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.

U.S. to help train Cambodia's peacekeeping forces

For the last several years, Cambodia has sent hundreds of its peacekeeping force to Sudan, Chad and Central Africa (blogger's)

March 15, 2010
Xinhua

Visiting U.S. high-ranking military officer Gen. William Crowe has accepted a request by Cambodia's National Center for Peacekeeping Forces and ERW Clearance (NPMEC) to train Cambodian forces on peacekeeping mission, official news agency AKP reported on Monday.

The request was made by Gen. Sem Sovanny, general director of the NPMEC, during a visit to the Oudong military training school on Mar. 11 by Gen. William Crowe who is in charge of South Asia and ASEAN affairs office under the U.S. Department of Defense, AKP said.

The visit to Cambodia is made according to the advice by leaders of the U.S. Department of Defense after a meeting in Washington between a Cambodian military delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense Gen. Tea Banh and the U.S. Secretary of Defense Gen. Robert Gate, said Gen. William Crowe.

He said that the U.S. Secretary of Defense fully supported the activities of mine-clearance by the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces ( RCAF).

Visiting to several activities of mine-marking in the artificial minefields along with the slide show of the past mine- clearance activities made by the RCAF in Sudan and the RCAF joining the Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI) held in many countries such as in Mongolia, Bangladesh, Indonesia .., Gen. William Crowe highly valued the RCAF's potentiality and remarkable achievements.

He said that he will attend the GPOI-2010, which is due to be held in Cambodia in July this year, as a member of the U.N. high- ranking delegation.

Asia's Tourists Hit the Beaches, Warming Region's Economy

The Wall Street Journal
By ALEX FRANGOS

SIEM REAP, Cambodia—Resurgent tourism within Asia is helping to drive economic recoveries, and demonstrating the growing power of regional consumers.

Just ask Kwong Meng Geip, a purveyor of a medicinal mushroom spirit a few miles from the ancient temples of Angkor Wat. South Koreans who arrive on tour buses are the biggest buyers of the unique brew he makes in clay barrels. And the Koreans are flowing back after a slow 2009.

"My business is better than before," says Mr. Kwong, as he presides over displays of the yellow-tinged liquor at the Angkor Rice Wine Workshop, a distillery and souvenir shop he owns. "It releases the hurt," he says of the liquor.

Mr. Kwong attributes the medicinal benefits to the special 150 pound soo krom mushrooms used to make the mild-tasting liquor, which sells for $25 a bottle.

What's happening at Mr. Kwong's shop is playing out across the region. Unlike the U.S. and Europe, where unemployment remains high and consumers are cautious, Asia's unemployment rates are falling. That has given Asians the confidence to travel, some for the first time.

Tourism generally accounts for a relatively small share of economic output. But it signals an important willingness among consumers to spend.

Consumption spending more broadly has been driving growth across Asia. Government stimulus spending and subsidies for consumers to buy big-ticket items such as cars and appliances have helped economies expand at healthy rates. Chinese consumers bought more cars than Americans last year, for instance.

But the shift into travel spending, seen as a big-ticket discretionary item, is a sign perhaps of the next stage of the recovery.

Unlike government-encouraged car purchases, "personal travel is a real indicator of consumer spending, in the sense that there are no subsidies involved," says Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, chief economist for MasterCard Worldwide, based in Singapore.

He says Asian consumers, not burdened by debt as were many in the West, socked away money during the downturn and are now spending some of those savings on travel.

Like auto purchases, tourism is a spending multiplier that puts money in the hands of a diverse set of actors in the economy, from airline pilots to taxi drivers and chambermaids. "It's a very good industry as a growth stimulus for the destination countries," says Mr. Hedrick-Wong.

The rise in intra-Asia tourism may help achieve a long-term goal sought by many policy makers around the world: a rebalancing of the global economy in which consumer spending becomes a bigger driver of Asia's growth.

To be sure, Asia's export-dependent economies still need American and European demand for their goods. And that goes for tourism. High-spending Americans and Germans are a critical source of demand in places such as Thailand and Indonesia. But more intra-Asian travel helps to ameliorate the sluggish travel recovery among Western consumers as they pay off home loans and credit-card bills.

An important source of tourism revenue for the rest of the region is China. During the Lunar New Year holiday in February, a popular time for travel in the Chinese world, the number of mainland Chinese who went abroad increased nearly 21% from the year before to 2.4 million, according to government statistics.

Zu Hui, 28 years old, a worker at an oil-trading company in Beijing, recently took her honeymoon trip to the beach island of Phuket, Thailand. It was her first exploration outside China, and she called it "a great trip" filled with romance and water sports.

She says going abroad can be cheaper than traveling within China, and it allows her to avoid the crowds in China during peak holiday periods. She's now planning a trip to Dubai.

In Malaysia, tourist arrivals have "not been disrupted because most of them come from Asia and the Middle East and from the emerging world," says central bank governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz.

Malaysia bucked the global downtrend in travel and managed to attract 22 million tourists in 2009, a 7% increase from the year before. Tourism spending helped boost fourth-quarter growth to 4.5%. More than a million tourists came from China for the first time. India sent nearly 590,000 tourists to Malaysia.

Overall, Southeast Asia saw a 2% increase in international visitors in 2009, according to the Pacific Asia Travel Association. Global international travel fell 4%, says the World Travel Organization, led by Europe and North America, both down 6%.

The return of tourism activity is especially important to parts of Asia where the leisure travel industry is a key component of growth.

Tourism expenditures made up 13.6% of GDP in Cambodia in 2008, 9.5% in Malaysia, and 8.4% in Thailand, according to the United Nations World Travel Organization. Taiwan credited its stronger-than-expected growth to a surge in tourism after rules were relaxed on visitors from mainland China.

In the dusty colonial town of Siem Reap, visitors from South Korea, China and Taiwan have begun to stream in again after a sharp downturn in 2009. The number of Korean tourists venturing to Cambodia dropped 26% in 2009, as Korea's currency lost almost a third of its value during the financial crisis.

By December, however, Korean arrivals to Cambodia bounced back 21% compared to 2008 lows. Visitors from China and Taiwan also rebounded sharply in December, up 14% and 34% respectively, according to Cambodia's Ministry of Tourism. Tour guides, motor-taxi drivers and folks like Mr. Kwong, the winemaker, are starting to get busy again.

"More and more people are coming," says Lee KyungMi, owner of Damnak Spa, a small hotel and spa in Siem Reap that caters to Korean visitors. The native of Seoul cautions business is still not where it was two years ago, when a quarter-million Koreans visited Cambodia, many to see the Buddhist temples around Angkor Wat.

The main drag in Siem Reap is lined with Korean-owned hotels and Korean barbecue restaurants. And three new golf courses are also a magnet.

"Korean golfers are our major market," says Adam Robertson, manager of the Angkor Golf resort. They make up 70% of his customers. "When the Korean won devalued, that was hard to take." January and the first half of February was "very good."

High-end hotel operators in the area say they have seen a pickup in travelers from the U.S. and Europe, but they are aiming their biggest growth at Asian travelers.

"The last two months a lot more Koreans are coming," says Emmett McHenry, general manager at the Sokha Angkor Resort in Siem Reap. He has offered special deals to Chinese and Korean travel agencies and figures one-quarter of his visitors are from the two countries.

The rebound in travel spending points to a possible sweet spot in Asian growth. A modest demand recovery in the U.S. and Europe, combined with a confident Asian consumer, could be enough to keep Asia's economies humming for awhile.
—Juliet Ye contributed to this article.

Write to Alex Frangos at alex.frangos@wsj.com