April 21, 2010By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
Pacific Daily News (Guam)I wrote last week that Alexey Semyonov of the Sakharov Foundation and Professor Baktybek Abdrisaev of Utah Valley University called Kyrgyzstan Central Asia's only nation to have "forced regime change," both observing that its people are "willing to fight for their rights."
We each can profit from learning about the interconnections among seemingly unrelated events to draw lessons and build a better world. Change breeds change. The Kyrgyz situation will evolve further -- as will situations in Myanmar, Cambodia and elsewhere. Nothing shall remain the same.
But change doesn't always bring good things.
Ideas are the catalyst of action. People of different temperament patterns -- organizational consultant Dr. Linda V. Berens called them theorist, catalyst, improviser, and stabilizer -- seem essential for good thinking and action.
President Andrew Jackson advised: "Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in."
Action opens door to many possibilities: the good and the bad.
Two strong proponents of action, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Theodore Roosevelt, leave us with invaluable insights.
"I never worry about action, but only about inaction," Churchill said. "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts" -- "going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm."
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are," Roosevelt said. "Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster." And: "In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing."
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life," Churchill said.
Roosevelt noted: "No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his body, to risk his well-being, to risk his life in a great cause."
On April 7, the Kyrgyz people acted in Central Asia, and Asian parliamentarians petitioned Association of Southeast Asian Nations leaders meeting in Hanoi to sanction and expel Myanmar from ASEAN.
On that day, in Bangkok, Thai Premier Abhisit Vejjajiva proclaimed a state of emergency after the antigovernment red shirts, supporters of tycoon turned populist former Premier Thaksin Shinawatra, broke into the parliament building, sending legislators climbing over walls and cabinet ministers scrambling to get on a helicopter to be rescued.
Then came the April 10 violent clashes between the red shirts and the military: 23 protesters and soldiers were killed, some 900 were wounded.
Sopon Onkgara wrote in Bangkok's English language newspaper, The Nation, on April 13 that the red shirts were armed with M-16 and AK-47 assault rifles, M-79 grenade launchers and hand grenades as they faced soldiers "who got direct orders from politicians with no battle experience."
Gone from Thailand, apparently, is the idea of a parliament as a house for democratic debate. When angry demonstrators take to the streets, lawless riots usually ensue and mob rule's tyrannical, imperious and oppressive characteristics emerge.
Swedish expatriate journalist and author Bertil Lintner's "The Battle for Thailand: Can Democracy Survive?" in the July/August 2009 Foreign Affairs magazine reads: "The political crisis is best understood as a simple power struggle between two different groups of elites. ... Neither side could accurately be described as democratic. If Thaksin's tenure was characterized by undemocratic practices, his opponents are even more openly antidemocratic."
On April 15, The Washington Post editorialized: Three times in the past four years, the yellow shirts, opponents of Shinawatra's populist movement, created chaos in the streets of Bangkok and brought down Thailand's "democratically elected governments." Now the Vejjajiva government, "backed by the same alliance of the middle class, business and traditional elites, has itself been cornered by the same tactics."
"Neither side in Thailand's class-based political conflict is a paragon of democracy," the editorial stated.
Shinawatra "violated press freedoms and allowed massive violations of human rights by security forces. The root of Thailand's years of conflict, however, is the unwillingness of the old establishment to accept that (Shinawatra) has the support of the country's majority."
In neighboring Cambodia, Premier Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People's Party control the country with an iron fist. Main opposition leader Sam Rainsy told the Voice of America in July 2009 of his party's decision to abandon street demonstrations and protests -- tools guaranteed by domestic and international laws -- saying the party found it "much more constructive and effective" to bring change through "other mechanisms."
While Rainsy visited France, in January Sen's court sentenced Rainsy in absentia to two years in prison for uprooting Cambodia-Vietnam boundary posts. On Feb. 25, the Deutsche Presse Agentur reported Sen as saying, "This time the court sentenced (Rainsy) to jail -- no pardon this time" and "In the next election (in 2013) there will be opposition parties, but this person will not be there."
Sen said, "You must be jailed first, if you are brave enough to come and be jailed."
Today, Rainsy remains in France. His political actions in Cambodia may have to be postponed for a while. Former premier Prince Ranariddh had to foreswear political activities to be able to return to Cambodia from self-imposed exile in Malaysia.
The "sheep culture" that reigns in Cambodia does not help.
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.
