Thaksin gambles on radical wildcards

May 12, 2011
By William Barnes
Asia Times Online

BANGKOK - Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand's fugitive former prime minister, has given the nod to radical United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) protest movement leaders to run on his Puea Thai party ticket at upcoming national elections. Whether their participation and association with last year's protest-related violence will help Thaksin's electoral cause is in doubt.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva dissolved parliament on Monday, paving the way for early polls on July 3. Opinion polls show a neck-and-neck race between Abhisit's Democrat Party and Puea Thai, which is expected this week to nominate Thaksin's sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, as its prime ministerial candidate.

The UDD and its top leaders, who last year campaigned for early elections and the ouster of Abhisit, have arguably been tainted by the mayhem unleashed in the wake of last year's protest-related clashes and crackdown. At least 91 people were killed in confrontations between protestors and security forces, with neither side accepting responsibility for any of the casualties.

Many hold the UDD's associated militant wing as responsible for the assassination of a prominent army colonel, launching grenades into rival protestors in Bangkok's main business district and forcing the nation's ailing chief monk to flee from a royal hospital its members had raided. A string of arson attacks, including against Southeast Asia's largest shopping mall, CentralWorld, and several provincial town halls, are believed to have been ignited by UDD supporters in retaliation for the government's bloody crackdown last May 19.

Several UDD leaders, currently out on bail after being detained for several months or returned from Cambodia, to where they fled last year, face terrorism charges for those and other attacks. News reports have noted that several UDD leaders hope to win elected office for the parliamentary immunity that comes with the job. A Puea Thai led government is expected to push for a general amnesty that would absolve UDD leaders of responsibility for last year's violence.

If the disruptive closure for several weeks of Bangkok's central shopping and luxury hotel district had brought down Abhisit's government, these violent events would have likely been forgiven as part of a successful popular uprising. But the UDD's protests were simply not big enough, numbering tens of thousands at their peak, to bring down a popularly elected government - albeit one that came to power through behind-the-scenes military machinations.

Thaksin, overthrown in a bloodless September 2006 coup for his alleged corruption, disloyalty to the Thai crown and elite-jarring ambition, has wrapped his desire for legal and political rehabilitation into Puea Thai's campaign. Given that polls show that the majority of Thai voters are not firmly in either political camp, the inclusion of unrepentant and taboo-breaking protest leaders in the Puea Thai's election line-up could be seen as yet another in Thaksin's long parade of often unsuccessful political gambles.

Therdpoum Chaidee, a former communist and royalist People's Alliance for Democracy protest group supporter, notes that the pro-Thaksin camp's three-pronged attack, including political, militant and mass movement arms, bears a strong resemblance to Maoist guerrilla strategies taught in Hanoi in the 1970s to would-be revolutionaries like himself and certain UDD leaders, including current chairwoman Thida Thawornseth.

Therdpoum noted that in revolutionary theory a united front (the UDD in this case) gathers up anti-government forces in a display of popular resistance while shadowy fighters (the so-called "Men in Black" who launched grenades and opened fire on security forces) provoke, discombobulate and fracture their opponents. A political party (the Thaksin-controlled Puea Thai) then moves into the ensuing political vacuum to seize power as the discredited government collapses.

Historically, united front organizations are discarded or betrayed once the revolutionary party is strong enough to take political power. The point is not to tar the protesters as communists (which, with minor exceptions, UDD leaders certainly are not) but merely to underline that a feisty "people's movement" was created to perform the combative street work inappropriate for a political party aiming to form a legitimate government in a free election.

Revolutionary theory or mere political calculation dictates that the arms of the campaign must at least appear to run independently of each other for the strategy to succeed. Yet several Puea Thai politicians blurred those lines by sponsoring and supporting last year's UDD protests, with many of their photographs proudly displayed at the protest camp. Some spoke on the protest stage, where threats and vitriol were aimed at the government and military, but the party mostly kept its distance from the UDD's "Red Shirt" movement.

The UDD, on the other hand, not only failed to distance itself from the vicious "Men in Black" but last year saw several of its leaders boast of violence inflicted against officials or warn of destructive deeds to come. Outspoken UDD leader Jatuporn Prompan, who's also a Puea Thai party member of parliament, has continued the fiery rhetoric that has effectively redrawn the boundaries of political invective in Thailand. Last month, he made a speech that allegedly tilted against the monarchy, causing a former prime minister and army commander, Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, to resign from the party.

Same old line

Thaksin, notoriously distrustful of potential rivals, may think the risk of running a few of his radical proteges worth it to jazz up an election platform that essentially recycles his decade old populist promises under the now tired "think new, act new" campaign slogan. Because two of his aligned political parties have been dissolved by court rulings, many analysts view the quality of Puea Thai candidates as lacking when stacked against the Democrats.

Some of Thaksin's fiercest opponents remain critical over how the government and military were caught flat-footed by last year's assaults by the "Men in Black". They argue that after Thaksin failed to bring down the government through protests in 2009, even after bringing much of the capital to a standstill and forcing the shameful cancellation of a regional political summit attended by world leaders, the next round of protests had to result in bloodshed to have their desired strategic impact.

On April 13, 2009, a month after Thaksin from exile had called upon his followers to launch a "people's revolution" to overthrow Abhisit's government, this writer exchanged a few words with the army colonel who was in charge of soldiers gathering to confront protestors at Bangkok's Din Daeng intersection. "I am going to do my duty," he said briskly. Was this, I asked, likely to be a problem? Colonel Romklao Thuwatham replied: "No one at all has to get hurt."

At the time, his troops were lining up in front of protestors arrayed around an eight-wheel truck with giant speakers screaming a spicy combination of abuse and flattery at the slowly advancing soldiers. Some protestors tossed small Molotov cocktails in the troops' direction before they retreated. Under Romklao's command, the army dispersed rioting UDD protestors, killing no-one in the efficient crowd control operation. (Thaksin told international broadcasters at the time that the army had killed several protestors, a claim that was later disproved.)

One year later, on April 10, 2010, Romklao's troops were again poised to clear Bangkok's streets of UDD protestors. However, an unidentified assailant lit up his helmet with an identifying green laser and moments later a hail of 40 mm anti-personnel grenades, the sort fired from hand-held M-79 launchers, exploded where he stood. The military precision attack was caught clearly by press cameras in the area, showing several soldiers severely injured or killed.

The unidentified assassins knew what they were doing. The previous year in Din Daeng it was clear the young, noticeably raw, conscripts would be lost without confident command and control. The following year, when Romklao walked into a deadly ambush of assault rifles and grenades rather than unarmed peaceful protestors, bloody chaos ensued. Twenty-five people were killed that evening, including five soldiers. The estimated 860 wounded included another colonel and a general, both of whom were permanently maimed.

In a recently released investigative report on last year's violence, Human Rights Watch was highly critical of the government's use of lethal force against mostly unarmed protestors. At the same time, the report discounted UDD claims that they were not associated with the "Men in Black". Any fair reading of the independent report based on eyewitness accounts concludes that the provocations of the so-called "Men in Black" were designed to trigger multiple casualties, which the UDD leveraged to predictable political effect.

This reporter was at one point squatting behind some army sandbags on Bangkok's Rama IV road last May watching the acrid black smoke rising from tires burning on the roadway occupied by protestors a couple of hundred meters or so away. There was barely a flicker of life in the smoke and nothing much seemed to be happening.

A grizzled old warrant officer was monitoring the haze through a battered pair of binoculars and occasionally spoke to a young soldier beside him who was peering down the sights of an M-16. Perhaps every 15 minutes or so this soldier would fire a shot at presumably some movement in the distant smoke. I asked the sergeant what they were firing at, to which he replied: "They have M-79s."

Contested histories

Competing versions of last year's violence are expected to animate Thailand's upcoming election campaign, which some analysts fear could tilt towards more violence. At least in part, the polls will represent a trial of popular tastes for radical and sharp-edged realignments of political power with the many UDD leaders running under Puea Thai's banner.

Those voters - not to be confused with actual protesters - still impressed by Thaksin's past aura of dynamism and pro-poor promises will likely still punt for his party. But there are subtle indications that the UDD's drawing power may have peaked in 2009, when the movement was widely seen as something fresh, hopeful and exciting. Then, many ordinary Thais were keen to echo the UDD's arguments against social and economic inequality, often with a vigor that often seemed to surprise UDD speakers themselves.

If Thai culture accommodates a certain level of "justified" violence, witnessed in the popularity of Thaksin's 2003 war on drugs campaign that resulted in over 2,200 extrajudicial killings, there is also a visceral dislike of anarchy and distrust of overweening arrogance. The UDD leaders running with Puea Thai will likely struggle against perceptions of the latter.

Somsak Jeamteerasakul, a Thai academic who has been notably pro-UDD and strongly opposed to military meddling in politics, wrote last year on an academic website that "The use of arms in [urban] struggle, during political protest that claims 'non-violence' as its motto is political suicide."

"[The violence] didn't really 'protect' the rally, in fact it only provoked heavier deployment of lethal force by the government, which the protesters, however armed, would not be able to counter, and which would [result] - and this is my strongest objection - in loss of lives of innocent demonstrators themselves," he added. Somsak now faces lese majeste charges filed by the Thai military for other outspoken views.

Meanwhile, three top UDD leaders told the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand in late April that their group was an entirely "peaceful" movement. Jatuporn claimed that the arson attacks against CentralWorld and other tower blocks were perpetrated by "the state" to distract attention from the military's killing of unarmed protestors. The government "started the violence because they know our strength is in peaceful protest," he said.

With the credibility of such claims stretching credulity, including well-documented counter-narratives raised in the HRW report, there are indications of significant splits among UDD stalwarts on moderate and hard lines.

Former UDD chairman Veerakarn Musikapong, who was jailed after last year's crackdown, warned in a recent press interview that the UDD will destroy itself if it continues to move in lockstep with the Puea Thai party because it should represent the people, rather than a single man, ie Thaksin. Veerakarn also raised concerns that the movement's agenda risked being hijacked by radical fringe elements that did not represent the movement's wider sentiments.

"We must not make people hate or fear us. We have to erase this image," he said in the interview.

Whether internal conflicts or negative popular perceptions will undermine the radical UDD leaders' bid to enter the political mainstream at the upcoming polls is yet to be seen. But it will by now have become clear to undecided voters that the UDD and its top leaders are no more peaceful or less guilty than the establishment forces they will be running against in July's elections.

William Barnes is a veteran Bangkok-based journalist.