Tuesday, 07 October 2008
Written by Giles Ji Unphakorn
Asia Sentinel (Hong Kong)
Since late in the evening of October 6, the ultra right-wing mob that calls itself the People’s Alliance for Democracy has laid plans to lay siege to the Thai parliament.
They came prepared with iron bars and crash helmets.
Their plan, as always, was to create chaos in the hope that the military would stage a coup or that the ruling party would once again be dissolved by the courts. Their claim is that the present government led by the Peoples Power Party or PPP -- ex-Premier Thaksin Shinawatra's Thai Rak Thai in another name-- is illegitimate.
The PPP and the previous Thai Rak Thai have consistently won large majorities in elections, proving that they are popular with the poor, who make up the majority of the population. This support from the poor is not surprising, since the party was the first elite party in 30 years to offer a universal health care scheme and public funds to develop the rural economy.
The PAD's claim that the government is somehow "illegitimate" is based on the belief that the poor do not deserve the right to vote because they are too stupid. This belief is shared by the opposition Democrat Party, which supported the 2006 military coup and is now supporting the actions of the PAD by boycotting parliament. Previously the Democrats boycotted the 2006 elections because they knew that the poor would not vote for their monetarist and neo-liberal policies. The Democrats when in office set police dogs on peaceful protestors from the Assembly of the Poor. That protest was nothing like the PAD riots of the past few weeks. The Democrats also used public funds to bail out the banks in the 1997 crisis. The poor were told to fend for themselves.
The PAD is calling for the defense of the military constitution of 2007, which has already restricted the electorate's right to vote for the Senate. They want to bring about a Suharto-style "New Order", in which only half of the parliament will be elected and the Prime Minister need not be an elected MP.
On the morning of the 7th October, the police cleared one side of parliament using tear gas. This was to allow MPs to enter the building. The police made it clear that the PAD would continue to be allowed to protest outside the other entrance to parliament. However, the PAD responded by attacking the police with sharpened flag poles, homemade guns and their own tear gas grenades. In any other parliamentary democracy, the PAD leaders and their rioting supporters would have been arrested. They have been illegally occupying Government House for over a month. Yet the police have been told to "lay off the protestors" by people in high places.
Every public institution and organization in Thailand is now compromised by this inter-elite conflict and the losers, as usual, are the poor: workers and small farmers. The monarchy has failed to defuse the situation. The queen has openly sided with the PAD mob. The courts are practicing double standards, attacking Thaksin and Thai Rak Thai/People’s Power Party corruption while ignoring illegal coups, mob violence and corruption by opposition politicians and the military.
The military as always is on the side of the conservative royalists. The police are unable to act and the government lurches from crisis to crisis. The majority of academia is hopelessly compromised by its support for the coup and their support for decreasing the democratic space. Democratic principles have been thrown out the window by professors who teach "democratization" and the need for "the rule of law."
Even the People’s Movement has shown itself not to be up to the job. Instead of building an independent political position at the side of the poor and oppressed, sections of the NGO movement supported the coup, the military constitution and the PAD. Rosana Tositrakul, the so-called NGO Senator, elected from Bangkok, has joined into ultranationalist fanaticism, especially over the ancient Khmer temple on the border with Cambodia that was almost conflated into a border skirmish.
These people must bear responsibility for the recent injuries of both Thai and Cambodian troops in a needless border dispute. Rosana also disrupted parliament today, working with military-appointed senators. She believes that the poor are too stupid to be allowed to vote. Yet all these people bang on about the need for "good governance" and "accountability". Who are they themselves accountable to?
The Thai economy is facing the full force of the global economic meltdown. It needs measures to protect the poor, income redistribution and a welfare state and peace for the three southern provinces. Thaksin and his top military men should have been clapped into prison long ago over human rights abuses in the south and the so-called War on Drugs, in which hundreds of people, many of them innocent, were killed.
Yet this is never mentioned and Thaksin and his wife are seeking asylum in Britain while poor people from all over the world are sent home to die by the British government.
We need to reform society to bring about progressive changes. This means expanding democracy, not allowing Thailand to slide back into the dark ages of dictatorship. But the task will only take place by forces in the Peoples' Movement – the left, the NGO networks, social movements and trade unions coming together to outline our own reform strategy. We cannot rely on the corrupt human-rights abusers in the government, nor the fascists of the PAD and their allies to achieve these aims.
They came prepared with iron bars and crash helmets.
Their plan, as always, was to create chaos in the hope that the military would stage a coup or that the ruling party would once again be dissolved by the courts. Their claim is that the present government led by the Peoples Power Party or PPP -- ex-Premier Thaksin Shinawatra's Thai Rak Thai in another name-- is illegitimate.
The PPP and the previous Thai Rak Thai have consistently won large majorities in elections, proving that they are popular with the poor, who make up the majority of the population. This support from the poor is not surprising, since the party was the first elite party in 30 years to offer a universal health care scheme and public funds to develop the rural economy.
The PAD's claim that the government is somehow "illegitimate" is based on the belief that the poor do not deserve the right to vote because they are too stupid. This belief is shared by the opposition Democrat Party, which supported the 2006 military coup and is now supporting the actions of the PAD by boycotting parliament. Previously the Democrats boycotted the 2006 elections because they knew that the poor would not vote for their monetarist and neo-liberal policies. The Democrats when in office set police dogs on peaceful protestors from the Assembly of the Poor. That protest was nothing like the PAD riots of the past few weeks. The Democrats also used public funds to bail out the banks in the 1997 crisis. The poor were told to fend for themselves.
The PAD is calling for the defense of the military constitution of 2007, which has already restricted the electorate's right to vote for the Senate. They want to bring about a Suharto-style "New Order", in which only half of the parliament will be elected and the Prime Minister need not be an elected MP.
On the morning of the 7th October, the police cleared one side of parliament using tear gas. This was to allow MPs to enter the building. The police made it clear that the PAD would continue to be allowed to protest outside the other entrance to parliament. However, the PAD responded by attacking the police with sharpened flag poles, homemade guns and their own tear gas grenades. In any other parliamentary democracy, the PAD leaders and their rioting supporters would have been arrested. They have been illegally occupying Government House for over a month. Yet the police have been told to "lay off the protestors" by people in high places.
Every public institution and organization in Thailand is now compromised by this inter-elite conflict and the losers, as usual, are the poor: workers and small farmers. The monarchy has failed to defuse the situation. The queen has openly sided with the PAD mob. The courts are practicing double standards, attacking Thaksin and Thai Rak Thai/People’s Power Party corruption while ignoring illegal coups, mob violence and corruption by opposition politicians and the military.
The military as always is on the side of the conservative royalists. The police are unable to act and the government lurches from crisis to crisis. The majority of academia is hopelessly compromised by its support for the coup and their support for decreasing the democratic space. Democratic principles have been thrown out the window by professors who teach "democratization" and the need for "the rule of law."
Even the People’s Movement has shown itself not to be up to the job. Instead of building an independent political position at the side of the poor and oppressed, sections of the NGO movement supported the coup, the military constitution and the PAD. Rosana Tositrakul, the so-called NGO Senator, elected from Bangkok, has joined into ultranationalist fanaticism, especially over the ancient Khmer temple on the border with Cambodia that was almost conflated into a border skirmish.
These people must bear responsibility for the recent injuries of both Thai and Cambodian troops in a needless border dispute. Rosana also disrupted parliament today, working with military-appointed senators. She believes that the poor are too stupid to be allowed to vote. Yet all these people bang on about the need for "good governance" and "accountability". Who are they themselves accountable to?
The Thai economy is facing the full force of the global economic meltdown. It needs measures to protect the poor, income redistribution and a welfare state and peace for the three southern provinces. Thaksin and his top military men should have been clapped into prison long ago over human rights abuses in the south and the so-called War on Drugs, in which hundreds of people, many of them innocent, were killed.
Yet this is never mentioned and Thaksin and his wife are seeking asylum in Britain while poor people from all over the world are sent home to die by the British government.
We need to reform society to bring about progressive changes. This means expanding democracy, not allowing Thailand to slide back into the dark ages of dictatorship. But the task will only take place by forces in the Peoples' Movement – the left, the NGO networks, social movements and trade unions coming together to outline our own reform strategy. We cannot rely on the corrupt human-rights abusers in the government, nor the fascists of the PAD and their allies to achieve these aims.
14 comments:
Breaking news.
One of the Thai soldier lost both legs, but the other one lost only one leg. We hope that the soldier that lost two legs did not lost his small and short middle leg, because your wife would not be happy.
Anyway cheers ah Thai.
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2008100722004/National-news/Thai-troops-hurt-by-mines.html
Vietnam women marry foreigners to escape poverty
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-brides24-2008aug24,0,4741709.story
Have you ever thought of population control Tep Vong?
You are sitting on a timing bomb dumb ass.
Unless you plan to invade the world.
the way i see thailand is the pad is the trouble-makers, and they got full support of the thai military backing them up. unless the thai armed forces stop supporting these pad thugs, i don't think thailand as a nation can have a real, stable gov't in place. what is wrong with the pad thugs? they called themselves democracy force of thailand. i think they are really ignorant people for they have no respect for other nation like cambodia, etc... they are full of shit, if you ask me! they are unruly people, and the thai gov't is so weak because they are not able to control these unruly people! can you imagine common people taking over the gov't in the USA? this is exactly what the pad thugs are, they are common people who try to take over the thai gov't and the thai gov't is powerless to do anything about it because, of course, the pad thugs have the backing of the military.
Hello sir! your blog almost good news . that good .
Thai is going down.
They can't do anything to Khmer.
Their rangers have blown their legs that enough to deter them not to wage war on us.
Plus the untame lands is full of old landmines from the past.
As if they continue they will end up loosing their legs.
Khmer #1,
Let me enlighten some of you a bit. The PAD can do all these things because the military is backing them, admittedly or not. Some source says that the PAD doesn't want the Western style of democracy anymore. That's why they keep overthrowing any elected prime minister. The PAD want military to have more power in the government. So that's why the Thai military is staying quiet.
Bottom line is PAD doesn't want the Western democracy anymore. They want Thailand to be run differently. For how they want to do it, I don't know.
"The PAD's claim that the government is somehow "illegitimate" is based on the belief that the poor do not deserve the right to vote because they are too stupid."
= It is amazing that the Thai even look down on their poor citizen and now just imagine those dirt poor Cambodian who are working in Thailand and they will be look down as animal! It is time for all Cambodian people who are currently working in Thailand to come back home! Please do not give up your human dignity and please come home!
My accounting professor once asked our class "Who causes Civil War usually?" We all answered that the poor. It's when the poor are fed up and they will overthrow the government. But the answer is "the middle class." Civil War happens usually when the privileges of the middle-class are stripped away. That's when the unrest middle-class rise up and cause internal fighting.
Those protesters are Thai middle-class. So could it be that Thailand over the way to a civil war?
i'm glad to see that the thai gov't is final doing something about the unruly pad protestors; after all, gov't is the power, not the ignorant, unruly people like the pad thugs or something. the military, of course, should stay out of it!!!
PAD wants their new government perform like Vietnam, China, and CPP so their country can grow faster. I thing it was infected by money and powers of the 3 countries.
Gladly enough that many of your moms and sises were raped during the wars..... Haleluyah to all raped Khmers & its offsprings
hey, it's alright to have mixed race. look at american mixed races make america smart and powerful country on the planet. plus mix races are smart and is good for cambodia as well. that said, everywhere in the world, there's no more pure races, people tend to intermarried and had mix children. the important thing, though is to teach them the national etiquette, the khmer language, and certain khmer cultural value and tradition. and most definitely teach them to love and care for cambodia and to help preserve our language, rich culture, arts, ancient relics and to know our history and love our food and our people, etc... that is more important than where they came from. think about it and be smart for the sake of cambodia. thank you and god bless cambodia and all our beautiful khmer people and citizens.
Who gives a shit about A-Siem. Let them all kill each other for all I care. Man, they're such ruthless people. They deprived their own people of rights cuz they're poor? That's messed up.
Fear not my friends.... A-Siem's nation is going down the shit drain. hip hip hooray!!!
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