An important article from the Wall Street Journal.
The Wall Street Journal, MAY 24, 2010
The Spring of Thailand’s Ethnic Discontent
By DAVID STRECKFUSS
Khon Kaen, Thailand
As the leaders of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (the “red shirts”) in central Bangkok ended their 79-day protest and surrendered themselves to authorities on May 19, Thailand literally went up in flames. For the rest of that day, roving bands of angry red-shirt protesters torched dozens of buildings in Bangkok. The governor of Bangkok proclaimed that May 19 would forever be remembered by its inhabitants.
Yet while much of the international focus has been on the situation in Bangkok—where indeed the protests have been largest and the violence most severe—it is now clear the disaffection has spread. In provinces through the North and Northeast, furious red-shirt mobs put to flame provincial halls and other offices and businesses perceived as sympathetic to the government. In this city of 200,000 situated 450 kilometers from Bangkok, red shirts pushed back police to set fire to the provincial hall and the government television station that they say distorted the news about their struggle, and broke windows of the bank they say funded the forces that have left more than 70 of them dead since April 10.
The pressing question for Thailand’s future now is whether the Bangkok elites who support the current government and oppose the red shirts will take the trouble to understand why disaffection is spreading.
The truth is that these protests have tapped into a long-simmering brew of ethnic and economic tensions bubbling below the surface of Thai society. It is often said there are two Thailands: Bangkok and the rest.
After a century of the capital’s political and military incursions into the hinterland, the red-shirt demonstration represented the most serious and sustained foray of the hinterland into Bangkok.
Bangkok truly isn’t like the rest of the country. A century ago saw the rather haphazard initial construction of a nationalist model based on smothering local languages, cultures and ethnic identity under a Western colonial-inspired centralized Thai state. In both the North and Northeast, rebellions against Thai state incursions were promptly suppressed. Ethnically, the people of the North and Northeast are Lao and originally spoke dialects of Lao. Yet under the new nationalism they were suddenly “Thai” and spoke a local “Thai dialect.” Even after a century of mixing with central Thai, it may not be too much of an exaggeration to say that a majority of people now living in Thailand speak a Lao dialect in their homes.
An emerging regionalism was crushed by military governments in the 1950s. In the early 1960s, the military dictatorship of Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat perfected the model of Thai-ness, defined by praise of hierarchy and the unified Thai race, the centrality of the monarchy and “Thai-style democracy.” A threat of greater democratization and political liberalization was cut short by a bloody coup in 1976.
It was only with the “People’s Constitution” of 1997 that sovereignty decisively shifted into the hands of the Thai people through a fully elected House of Representatives and Senate. The constitution recognized local community and cultural rights and promised greater decentralization. Now there was a mechanism for addressing regional inequalities. Poor people were suddenly enfranchised more than ever before in Thai history. A majority in the North and Northeast regions, supplemented by poorer classes in urban areas, could, if unfettered, play the deciding role in representative democracy.
This has set the stage for this year’s protests. Bangkok elites have laid the blame with the populist former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a billionaire whose government promoted essentially free health care, debt aid to farmers and rural economic development. But Mr. Thaksin didn’t create the forces that are now roiling Thailand. He was simply more adept than earlier politicians at understanding how to appeal to voters outside Bangkok. His political genius was to tap into the demand this enfranchisement created in rural areas for a greater voice in Thai government.
Rather than adjusting to the new political realities, Mr. Thaksin’s detractors fell back on complaints (some justified, some not) that he bought votes, undermined democratic institutions, committed massive human rights violations and used his office for personal gain. The forces of conservatism, as represented by the pro-monarchy, old-establishment People’s Alliance for Democracy, or “yellow shirts,” regrouped and supported the 2006 military coup that threw Mr. Thaksin out of power after months of demonstrations.
The ensuing 2007 military-inspired constitution limited popular sovereignty through a half-appointed Senate, new electoral rules and a greatly expanded role of the judiciary. From 2006 to 2008, Thai courts nullified one election that Mr. Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai party won; dissolved Thaksin-backed parties twice and banned 220 0f their executive members from political office for five years; and removed one prime minister—Samak Sundaravej—for taking a small remuneration for hosting a television cooking show.
At the same time, a court order seemed to condone the yellow shirts’ months-long occupation of the Government House, and the justice system has yet to bring yellow-shirt leaders to trial on “terrorism” charges for seizing Bangkok’s international airport in late 2008. The suspects—including Thailand’s present Minister of Foreign Affairs—were given bail. In contrast, following the recent protests in Bangkok the red shirts as a whole are being portrayed as terrorists and enemies of the nation, and the red-shirt leaders have been denied bail.
To many people in the North and Northeast, it appears that the courts are frustrating the popular will and there is no equality before the law. This in part explains the growing rage of red-shirt protesters. Prior to the end of their protest Wednesday, red-shirt leaders in Bangkok warned that if security forces attacked them, Thailand would become divided. Malay Muslims in the South of Thailand already have been in revolt for years. Such, the red shirts said, may happen with the North and Northeast. On the national stage during the protest, speakers from the North and Northeast often spoke, sang and celebrated in their preferred tongue—not as some performance of rustic, minority Thai people, but as a purposeful expression of a frustrated political disenfranchisement.
As the protests heated up in April, some angry Bangkokians took to the streets, screaming, “Rural people, get out!” These people of Bangkok only saw what the red shirts had done to them. They did not see that much of the red rage is about what Bangkok has done to the “second class” rural people.
Whether Bangkok’s elites will recognize that fact ultimately will make the difference between a democratic Thailand with equality under the law, or the possibility of a forever-fractured Thailand.
Mr. Streckfuss is a writer based in Thailand.
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