by Philip J Cunningham
The State of Emergency is bad news for Thailand, bad news for
believers in peaceful struggle and bad news for newspapers.
Lethal forces that could unwittingly plunge Thailand into civil
war are in play, and while it is not too late for sane minds and the better
angels of Thai political nature to prevail, time is running out.
The caretaker government’s declaration of State of Emergency has
unfortunately pushed Thailand’s doomsday clock to an interval perilously close
to midnight. Such an act, with the belligerent Chalerm Yubamrung at the helm,
bodes poorly for peace and unity in the nation’s future.
This, despite caretaker Yingluck’s solemn pledge to UN Secretary
General Ban Ki Moon that she would not declare a State of Emergency, as
recorded in the transcript from the Secretary General’s office on the 38th floor of the UN that
was made available in New York last week.
What happened? There is strong anecdotal evidence that Yingluck
might actually have liked to step down earlier this month, but she didn’t. A
week ago she was saying she had no desire to impose a state of emergency,
either, which by its very legal clauses deprives citizens of rights, and rights
to legal redress.
Why did Yingluck change her mind on so crucial and divisive an
issue? Did a little bird whisper something in her ear? Could it be the same
out-of-the-country source who persuaded her and the party she supposedly leads
to accept the last-minute inclusion of convicted felon Thaksin Shinawatra in an
ill-conceived and unpopular amnesty scheme?
While it is not possible to pinpoint in each and every case when
the caretaker PM has been her own woman, and when she has been a medium for her
fugitive elder brother, I think everyone would agree that it is high time for
the real Yingluck to stand up and set a good example for women and girls in the
kingdom. It’s high time she showed the courage of her convictions instead of
reflexively kowtowing to her bossy big brother. It’s not too late for her to
show the entire electorate that being independent, principled and holding the
highest civilian office in the nation are not incompatible things.
The transcript of Yingluck’s telephone conversation with the UN
chief reveals a person with good manners, good protocol but a lack of original
thought and imagination.
She has the dispiriting tendency to evade difficult truths, and
tends to repeat a party line that has been formulated by others. On the one
hand she told Ban Ki Moon there would be no state of emergency, on the other
hand she trotted out the usual crackdown excuses, saying that “drugs” and
“weapons” could be found among her political enemies, while not acknowledging
evidence of the same among her allies.
Elections are not necessarily the problem, as some of Suthep’s
followers seem to believe, but elections are not the answer at the present
time. If a Tammany Hall type of electoral-based political cult is causing a
nation to rip its heart out, and the State of Emergency narrowly focused on
Bangkok promises to do just that, then the system needs reform before a
periodic flick of the wrist at a voting booth is going to produce decent
democratic results.
The obsession with elections smacks of Cold War political
theatre, the sort of thing that tyrants like Ferdinand Marcos perfected,
installing superficially democratic regimes that then went on to rape, rob and
pillage the wealth of the nation for decades to come.
A free press is a pillar, indeed, a necessary precursor to a
truly democratic election. Thaksin’s systemic long-term attacks and attempts to
buy the Thai press are almost as well known as his extrajudicial campaign of
murder in the so-called “war on drugs.”
Based on the evidence, it is fair to say that Thaksin’s rule by
proxy represents not democracy but its polar opposite.
Thirayuth Boonmee, a key member of the 1970’s October generation
of rebels, is still fighting tyranny and corruption, unlike some of his
erstwhile comrades who have joined the Shinawatra bandwagon. He recently
offered an original analysis of how Thaksin’s “anarchy,” as he calls it, has
destroyed the independence of the state bureaucracy and is set to ruin the
country.
It’s a far more penetrating analysis than silly,
communist-sounding platitudes about how two plus two equals four and some of
the other lame attempts such as “respect my vote,” which seeks to make peace
with a corrosive political machine in which votes are abrogated and used, not
respected.
If nothing else, Thaksin, and his assorted proxies have never
wavered from the view of democracy as a “winner-takes-all” lottery for the
ruling party, with maximum benefit accruing to the man on top, to the detriment
of the nation as a whole.
While I don’t pretend to understand Mr. Suthep’s politics,
I believe he is honest in portraying himself not as a new strongman for a
country that is weary of domineering figures, but as a short-term bridge
figure, to lead Thailand out of the Shinawatra-rigged political trap into a
neutral zone where national affairs can be gotten into order and cooperative
norms of Thai political behavior can be restored.
There’s no need to make a big deal about the need for elections
in February, they can and should come later.
One doesn’t get the feeling that the millions who have
demonstrated in recent weeks were unduly concerned with what foreign
journalists at the New York Times or BBC might say nor did they resort to phony
democratic rhetoric only to please the powers that be in Washington.
Nor is the crowd going to kowtow to Tokyo and Beijing. Japan’s
former defense minister Yuriko Koike wrote an embarrassingly pro-rightist piece
equating Thaksin with a tough stance on China, slyly hinting that the street
crowd is pro-China. On the other hand, Beijing has tolerated Thaksin’s active
politicking from its dominion of Hong Kong where he regularly holds “audiences”
with top aides who measure their success in the number of minutes he grants
each of them respectively.
It is unknown what effect the Yingluck
caretaker government’s emergency decree will have on free press in the weeks
and months to come, but if past behavior is any judge, the consolidation of
Shinawatra political and economic fortune will see a decline of free speech and
media diversity.
