A Good Economist Article On Thailand

My friend Eric sent me this link. Anybody who is interested in understanding Thailand's current political revanchism needs to know its source, and the source is the one thing that Thai people won't talk about... can't talk about.

The government of generals and bureaucrats installed by the 2006 coup-makers performed miserably. In last December's elections, though TRT had been disbanded, Mr Thaksin's new People's Power Party won most seats. This spurred the PAD to resume its protests. In clashes in October PAD members fought the police with guns, bombs and sharp staves, hoping the army would again use disorder as the pretext for a coup. The PAD nevertheless blamed the clashes entirely on police brutality, and the anti-Thaksin Bangkok press let it get away with this. The death of one PAD member, apparently blown up in his car by the bomb he was carrying, was quickly buried. But the death of a young woman, reportedly when a police tear-gas canister exploded, became a cause célèbre.

Up to this point there were only whispers as to why the PAD enjoyed such lenient treatment—even from the army, which refused to help the police remove protesters from government offices. However, rumours of an extremely influential backer were confirmed when Queen Sirikit, attended by a clutch of cameramen, presided over the dead woman’s cremation. The king remained silent.

Nobody can discuss, of course, what effect the queen's support has had on the majority of Thais who still, apparently, back Mr Thaksin. A whirl of lèse-majesté accusations have been made against pro- and anti-Thaksin figures. But the PAD's ever more menacing behaviour, the palace's failure to disown it, and the group's insistence that Thais must choose between loyalty to Mr Thaksin and to the king, may be doing untold damage to the crown itself. Some of Mr Thaksin's voters must be contemplating the flip-side of the PAD's argument: if the monarchy is against the leader they keep voting for, maybe it is against them. Such feelings may only be encouraged by the PAD's condescending arguments that the rural poor, Mr Thaksin's main support base, are too "uneducated" to have political opinions, so their voting power must be reduced.

At a pro-Thaksin rally in July a young activist ranted against the monarchy, calling the king "a thorn in the side of democracy" for having backed so many coups, and warning the royal family they risked the guillotine. She was quickly arrested. What shocked the royalist establishment was not just the startling criticism of the king—but that the activist was cheered. "It is more and more difficult for them to hold the illusion that the monarchy is universally adored," says a Thai academic.

Their majesties have never been big fans of Democracy. It's not unreasonable to suspect that the king tacitly shares the royalists' supposition that Thailand's general population can't be trusted to elect the best government possible, and that he advocates at worst some sort of monarchal irredentism, or at best the martial plutocracy that Thailand has traditionally appointed in the past.

The article goes on to examine the line of succession in Thailand, and also takes time to examine the historical context in which the major parties' behaviors are unfolding. All in all, a nice little piece on the situation behind the scenes in Thailand today.

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UPDATE:

Everybody in Thailand must be reading this article. Since posting this, I've received 2 more links to the Economist in my e-mail. Thanks for thinking of me, guys.