by WALDEN BELLO
Thai protesters in Bankgok call for the ouster of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinwatra in December 2013. For some protesters, rallying cries against corruption have given way to broadsides against popular rule and democracy itself. PHOTO/Where Is Your Toothbrush?/Flickr
With popular singers belting out Queen’s “We are the Champions” and John Lennon’s “Imagine,” the enormous protests taking place against Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinwatra’s government have all the cultural luster of a progressive cause. Professional and highly educated people crowd the streets, and young people shout passionately against corruption. Middle class liberals around the world easily find much they can relate to.
But one thing about this movement bothers liberal analysts, including quite a few in the foreign press. The protesters appear to have lost faith in the key tenet of representative democracy: rule by people or parties elected by the majority of citizens.
The People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) has maintained massive protests in Bangkok for close to three months. When Prime Minister Shinawatra reacted to the efforts to oust her and her Pheu Thai party from office by dissolving parliament on December 15 and setting elections for February 2, the PDRC responded by saying no to the elections. It called on its supporters to “shut down Bangkok” until Yingluck resigned and advocated replacing her with an unelected “reform council.”
While no one denies that Thailand’s political system needs reform, many observers feel that the opposition has rejected the elections not simply as a protest against corruption, but rather because it knows it will lose the vote — just as it has lost the last five parliamentary contests.
The Thaksin Upheaval
The current showdown between the Pheu Thai government and the opposition is but the latest round in an epic struggle between conservative and populist forces that began when Thaksin Shinawatra, brother of the current leader Yingluck Shinwatra, became prime minister of Thailand in 2001.
Thaksin came to power in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis of 1997. That crisis saw over a million Thais drop to the ranks of the poor when what had been one of Southeast Asia’s most dynamic economies collapsed due to capital flight, followed by an austerity program imposed by hapless governments under the thumb of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Thaksin had benefited from globalization owing to his massive holdings in private telecommunications, one of the economy’s most globalized sectors. Yet, with unerring populist instinct, he sensed that the financial crisis had catalyzed popular fears about free-market globalization, smoldering resentment toward the urban and rural elites that seemed to be cornering the country’s wealth, and anger at the international financial institutions.
On becoming prime minister, Thaksin made a number of dazzling, if opportunistic, moves. He paid off the country’s loan and kicked the IMF out of Thailand. He initiated a universal health care system that allowed people to be treated for the equivalent of a dollar. He imposed a moratorium on the payment of farmers’ debts. And he created a one-million-baht fund for each village, which villagers could invest however they chose.
This side of Thaksin won him a mass following among the country’s deprived and marginalized sectors, entrenching him and his coalition in the northern and northeastern regions of the country.
But there was another side to Thaksin, a side that most of his urban and rural poor followers chose to ignore. Thaksin literally bought his political allies, constructing in the process a potent but subservient parliamentary coalition. He used his office to enhance his wealth and that of his cronies. He failed to distinguish public interest from private gain. And he gave short shrift to human rights concerns, most notably by backing a police campaign against drugs that resulted in the extra-judicial executions of over 2,000 people.
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