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Then on Monday Abhisit informed representatives of Thai government agencies that the country needed to be more aware and proactive with regard to foreign affairs. To top off the foreign affairs agenda, he informed them that Thailand needed to step up cooperation with neighboring countries.
Defining cooperation, especially with regard to neighboring Burma, requires a deft sleight of hand. Burma seems to be in competition with North Korea as the world’s most intransigent ogre, which no one can do much about because it has powerful friends.
On the political side, the People’s Alliance for Democracy held a huge gathering in the main stadium of Thammasat University’s Rangsit campus, as part of a referendum to determine whether the activist movement should officially set up a political party.
The decision has been made, but problems exist. Who will head the new party? Most believe it will be Sondhi Limthongkul – who some time ago swore that he would never accept a political position.
To observers, Sondhi appears to be the glue that could hold the new party together and allow a new generation of PAD leaders to gradually grow into senior positions in the movement. Political parties are expensive animals to feed, however.
Already running into the red with his ASTV network and other media pursuits, Sondhi would probably have to divest himself of these communications organs if he were to serve as party executive. It is not likely he would be willing to do this, but when push comes to shove, he may not have a choice.
In terms of financing the party, Sondhi has indicated it would take over 100 million baht (nearly US$3 million) a month, and suggested that the funds would come from monthly donations by PAD supporters.
According to Sondhi and other PAD backers and supporters, the new party would help protect the monarchy and put a stop to age-old corruption in the political process, where family members and colleagues enjoy the spoils of public funding.
However, the proposal to start a new party is uncomfortably reminiscent of a suggestion made years ago when the late Chatchai Choonhavan – later to be called Thailand’s most corrupt prime minister – along with Suwat Liptapanlop, Korn Dhabbaransri, the late general Arthit Kamlangek and others sat down in Bangkok to propose the creation of a new party to rid the country of political corruption and the same old political games that were causing so many problems.
The earlier meeting was held was 1992. Now, 17 years later, one is tempted to say, “Here we go again.” There is some doubt as to the viability of any new party, especially one led by fanatic monarchists, to bring about real democratic change in the country, especially change that would also protect human rights.
Chatchai Choonhavan, who ended up heading the new Chatpattana Party but was removed from the premiership for corruption, is well known today for sponsoring many projects that supposedly benefitted the country’s most impoverished region, the northeast. He passed away long before the party folded under the Thai Rak Thai mantle and combined with that monolith, only to see its party executives prohibited from political activity for five years due to improper voting procedures by a party executive.
As a result of all this, the new political party merely became another tool of corruption, enriching its executives and party faithful over the subdued party platform of “helping the country and the people.”
Since 2006, when former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted from power and three Thaksin-backed puppet political parties were dissolved, Thai politics have been unsettled. Yet the current Democrat-led government is attempting to tell everyone around the globe that things are “normal.”
Normal may mean continued repression, continued ignoring of international condemnation of human rights abuses and a continued clampdown on free speech and the right to information. If so, then things are indeed back to normal.
With 50,000 volunteers eager to spy on their fellow citizens, with one arrest after another popping up around the country based on Nazi-era reports of unacceptable fellow citizen behavior, with fear growing around the nation among subjects of a kingdom struggling to represent itself as a democracy, but whose rights go only as far as police power – the image of Thailand returning to “normal” is Piccaso-esque at best.
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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.)
