Bangkok - Thailand - a country whose recent history has
included 18 coups and several bloody showdowns between troops and
protestors - has a reputation for resiliency as a cohesive society
that manages to muddle through its political crises with compromises.
That famed resiliency is being sorely tested.
Analysts are warning that if Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva
fails to push through significant political reforms soon that return
Thailand to a more democratic path, the country's deep political
divide will widen and more violence could be in store.
Abhisit, the 44-year-old Oxford-educated leader of the Democrat
Party that leads the government, has vowed to launch a national
reconciliation process in the wake of this month's clashes between
troops and anti-government protestors that left two people dead and
123 injured, according to government accounts of the incident.
He has also mooted an amnesty for about 200 veteran politicians
whose careers have been cut short by court rulings based on
provisions in the military-sponsored 2007 constitution that is deemed
by its critics hostile to political parties and supportive of the
bureaucracy and appointed officials.
There has also been talk of amending the 2007 charter.
But all these suggestions have been met with opposition from the
Thai establishment - monarchists, the military and the bureaucracy -
who are among Abhisit's chief political supporters.
'The signs are bad,' said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political
scientist at Chulalongkorn University. 'I think Abhisit's window to
reform and accommodation is fast closing.'
Abhisit's political opponents, the leaders of the United Front for
Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) that led the protests earlier
this month and the opposition Puea Thai party, have little faith is
his talk of national reconciliation.
Abhisit came to power last December after the Constitution Court
disbanded the People Power Party (PPP), that headed Thailand's last
government and was openly supportive of fugitive former premier
Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted by a coup in 2006 and has lived in
self-exile since he was sentenced to a two-year jail term on abuse of
power charges last year.
Although Abhisit's appointment was legitimate by parliamentary
procedure, his critics accuse the military, judiciary and last year's
pro-monarchy protestors of conspiring to bring him to power.
'Abhisit is just a mouthpiece for the establishment,' said core
UDD leader Jakrapob Penkair, who has evaded arrest and claims to be
organizing an 'underground' anti-government movement that might
resort to violent tactics.
'The point is that when the government ignores the people, they
have to find a way to get the country reformed,' Jakrapob said in a
phone interview from an undisclosed hiding place.
Most of the key UDD leaders were arrested on April 14, and remain
under detention. In contrast, core leaders of the People's Alliance
for Democracy (PAD), which organized six months of protests last year
that culminated with the closure of Bangkok's two airports, have yet
to be punished.
'The present situation in which rule of law does not prevail, and
law enforcement is discriminatory, is forcing some groups to seek
other means of protest, including going underground,' said Chaturon
Chaisaeng, a former leader of the defunct Thai Rak Thai party that
was founded by Thaksin.
But Chaturon downplayed threats that the red-shirted UDD movement
is going underground.
'The movement doesn't need to go underground at all, because their
demands are accepted by the Thai public,' Chaturon said.
While the red-shirts openly support Thaksin, their political goals
go beyond calls that he be returned to power, an increasingly remote
possibility.
Thaksin, who was prime minister between 2001-2006, has been
discredited by the recent street violence which he encouraged through
phone-in messages to his followers, at one point even calling for a
'people's revolution.'
The Thai government this month revoked Thaksin's passport, forcing
him to travel on a passport granted by Nicaragua.
Part of Thaksin's durability as a political force is his money.
A former telecommunications tycoon, Thaksin allegedly has millions
socked away abroad. He is keen to have the Thai government return to
his family 2 billion dollars in frozen bank accounts.
But Thaksin's popular appeal is not just money. During his
premiership, he courted votes from Thailand's rural and urban poor
with populist programmes that tangibly improved their lives and gave
them a sense of empowerment.
That sense of empowerment has been lost, first with the military
coup of 2006 and then the promulgation of the 2007 constitution that
has reined in the powers of elected politicians. 'The mechanism has
to be put in place to reset the democratic mandate,' Thitinan said.
'Otherwise there will be a build-up of more tension. You have to let
it off.'
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