Another day, another protest

I was in Bangkok during the airport strike last year. I started working on a post about the political situation in Thailand but never finished it. I wish I had. I predicted the worst was yet to come. And for once in my life I was right. As I write this I'm watching news footage of the Thai military shooting in the streets, burnt vehicles being towed away, and other typical scenes of a Southeast Asian vacation.

I was stuck in Bangkok for a week when I went back to the city after aggravating my back diving in Koh Tao. I received emails from folks wondering if I was OK. The bombings in Mumbai happened at the same time and it was easy to confuse the two.

At the time I was perfectly safe at a comfortable hostel in Silom, the financial district. There was no sign that anything was amiss, except that attendance at the hostel dwindled. One night I was the only guest! On the streets there was no sign that the country had been shut off from the outside world.

Bangkok is the main hub not just for Bangkok but for all of SE Asia. If you fly to Rangoon or Hanoi or Phnom Penh the odds are pretty good that you'll go through Bangkok. So by shutting down Bangkok the protestors were effectively shutting down the whole region.

I was fascinated at the time by the way the story was being covered, not just in the American and Western press, but also in the SE Asian media. They totally missed the point. I read the English-language reports online and in the local press, and the story was all the same.

A group of peaceful protestors from the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) shut down the airport because they wanted to force out a corrupt prime minister (Somchai), who was actually just a puppet for a previous corrupt prime minister (Thaksin), who is living in exile to escape justice in Bangkok.

Sounds perfectly noble, doesn't it? The protestors were well-behaved, articulate, organized and had the best interests of the country in mind. Right?

Not so fast.

The former prime minister who is living in exile is actually wildly popular and was elected in a landslide. He was forced out of office in 2006, not by an election or even a trial, but a coup. The people who are protesting now want him to return.

His successor was likewise elected in a landslide election. Both were successful because they understand one fundamental truth in politics, no matter what the country: There are more poor people than rich people.

Both PMs appealed to the rural poor of Thailand, the farmers and the fishermen. They've been accused of buying votes. A scathing commentary in Forbes magazine during the protest explains how these votes are "bought":

"Thaksin and Somchai are loved by the rural poor whom they have showered with grants and subsidies, some of them venally political in nature, but others more worthy. They have nudged elitist and stuffy Thai banks to open up affordable credit lines to impoverished farmers, which is no small thing given that for generations those same people have languished in misery, forgotten and despised by the urban elites and unable to raise any capital whatsoever outside of ruinous loan sharks."

http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/12/02/thailand-class-airport-oped-cx_lo_1202osborne.html

In other words, sure there were some shenanigans, but they instituted policies that would help the poor become ... not poor.

Thaksin also made the catastrophic mistake of butting heads with the king. Thailand is a monarchy, remember. The people there love the king. It's no act. They literally worship the guy. It is genuine, but they are required by law to do so.

The Thailand constitution says:

"The King shall be enthroned in a position of revered worship and shall not be violated. No person shall expose the King to any sort of accusation or action."

The Thai Criminal code further states:

"Whoever defames, insults or threatens the King, Queen or the Heir-apparent, shall be punished with imprisonment of three to 15 years."

By all accounts, though, King Bhumibol Adulyadej has been a good leader. He has used his almost literally infinite wealth to sponsor thousands of public works project. (In 2008 Forbes ranked him as the world's richest monarch, with an estimated wealth of $35 billion. Thais will not pass up an opportunity to vigorously dispute this, as they believe that the king's wealth is Thailand's wealth and vice versa.)

During his reign there have been a bewildering succession of coups and changes in government, but the king has managed to remain respectfully above the fray.

Which brings us back to the PAD. They wear gold to show their allegiance to the king. The People's Alliance for Democracy is actually a pro-monarchy group. But you'll only find that crucial nugget at the bottom of news stories, if at all.

“If Thaksin’s puppet government returns or they make any attempt to amend the constitution in Thaksin’s favor or reduce the king’s power, the People’s Alliance for Democracy will come back,” protest leader Sondhi Limthongkul said during the airport strike.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aezhA7mHQmIc&refer=asia

So the story was grossly misinterpreted in the way the media completely missed that this "democratic" organization's goal is to solidify the king's power. The two PMs appeal to the vast numbers of rural poor, so what can the educated/rich/pro-monarchy group do?

They want to take away the vote from poor people.

I am not simplifying or paraphrasing. That is the stated goal of the PAD. A news article says the PAD "is now considering moves to take away the power of the vote from the rural masses, with parliament members to be appointed."

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?ArticleId=420664&publicationSubCategoryId=64

The legislators would be "appointed" by members of certain professions, professions which, not coincidentally, happen to make up the bulk of the PAD.

Surgeon Noppakoon Lagum, one of the airport protestor said: "Rural people have good hearts but they don't know the truth like we do in Bangkok. It is our duty to re-educate them."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081204/ap_on_re_as/as_thailand_political_unrest

It is astonishing that in 2009 a political group can so boldly and nakedly embark on a program to disenfranchise poor people simply because they're poor without anyone even noticing! You have to give the PAD credit for the way they managed the media. They were so well-behaved and so darned reasonable that no one in the media -- not even locally -- bothered to question their motives.

The PAD was able to steer the conversation in such a way that the story became "Look at all these poor stranded tourists!' They were able to engineer the situation in such a way that the media, even the local media, focused on how it was affecting foreigners, and not how it would stand to affect Thais.

Maybe it's because the situation is so hard to simplify into terms Western readers can digest. The Forbes commentary I quote above says "make no mistake that this is class warfare. But forget the usual categories of left and right. This is class war in a consumerist Theravada technocracy ruled by an uneasy mish-mosh of divine kingship, a shadowy military, business interests and inherited money. It is outside Western categories."

I was sure there would be a backlash. When a small minority engineers not one but two coups in as part of a systematic attempt to take away the vote from the vast majority of the people, the people whose votes are threatened are going to react. Again, it's important to remember that both PMs won huge victories in democratic elections. The minority doesn't like the results, so they're going to change the entire system of government.

I am a bit torn on this because I believe -- and I love dropping this conversational hand grenade -- that universal voting rights are a bad idea. The Founding Fathers instituted the Electoral College because they felt the vast majority of the population was quite simply not educated or informed enough to make a responsible choice.

Of course they were all rich, white, educated landowners, aristocrats who felt they were best-suited to run the country. They never in their worst nightmares imagined a scenario in which everyone could vote.

A person can live in a Unabomber shack in the woods and stumble into town once every two or four years and cast completely arbitrary votes. His vote counts the same as mine. If someone votes purely along party lines, without even knowing the names, let alone platforms, of the candidates, her vote counts the same as mine.

Voting is a right but it is also a responsbility. If you do not take it upon yourself to make the most informed decision possible, sorry, you don't get to vote. And yes, this rule would apply to me in some recent elections.

I met a girl last year in Nepal who said she wouldn't vote for Obama because he's a Muslim. If you vote on one issue, you don't get to vote. Period. If you vote on one issue and you are demonstrably wrong about it, you don't get to vote for the rest of your life. The 25 percent of people who still approved of Bush when he left office? No more votes, sorry.

I question whether voting rights should be universal but it's just plain evil to take away votes from poor people simply because they're poor. Wealth, class, profession -- these are not reliable indicators of a person's intelligence or political acumen. There is a certain rich private-school guy who served two terms as president even though he is as dumb as a box of hammers.

Back to the king. When I first arrived in Bangkok much of the city was shut down for a state funeral. The king's sister had died several months before. The official explanation for the delay was a "national period of mourning" or something along those lines. I was told on the sly that the delay may have been due to the king's health, that he was not well enough for full-day of ceremonies. The funeral was delayed until he was up to it.

He turned 81 in December. He traditionally gives a radio address to the nation on his birthday. This year his son, the crown prince, gave the address. Last month he was hospitalized.

The PAD wants to protect the power of the king. The king is truly loved by the people but that doesn't mean future kings will necessarily inherit the goodwill he has built up during his 63-year reign. He is the longest-serving head of state in the world. There hasn't been much for the royal heir to do .

A 2002 issue of The Economist was banned in Thailand for criticizing the crown prince's personal life. He's on his third wife. He put the lèse majesté laws to clever use during his first divorce. He claimed his wife was totally at fault for the failure of their marriage. Because she was forbidden by law of accusing or criticizing him, she was unable to refute his accusations!

So if the PAD achieves its goal it will be just in time to see the king's newly-solidified power pass to the hands of the crown prince, who does not enjoy unquestioning adoration as his father does.

The situation is obviously far too complicated for an American tourist to grasp, although I do think I see the finer points of the controversy better than most of the journalists paid to cover it.

One thing I know for sure: I'm glad I left Thailand when I did!