December 3, 2008
Analysis: dark rumours around Thai monarchy and PAD victory
Richard Lloyd Parry
On the face of it =96 and certainly to the quarter of a million tourists
stranded for the past week in hotels and departure lounges =96 it seems
a merciful resolution to an absurd situation. Last night, after the
Thai Prime Minister was forced from power, the People=92s Alliance for
Democracy (PAD) announced that it was calling off its action.
The yellow-shirted activists will retreat from the halls of
Suvarnabhumi airport, and the three-month occupation of Government
House in central Bangkok by the PAD will also come to an end.
To assume that Thailand is now at peace would be a mistake, however.
The spectacle of the past week =96 in which the tourism and export
industries of an entire country have been held to ransom by a few
thousand middle-class zealots =96 demonstrates the alarming
transformation that has come over Thailand in the past three years.
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From one of the most stable nations in SouthEast Asia, it has become a
place where effective democratic politics has almost ceased to
function.
The key question is how such a mob, with a few light arms at best, was
able to occupy a key strategic installation such as an airport so
easily and for so long.
If foreign soldiers or terrorists, such as the ones who attacked
Mumbai last week, had stormed Suvarnabhumi airport, there is little
doubt that the Thai police and Army would have fought against them. It
was not that they could not keep out the PAD, but that they chose not
to.
And this raises the crucial question =96 who is really running Thailand?
Despite its name, the PAD favours a constitutional restriction of
democracy to reduce the influence of rural voters. The majority of
voters may reject the politics of the PAD, but its apparent immunity
in the past week shows that it has backing from institutions powerful
enough to intimidate the police and the Army.
Who might they be? The answers one hears, even from the best-informed
Thais, are vague and hard to prove. No doubt many of the PAD
supporters are genuine in their disgust at the now-exiled Thaksin
Shinawatra and the adulation that he won among the rural poor =96 but
this does not explain how they were able so blatantly to flout the
law.
Sondhi Limthongkul, the chief leader of the movement, is a wealthy
media mogul, but he alone could not have sustained the PAD for so
long.
Darker rumours =96 and they are little more than that =96 infer support
within the powerful Thai monarchy, perhaps from Queen Sirikit, who has
been notable for expressing sympathy for PAD members injured in
clashes with the police. Her support for the movement, the speculation
goes, is intended to counteract the influence that Mr Thaksin was said
to have had over her son, the unpopular Crown Prince Maha
Vajiralongkorn.
All of this is difficult even to talk about in Thailand, where the
crime of l=E8se-majest=E9 =96 defaming the monarchy =96 is punishable with
prison sentences. Whatever the truth behind the sinister PAD, it will
continue to exert its influence long after the unhappy tourists have
gone home.
* Have your say
Finally the press (or at least the Times) are starting to ask the
right questions. This is impossible here in Thailand due to the l=E8se-
majest=E9 laws. In reality this has got little to do with corruption or
democracy. It's simply a power struggle between Dr. T. Shinawatra and
the XXXXXXX.
David, Bangkok, Thailand
I went to Thai enews where this article was reprinted without the
darker rumors section. It's a shame that the Thai people have to put
up with a pseudo-democracy because the King still rules in an archaic
demeanor. The country would be better off without him.
Rocky, Wiesbaden, Germany
Bizarrely, it appears PAD may have been pulled back by their rich
controllers, precisely because of their success. It is the rich
business elite that is losing all the money because of the collapse of
trade and tourism. It has been an expensive exercise for them, and it
may not be finished yet.
George Hudson, Bangkok, Thailand |