Much excitement in the land of smiles as we await tomorrow’s shutdown of Bangkok by Suthep’s PDRC.
PDRC? Let’s start at the back.
C- Committee. The original plan was that the committee would comprise 27 of Suthep’s mates; but has now been expanded to around 400 “good” people that Suthep will choose. They will not obtain consensus by voting, so will presumably be placed in a large room and will shout at each other for months on end.
Reform - Rather vague at this point; because it is going to need the committee to do a load of shouting before anything concrete can be decided; and then several years before the magnificent reforms can be implemented; after which the people can have the vote again. Maybe.
Democratic - Democracy is to be suspended for an indefinite period at the whim of Suthep and his “good” people; so the group should really be PRC, or just SRC, given:
P - People’s. In this case, Suthep, his 400 “good” people and the thousands who will take to the streets to block Bangkok in defiance of the millions of voters who elected the current government, and the millions more who just want this nonsense to stop and life to return to normal.
So if the PDRC concept seems a little shaky, let’s hope that the man in charge has impeccable credentials…. Suthep’s Wikipedia entry is a good place to start. Not exactly a shining star of cleanliness in the Democrat government, which itself was considered to have stooped even lower in the corruption stakes that the Thaksin government it replaced after the coup. To top it all, he is currently being indicted for murder for his role in the suppression of the red shirt protests.
The bogeyman triggering this mess is Thaksin. While it is true that he took personal corruption and cronyism to new and obscene levels; his real crime was that he pandered to the rural poor who had traditionally been ignored by the government in Bangkok. By doing so he established a base of voters that would ensure he remained in power in subsequent elections. To the other Bangkok elites, this was completely unacceptable and he had to go; hence the coup.
After the coup, government was eventually handed to the Democrats who did bugger all with it during their time in office; thus allowing the Shinawatra crew to sail back into power at the next election. Oops. If elections were not going to work, how to get rid of the Thaksin clan?
Having drummed up street protests to persuade the government to drop an amnesty bill, Suthep decided to launch the PDRC and here we are on the verge of who-knows-what.
To an outsider, it is inconceivable that a country would allow a relatively small group of people to take over the capital city. The police are mainly loyal to the current government; but launching them against the protesters would escalate the violence, which some, probably including the government, feel is exactly what Suthep wants. Because sitting on the sidelines are the army and their sympathies lie outside the Thaksin camp. Enough disruption and loss of life and it could be coup time again, with the power then being handed back to the Democrats, after which there would an election, after which… well we have been here before. So the government are trying very hard to avoid confrontation, in the hope of surviving until the planned election on 2nd February, which won’t resolve anything because team Thaksin would win again if enough of an election could be held; which it probably can’t because Suthep’s boys in the south have blocked electoral registration offices. Stalemate.
The sad fact is that none of this is about democracy or the people or doing what is best for the country. It’s all about which bunch of elites will get access to the bountiful funds of government which they can then use to better themselves, their families and their various hangers-on. Whoever wins, not much is going to change for the ordinary people; which is why everyone I have talked to just wants them to sort it out and stop causing chaos and uncertainty.
My wife, for example, hates Thaksin, but also dislikes Suthep, and certainly has no free time to ponce around the streets blowing a whistle; she has a job to hold down. And she knows that, however this resolves itself, life will not improve for her and she will still be required to pay substantial bribes whenever she has to do business at a government office. The corruption is too widespread and runs too deep to be resolved by an unelected committtee shouting in a room; especially one led by a man once voted the least honest politician.
As an outsider, I have been careful not to express a strong opinion, especially as most of my Thai acquaintances are middle-class Bangkok Thais who just tell me that I “don’t understand Thailand”; which in this case is probably true because I am baffled by their pandering to the Suthep cause. So, I remain neutral and am just grateful that I will not have to commute to work in Bangkok in the coming days (weeks? months?). My view, which is of no import and unrealistic, is that Thailand can’t afford a democracy when the only leaders on offer are the likes of Thaksin and Suthep. Something like Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew to sort the place out for while would do very nicely. Ain’t going to happen.
In the meantime, the economy is slumping, tourist arrivals are down, the rice pledging scheme is hemorrhaging money and some of the real problems in the country remain ignored. For example, there are now 5,000 orphans created by the violence in the south of Thailand; is anyone doing anything about that?
Still, it’s not all bad news, the exchange rate is doing very nicely for those of us who rely on foreign currency for our living expenses….
Comments 🔗
2014-01-12| ivo saysHuman right wise LKY was worse as Taksin and Suthep together. But at least he had busniss brains that made him look not so bad as he really was. And Sillypore is of course still a limited version of democracy.
As of Thailand I think a 100’s of years old problem will not be solved over night or election. But the glass tower Thailand has been living in for the past 100’s years will break sometime some how.
2014-01-12| Andrew says“It’s all about which bunch of elites will get access to the bountiful funds of government which they can then use to better themselves, their families and their various hangers-on. “- I think this pretty much describes politics everywhere…unfortunately nowhere is " none of the above” ever offered on a ballot form….
2014-01-13| Richard H says“nowhere is ” none of the above” ever offered on a ballot form” You might be surprised: according to the fount of all knowledge there’s something of the sort in those bastions of democracy India, Greece, Ukraine, Spain and Colombia. Whether it makes any difference is another matter…
2014-01-13| Clive saysRichard, I think you might in fact be entitled to register a “protest vote” in the UK (as in, “None of the Above”). I think Spike’s story is a typical example of “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely…”
Just recently in the UK, for example, we’ve been told that the public needs to fork out £80 Billion for a high-speed railway to Manchester and the North, despite no valid business case being made. Meanwhile, we’ve also been told that we can’t afford £9 Billion for a new nuclear power station (let’s sidestep the arguments on nuclear power) and as a result we’re going to get the French company EDF to build it, with Chinese help, and then sell us the energy at a minimum rate already way more than we’re paying in the UK today…
Over the weekend we had William Hague reacting to a letter from 95 Tory MPs [who had asked Cameron to pull back some powers and a right of veto to further EU legislation] by telling us that this simply wasn’t possible because the entire EU would collapse:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25701515
which is kinda interesting, seeing as how in May last year, the same guy was arguing for exactly that:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22730226
and who then in July last year went on to say that he thought the EU “lacked legitimacy”:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23200576
The really scary part about this weekend’s statements was, in effect, the admission that now the UK is “in” the EU, there is no way out. Ignore whatever anyone else claims about the Maastricht Treaty and the like, the EU will impose it’s will on the UK, like it or not… And the fact that the EU’s auditors have refused to “sign off” the EU budget for 19 years in a row…
is a sad but accurate way of saying - this is the same the world over. Anyone who stands for public office should, by virtue of that act, automatically disbarr themselves from the post. Or, put another way: we’re constantly in the ####, only the depth varies. But maybe there’s another way of looking at it: if there’s fundamentally little difference between the ways that different countries govern their citizens, maybe the simplest approach is for us to pick a country which, for other reasons entirely, is a nice place to be, and stick with it?
I, for one, am watching the Sterling:THB exchange rates at the moment with keen interest…
2014-01-14| Barry saysMuch of the support for the protesters comes not only from the so-called Bangkok elite (but in reality seems mostly to comprise of the Bangkok middle class), but people from the south of the country. So what do the protesters do? Prevent people, presumably including their own candidates, from registering to stand in the election in the south. So people can’t vote in support of the protesters. Another example of how it is utterly impossible to understand Thai logic.
2014-01-14| Barry saysFar, far too many only want to see one side of the problem. The Reds hate everything about the Yellows etc, and the Yellows etc hate everything about the Reds. There is no room AT ALL for any compromise or even any desire to see or consider the point of view of the opposition. That is the problem, and it is insoluble.
To make matters worse, the two sides run tv stations broadcasting hate speeches 24 hours a day to fan the flames of dissent. There really is no way out of this that I can see other than the army coming in and running the country in defiance of the two warring parties. They aren’t going to listen to each other, ever, so the army has to guide the country down a middle path. Whether they can do that is another matter entirely and open to great doubt.
The likely future is a country tearing itself apart in a civil war and falling apart much like Cambodia did, but with less casualties. And, once it is one of the poorest and most backward nations in SE Asia, putting itself back together again. As long as the people, all the people, refuse to heed the wisdom of the King they claim to worship while ignoring his every word, I really can’t see any other future for Thailand.