Bloody desperation for Thailand's reds

Asia Times Online
By Shawn W Crispin
Mar 17, 2010

BANGKOK - Despite a made-for-television mass rally, rousing speeches, a phone-in 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.