A protester wearing a Guy Fawkes mask marches on a main road during an anti-Thaksin demonstration at a
shopping centre last month. (photo credit EPA/Narong Sangnak)
"The
Year of Living Dangerously" (Bangkok Post, July 17, 2013)
Philip
J Cunningam
Thailand is one of the world's top tourist destinations, and this success couldn't have come at
a worse time, not because the country hasn’t earned it, and not because it
isn’t a fun place to visit, but because Thai society is on the brink, entering
its year of living dangerously. To the background drumbeat of mounting
political pressures, there are endless attractions and distractions and myriad,
shimmering sights to see. The food is delicious, the music swings, service is
supreme and there are serene temples, street snacks and tempting nightlife.
Even the egotistical strutting of local politicos, and the consumerist
tail-dancing of hi-so snobs can be viewed as background color for sojourners
soaking up the sun and fun and non-stop folly in the kaleidoscopic tropical
wonderland.
Unfortunately for
tourists, Thailand is not a mind-bending fantasy, but a real, fractured country
in crisis, teetering on the edge of a political abyss, facing imminent political
implosion. The record-breaking twenty million pleasure-seeking foreign arrivals
may suddenly discover that a funland lurching towards civil war in fits and
starts is no holiday bargain. Crime against tourists appear to be on the
upswing, and while there is no neat correlation between rape, rip-offs, murder
and the political descent into madness, the risk of tourists becoming
collateral damage is a real one.
Recent volatile events in
Cairo are being monitored closely in Bangkok because there are haunting political
parallels. Thailand has more experience with electoral democracy, but it also
has more experience with coups. Both Egypt and Thailand have been major
recipients of US military aid, and each has duly attempted to emulate
American-mandated democratic trappings. This has led to the creation of
formidable political machines that win at the polls only to gobble up power,
cripple the opposition and hoard the ill-begotten goods as ruthlessly as any
strong-arm patron would.
In Egypt, the Muslim
Brotherhood abused a broad electoral mandate, allowing the economy to crumble
and crime to soar while trying to cow the courts in the direction of Sharia
law, while in Thailand, valuable time has been wasted on schemes designed to
pave the way for Thaksin’s return with a get-out-of-jail-free card, distracting
the nation’s law-makers from tackling more pressing problems of poverty, crime,
corruption and the “fire-in-the-south” communal violence that has claimed
almost 5,000 lives.
The ill-conceived amnesty
bills range from the anarchic --letting every violent offender since 2006 off
the hook-- to the ironic, such as a proposal by coup-maker Sonthi Bunyaratglin
to forgive and forget “political” offences.
Now out of power, under an
administration where the political opposition is not given its due as part of
the game, a very vulnerable Abhisit has been hit with spurious murder charges
by PM Yingluck’s Ministry of Justice. Meanwhile, there’s been enough
behind-the-scenes-scheming to make Machiavelli blush, a sample of which has
emerged in the form of an audio tape documenting Thaksin’s attempts to wheel
and deal with the military.
But that’s not all. Former
Prime Minister Abhisit recently revealed that he has been offered a deal by an
unnamed nemesis, the gist of which was to approve the pro-Thaksin amnesty bill
if he wanted capital charges dropped against himself.
So, say what one might about
Abhisit’s privileged childhood spent mostly in England, or the disadvantages of
behaving like a gentleman when inside the ruthless ring of political combat, it
is the rare man who calmly faces legal charges that could result in his
execution. Unlike Thaksin, who fled the country in 2008, using a short,
court-approved trip to the Beijing Olympics as a pretext to escape justice for
economic crimes, Abhisit is willing to face grave, life-and-death charges
against him in court and in country.
To those aligned with the
Shinawatra bandwagon, Abhisit’s stubborn courage makes him the anti-Thaksin. He
was inexplicably portrayed as a ghoulish, long-fanged, bloodthirsty, Dracula by
partisan propagandists well before the crackdown in 2011, but that was trash
talk and street theatre. From the very outset, pro-Thaksin agitators revealed
their darkest desires in a self-fulfilling prophecy of bloody chaos by pouring
buckets of donated blood on the gate of Abhisit's home. And it was in keeping
with the same desperate, apocalyptic agenda that Thaksin’s negotiators courted
a crackdown by refusing a fair and reasonable agreement to hold new elections within
six months.
A terrible bloodbath followed
on May 19, 2011. There is no disputing the dreadful violence, much of it
committed in the course of a clumsy military crackdown, but there were also
rogue snipers, police asleep on the job and partisan men in black running
interference; factors which made the military dispersal of the crowd at
Rajprasong an unmitigated disaster for all sides.
And yet, if the opportunistic
deals with the military and the shameless horse-trading that Abhisit recently
alluded to are for real, it just goes to show that the Shinawatra don did not
have any skin in the game, and can conveniently distance himself from the
bloody battles he praised so highly from the sidelines.
To such a leader there are no
permanent friends or enemies, nor any concept of impartial justice or lasting
loyalty to the foot-soldiers fallen at the barricades, just opportunism at each
and every turn.
What this potent political
mix means for holiday-goers soaking up the sun, dancing in the moonlight and
cooling in crystalline swimming pools is uncertain, but if the restless Thaksin
can’t overcome his heartless lust for power, Thailand loses, and all bets are
off.
Millions of visitors may find
themselves in unexpected jeopardy, akin to Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver in
Peter Weir’s “The Year of Living Dangerously,” set in Indonesia on the eve of social breakdown. Even the most cosmopolitan and
street-wise traveler is at risk when it comes to dealing with the unseen
political riptides that deliver periodic terror to the shores of what otherwise
may seem a bountiful, steamy tropical paradise.
If the most divisive figure
in modern times orchestrates a return to Thailand, by hook or by crook, coups
and chaos will follow, and tourists won’t be able get to the airport fast
enough.
