Thailand’s shadow theatre

Thai Prathet Thai, the “land of the free” has Thailand freewheeling street marches in the manner Yul Brynner strutted as the King of Siam while he charmed the corset off Anna in the King and I.

I fancy a Thai restaurant in San Antonio. Thai hospitality melded with the harmony of spices in their cuisine, thus the frequency of my patronage.
Triggered by the devaluation of the baht, the Asian financial crisis of ‘97 severely affected Indonesia and South Korea. Hong Kong, Laos, Malaysia, and the Philippines were infected by the consequent economic slump; Singapore, China, Taiwan, Brunei, and Vietnam suffered from loss of product demand as inventory rose.

The world in 2014 is in an uproar. Brazil moves beyond the glamour of FIFA World Cup, South Sudan decides on who controls the oil, Afghanistan feels the impact of civilian drone victims on the resurgent Taliban, Delhi struggles with another gang rape, the United States locates its equilibrium after a middle school student pulls out a rifle, an ex-police chief shoots a texting dad at a movie house, and a supermart random shooter leaves two ladies breathless down the aisle, even as many fails to see beyond the WH resident’s skin color!

The divisiveness in Thailand now pits the red and the yellow shirts. Identified with the red shirts is Thaksin Shinawatra, former PM 2001-2006, deposed by a military coup for corruption and abuse of power, and now accused of pulling the levers from exile through Yingluck Shinawatra, his sister and current prime minister.

Main protagonist leading the yellow shirts is former deputy PM Suteph Saugtuban, also under indictment for corruption and abuse of power. He resigned his seat in parliament 2013 to lead the current protest in the streets of Bangkok with no less than the resignation of PM Yingluck as a goal. He leads Bangkok’s elitist educated class against what it considers the reds’ uneducated rural class.

There are also two other power bases. One is the monarchy, with its considerable moral clout but short of chutzpah to influence affairs one way or the other. Thailand is a constitutional monarchy. The beloved but ailing monarch Bhumibol Adulyadej, and consort, the charming Sirikit, are now 87 and 81.

The other power base is the military, respected for its discipline to maintain order but remain subservient to civilian rule. It intervened in 2006 to oust PM Thaksin. He was effective enough to finish a full term, popular enough to get re-elected a second term, turned the economy around from the baht devaluation, but had the politicians’ greed of enriching himself in office, and putting himself above the law, especially in the heavy-handed treatment on the rampant trade in drugs.

The current emergency is endemic to the nature of the Kingdom of Thailand itself. Consisting of six macro-regions of considerable diversity, Thaksin is from the Chang Mai area up in the mountains with a heritage that reaches back to Guangzhou in China on his father’s side, and a local princess close to Yunnan and Yuenan (Vietnam) mountain tribes on his mother’s side. Thaksin’s father was in Parliament, and four members of the family (two sisters and a brother-in-law) are familiar with the management of political power.

Suteph comes from the southern province of Surat Thani, part of the buffer between Myanmar and Malaysia, bounded by the Gulf and Malacca Strait, predominantly of Malay stock of Muslim persuasion. Suteph struts with the confidence of a coastal pirate but defers to the military and the monarchy; Thaksin is seen as a talented but opportunistic investor, cavalier to lese majeste laws and renders less deference to the status-conscious military.

Yingluck mistakenly promoted an amnesty bill in Parliament in 2013 allegedly to bring harmony into a divided nation, but would have also allowed brother Thaksin to return from exile. In the uproar, she dissolved parliament and slated an election as decreed by the constitution, a process boycotted by the yellows who clamor for reforms first before elections (read, Yingluck resigns) and watched by the military and the police. With the abstentions, it will not adequately represent the country’s will regardless of how well polling rights is exercised, but it has created the white shirts who ditto the yellows’ desire for change but promote the reds’ adherence to the electoral process. The royal palace will most likely just listen to the chants of the saffron draped Theravada monks.

On Saipan, I would just sit back and eat a Laplae durian, finger a plate of phat thai, nibble on a Garapan Thursday night saté, and watch the news on the shutting down of Bangkok as poor Yingluck Shinawatra helplessly looks out, knowing that the Land of the Free will now always have the reds, the yellows and the whites in the streets with their banners, placards, and flowers in their hair. 

Regardless of electoral outcome, Yingluck will be remembered for her refusal to be confrontational in response to the crisis, preferring the lessons of Thai cuisine: balance the mixed taste of diverse ingredients and spices. I hope she survives.