THAILAND: After ASEAN Summit Fiasco, Summer of Discontent Looms

• Analysis by Marwaan Macan-Markar (bangkok)
• Saturday, April 11, 2009
• Inter Press Service

The four-month-old coalition government, headed by the Democrat Party, was forced to call off the two-day, 16-nation summit after thousands of anti-government protesters broke through a wall of police and army personnel guarding the venue and swarmed into the conference halls.

In this loss to the country, anyone or any group of people that announces a victory should be regarded as the true enemies of Thailand, the visibly shaken Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said at a press conference in the aftermath of the ruined summit. 'Whatever status I have, I will never allow these people to become influential.'

The summit had brought together leaders of countries who belong to a 10- member regional bloc, the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN), and leaders from its economic and dialogue partners.

ASEAN’s members include Brunei, Burma (or Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam and the summit’s host, Thailand. The bloc’s partners range from China, Japan and South Korea to Australia and India.

The scene of anarchy that was played out in Pattaya, a resort town south of Bangkok where the leaders were to talk, was, in a sense, the final act of a regional meeting that had struggled to get underway due to the political tug- of-war that has gripped this country since the September 2006 coup.

The 14th ASEAN summit had to be postponed twice late last year after the coalition government of the day, led by the People Power Party (PPP), was crippled due to a protest movement that drew thousands of yellow-shirt wearing followers from the urban elites who openly advocated pro-royalist, conservative and right-wing views.

The 'yellow-shirts' took to the streets in late March 2008 and then stormed the prime minister’s office, Government House, in August and occupied it for over three months. In late November, they gave the PPP government its bloodiest nose by forcefully taking over Bangkok’s largest international airport, bringing all airline traffic to a halt.

The Democrat Party, the opposition in 2008, got its chance to govern and host the summit in 2009 due to fortunate circumstances. In December, the PPP-led coalition, which had won convincingly at a late 2007 general election, was disbanded in a controversial ruling by a superior court. The Democrats filled the void thanks to backroom deals involving the country’s powerful military and large sums of money reportedly paid to parliamentarians to join the new coalition.

This shift of power hardly impressed supporters of the United Front of Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), who stormed the ASEAN summit and forced its cancellation over the weekend. Supporters of this protest movement are recognised by the trademark red shirts that they wear and their slogans against the Democrat Party-led coalition, declaring that it 'lacks legitimacy.'

The 'red shirts' also stand out for their open support of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted by the military in the 2006 putsch and is on the run in exile to avoid arrest for breaking conflict-of-interest laws and corruption charges.

Thaksin led a government that won successive parliamentary elections in 2001 and 2005 with unprecedented majorities. He still has deep support among the urban and provincial underclass due to a raft of pro-poor policies he implemented during his five-and-a-half-year term in office.

The PPP drew similar support due to its strong ties with the deposed Thaksin. Its electoral triumph in the late 2007 poll saw Thailand making a tentative return to democracy after being under the rule of a junta for 16 months.

But, for the second time in less than two years the electoral choice of the country’s largest constituency - the urban and provincial poor - was under attack by the political conservative forces that revile Thaksin and his associates. While it was the army that played its part through the country’s 18th coup in 2006, in 2008 it was the courts, issuing controversial and, at times, farcical judgements.

The ruling Democrat-led administration is being buffeted by the rage that has burst to the surface from this disenfranchised constituency. The 'red shirts' have taken to the streets since late March and have begun to repeat some tactics of the 'yellow shirts' - holding round-the-clock protests outside Government House.

Among them are people like Pricha Jaibanpad, a taxi driver from the northern city of Chiang Mai. This 48-year-old was involved in a form of civil disobedience on Thursday that demonstrated the muscle of the marginalised: nearly 100 taxi drivers parked their vehicles across the streets of a busy intersection, clogging traffic and bring parts of Bangkok to a standstill.

'Many taxi drivers have come. They feel it is their responsibility because of the love for democracy,' said Pricha, standing by his car that had a coat of canary yellow and green paint and carried a banner in Thai, which read: 'Elite, aristocrat policy exploits human dignity.'

The show of force by the 'red shirts' in the recent weeks to shake up the conservative political establishment that the Democrat-led administration presides over is already being viewed as a watershed moment in Thai politics.

'The country has had political mobilisations against governments going back to 1973. But what is new is that it is not the Bangkok middle class trying to force a government out of power; for the first time, it is the up-country people trying to push the government in Bangkok out,' says Michael Nelson, a German academic who has written extensively on Thai politics.

The emerging 'red shirt' movement goes against a view that the urban elite has long held, that they determine the country’s national agenda, Nelson explained in an interview. 'There is a Thai saying that the up-country people vote governments in and the Bangkok people topple the governments.'

He views this sea change as a 'sign of enormous political progress' of a constituency that was often sneered at by the elites as being passive, uneducated and not interested in politics. 'They want to have more share to determine the national agenda.'

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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