The Desire to Crush All Opposition

Gotta love Political Prisoners in Thailand. As with most of us, Thaksin was considered the devil incarnate when he was in office, and a major abuser of human rights, not to mention using his position and power to add to his substantial wealth. He was legitimately elected PM three times, but when he threated the traditional power structure of royalty, the military, and to a less extent the beaurcracy, it was time for the military to go for the traditional way to keep the richies in power: yet another embarrasing coup. Here's PPT latest examination on why Thailand fails in almost every respect to be a democracy.

The desire to crush all opposition

For the Military-backed Abhisit Vejjajiva regime the crushing of the red shirts was always more than ending the demonstration at Rajaprasong. For the royalist ruling class, the desire is to crush opposition that is seen as challenging to their social, political and economic power. The crackdown is continuing to deepen.

PPT has already mentioned the deep commitment that the royalists in government have to weeding out those they believe are anti-monarchists and republicans.

The New York Times reports that the “government has moved into the next phase of a campaign against the dissident movement known as the red shirts, freezing the assets of scores of people it says helped finance recent protests, and planning to summon them for questioning.” (See Bangkok Pundit on this.)

The NYT notes that Abhisit has emphasized so-called national reconciliation while, at the very same time, “hundreds of members of the opposition have been arrested and held without trial.” It observes that the premier’s “plan” has now “added to the atmosphere of acrimony, becoming a new focus for attack from government opponents.” The BBC also has some video on this “reconciliation” process.

Bangkok Pundit has another excellent post on reconciliation and the chosen committee, recalling PPT’s earlier point that reconciliation for Abhisit means rejected opposition, speaking only to his buddies and yellow-shirted supporters, and appointing the same to his various reconciliation committess.

The overall result, according to the NYT is that Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban has said that emergency rule will be maintained, essentially allowing the government to do almost whatever it wants, effectively placing it above the law, especially as the courts are almost always on the government’s side.

The government continues to hunt down people it thinks might have funded the red shirts. The highly-politicized Department of Special Investigation has identified a shortened list of “83 individuals and companies that were thought to support the protesters had made suspiciously large and frequent financial transactions over the past nine months. It said questioning [of suspects] would begin next Monday.”

Some of the amounts claimed are ludicrous. For example, Thaksin Shinawatra’s cousin, Chaiyasit, is accused of using almost $1.14 billion.

In response to allegations of political harassment and persecution, Abhisit makes the following absurd statement: “I insist that the government has never intended to persecute anyone.” He insists that “suspicious financial transactions” need to be controlled. He seems to have forgotten all those in jail, killed and being hunted.

Abhisit is hardly mentally inhibited, so PPT assumes that he realizes that he is demanding controls on private funding that are unlikely to “prevent further unrest and that people whose accounts had been frozen would still be able to do things like pay utility bills and staff salaries and service debts” but that will prevent these people from making political contributions to legal political parties when election time comes about, if it ever does.

Abhisit, like many of his supporters, believe that funding keeps red shirts going and gets pro-Thaksin parties elected. They are wrong, but can’t see it. That said, if Puea Thai Party’s main financial backers are blocked, then the Democrat Party and its pro-military coalition partners can have an open road in funding.

This is beginning to look increasingly like a co-ordinated plan to ensure royalist-military-”Democrat” rule for some time to come. So-called reconciliation is nothing but a political Orwellianism that hunts, harasses, inhibits, and destroys opponents.