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As an important party coalition leader, Banharn had helped make Somchai prime minister, bringing back a member of the Shinawatra family into national leadership.
Banharn, a diminutive man in stature, is not so small in the world of old-style Thai politics. He carries nicknames no aspiring politician really wants – including “Mr. ATM,” due to his propensity for dishing out vote-buying money, and “Slippery Eel” for his changing political alliances – and not only in his home province of Suphanburi, north of Bangkok and an important rice-growing region.
But despite his popularity, the soon-to-be octogenarian raises eyebrows in the kingdom by his checkered past and personal record of running one of Thailand’s most corrupt and inept governments, no small claim after following Chatchai Choonhavan and Chuan Leekpai in the driver’s seat.
Despite all this, Banharn stuck with the entrenched political system in Thailand, where old fogies run things by protecting the status quo and the public goes along with lame ideas and matching excuses for not representing the people’s interests, like candidates claim to do before and after being elected.
Banharn decided to forget his severe differences with the administration of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and the current People’s Power Party, and threw his considerable influence behind Thaksin’s brother-in-law Somchai, who now heads Thailand’s government. What did he get out of it? Certainly a strong Cabinet position for himself, and possibly a couple of similar jobs for fellow cronies.
Despite so-called cooperation among all the coalition parties, however, the question now is how long the new government will last. After all, the People’s Alliance for Democracy, which has stirred up national politics through constant demonstrations in recent months, has already announced that it opposes the new government. This should come as no surprise. Why? The new government consists of the same people as the last one … corrupt and not acting in the people’s interests.
The leader of Thailand’s opposition Democrat Party, Abhisit Vejjajiva, has commented on the new government by hailing what he sees as the greatest problem the new prime minister will have to address – social division. The idea that social divisions may, in fact, promote individuality in a positive fashion has not registered with Abhisit or most of the non-PAD population in Thailand. They just might lead to both leaders and voters starting to make up their own minds about personalities and issues.
It is strange, too, that when we consider the issue of independence and thinking things through on one’s own, Chotisak Onsung’s name comes up. He is the man who refused to stand in a theater during the royal anthem, and sports a slogan T-shirt saying “By not standing I am not a criminal, thinking differently is not a crime.”
Chotisak in his own way and the PAD in its own way are both attempting to instill the same idea in the minds of the Thai electorate – that it is not necessary to emulate everyone else’s thoughts, beliefs, behavior and policies, indeed that it is necessary sometimes to stand out and do the opposite. This kind of thinking, this kind of being different, is anathema to Thailand’s entrenched political and social elite. It threatens their hold over the electorate – which in many parts of the country is treated as serfs – and insults their self-perceived right to retain power.
So far, the old guard has been successful in fighting back against this movement of independent thinking. Banharn’s latest success in ramming through the brother-in-law of a corrupt and highly disingenuous Thaksin Shinawatra reflects this ancient scourge. He has become leader of a nation that is very likely heading toward another short-duration coalition government. How long will it last? A year, perhaps?
And what about those tens of thousands of people literally sitting and standing in the relentless Bangkok rains and hot daytime sun, the PAD faithful? Are they pursuing a useless objective and becoming a disenfranchised movement that other Thais are tiring of? Not if one looks at Thailand’s entrenched social and political problems and the need for something U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama is calling for – change.
But time and time again, Thailand’s power brokers and the guys with both money and guns have proven, “We don’t want change. We are happy the way we are.” Translation: “Lots of Thais are unhappy and do without, but they will always be protected.”
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(Frank G. Anderson is the Thailand representative of American Citizens Abroad. He was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer to Thailand from 1965-67, working in community development. A freelance writer and founder of northeast Thailand's first local English language newspaper, the Korat Post – www.thekoratpost.com -- he has spent over eight years in Thailand "embedded" with the local media. He has an MBA in information management and an associate degree in construction technology. ©Copyright Frank G. Anderson.)
