number of protesters were killed either by cops or by a sort of pro-Shinawatra/Wongsawat militia that appeared to have been bussed in for the purpose. Several more were killed when militia members lobbed hand grenades into the middle of groups of protesting PAD members.
A Thai friend of mine e-mailed me a link to a graphic YouTube clip of the aftermath of one such attack – it showed a Thai protester sitting on the ground looking at the two bloodied stumps where his legs used to be, while a ring of people stood around staring at him.
By the time PAD protesters took over Bangkok’s two airports in late November, the situation was becoming desperate. Massive damage was being done to the country’s reputation as a holiday destination and many of the millions of Thais reliant on the tourism industry already hit by the global financial slowdown were feeling the pinch. There was a general consensus that matters could not be permitted to continue as they were, and when the army failed to respond with force after the PAD effectively cut the country off from the rest of the world, it was clear that they had won the day.
The Thai court responded by banning Wongsawat from politics and dissolving his party. The government was forced from power and the opposition Democrat Party’s English-born and Oxford-educated leader took over. The 44-year-old Abhisit Vejjajiva is seen very much as coming from the upper echelons of what is a deeply-stratified Thai society and is not particularly popular among either the rural poor or the city’s working class, although his plans to introduce free healthcare, a higher minimum wage and free education, textbooks and milk for nursery-school children should win many over.
From the PAD point of view, his appointment will largely be welcomed in that he has built a reputation as being thoroughly against corruption and a figure unlikely to involve himself in anything untoward. However, his greatest asset to PAD supporters is that he has been in opposition to the various incarnations of Shinawatra’s political parties from the outset. It is unlikely that he will implement PAD’s more radical reforms regarding the rolling back of democratic entitlements, although with one drawn from their own now in power, many in PAD will be reassessing whether this is really still necessary.
Robert Carry is a former staff journalist at Metro Éireann where he served as chief sports reporter and headed the paper’s Northern Ireland news section. He is currently working in Thailand as the news editor of an English-language magazine.
