THE ROVING EYE An appeal
to the Thai masses By Pepe
Escobar
BANGKOK - December 9. This is the
day of destiny when the Buddhist kingdom of
Thailand will see which way the wind blows in the
ongoing, no holds barred, very un-Buddhist
political confrontation between former allies and
best friends, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra
and his now fierce critic, Sondhi Limthongkul,
founder of Manager Media Group.
It all
started with a talk show, or rather a case of the
(talk) show must go on. Ever since Thailand
This Week, Sondhi's unique political talk show
went mobile after being canceled by state-owned
Channel 9 in mid-September, it has been relentlessly
snowballing into a political
protest movement.
From terrestrial to
satellite, from studio to growing live audiences,
first at Thammasat University and then in Lumpini
park in downtown Bangkok, the mobile talk show is
virtually the only outlet in Thailand for the
urban masses to express political dissent. And
they have adopted it with unlimited relish. Thai
media have dubbed the saga "Sondhi fever", or "the
Sondhi phenomenon".
Bring on the yellow
T-shirt masses Once again this past Friday
just a man and a woman talking over a few large
screens planted in a park - a political
installation that would have pleased the Venice
Biennale - were shaking the government tree to the
core. Sondhi and his co-host, Sarocha Pornudomsak,
were literally virtual. Sondhi had been to Udon
Thani in northeast Thailand, meeting with revered
Buddhist abbot Luangta Maha Bua - another fierce
Thaksin critic - at his temple, but his return to
Bangkok had been prevented by evidence of a plot
to assassinate him.
According to Sondhi,
"There was a conspiracy to block me from coming to
the temple and to prevent me from hosting the
program." So at the last minute the 10th chapter
of the mobile show was broadcast live from Udon
Thani. Those not in the park followed it on Asian
Satellite TV (ASTV) or over the Manager Media
Group website - the most popular in the country.
Sondhi threw down the gauntlet: "On
December 9, we shall retaliate. I ask that 500,000
people show up, even though Lumpini park cannot
handle it."
The live audience at the park
- at least 50,000 people - was not deterred. It
represented a fascinating cross-section of the
capital's middle class - high school and
university students, secretaries who left work in
a rush in neighboring, business-centered Silom
Road and went straight to the rally, liberal
professionals, entrepreneurs, senior citizens,
housewives, whole families picnicking on the
grass.
Most had voted for Thaksin in the
past two elections. Thousands were sporting the
now-trademark yellow T-shirt with the black logo
"We shall fight for the King" (150 baht - less
than US$4 - for the short-sleeved version). The
show lasted two-and-a-half hours. During the
interval - a musical/satirical interlude - crowds
mobbed the stands selling T-shirts, books and
video-CDs of the previous shows. When employees of
Sondhi's Manager Media Group started distributing
free copies of the video-CDs, even some of the
hundreds of policemen on duty snatched them.
Nobody left the park until the end. Some
were there because "Sondhi is a good man." Many
were there because they were fed up with the
perceived corruption and cronyism of the Thaksin
administration. Unlike raucous political rallies
in the West, this was a very polite audience,
listening to a passionate Sondhi with almost
devout attention - occasionally interrupted by
bursts of laughter and applause. Ultimately, this
impeccably organized electronic rally delivered
what the audience wanted: more accusations of
corruption and cronyism. Satisfaction guaranteed -
or your yellow T-shirt back.
Sondhi came
up with fresh allegations that the government
mishandled Thai national lottery funds.
Brandishing documents, he smashed the government's
response to another accusation lobbed in the
previous show - related to Thaksin's younger
sister using a C-130 Thai Air Force transport
plane to take some VIP friends for her birthday
party in the northern city of Chiang Mai,
Thaksin's home town.
The crowd absolutely
loved it. Once again, the thrust of Sondhi's case
is that the Thaksin administration only pays lip
service to democracy, is corrupted to the core and
does not deserve popular respect or support. Thus
the December 9 date with destiny, in Sondhi's own
words. "I ask that 500,000 people show up on
December 9, even though Lumpini park cannot handle
it. We need to stand up against the abuse of state
power and ... redraft the constitution."
The plot thickens The run-up to
last Friday's show reads like a thriller. On
November 17, Sondhi was slapped with a court order
effectively gagging him while Thaksin's flurry of
lawsuits against him await trial. He was not
deterred. The next day, on the 9th edition of the
mobile talk show, Sondhi implicated Thaksin's
younger sister in the C-130 "fun flight".
The government tried to prevent cable TV
stations in Thai provinces from relaying the
signal from ASTV, which broadcasts Sondhi's show.
From Chiang Mai to Phuket in the south people
counteracted, getting together to watch the show
on open-air projectors - provided by the
provincial bureaus of Manager Media Group.
But a larger tempest was in the making -
and the Thai political skies really trembled when
Supreme Commander General Ruengroj Mahasaranond
stepped into the fray. He warned that Sondhi
should stop invoking the Thai monarchy in his
criticism of the government and accused Sondhi of
sabotaging national security.
Ruengroj,
not by accident, is very close to the former
supreme commander, who is Thaksin's cousin Chaisit
Shinawatra. People such as senator Nirun
Phitakwatchara, one of the leaders of the 1973
Thai student uprising, were positively alarmed.
"It's as if we're living in the climate of
military rule decades ago," he said. In an
editorial, the English-language daily The Nation
described Ruengroj as "the wrong man at the wrong
place at the wrong time".
Those with long
memories readily expressed their fears of
radicalization. Pithaya Wongkul, chairman of the
Campaign for Popular Democracy, stressed that "the
best way out is for the prime minister to dissolve
the house and call for a general election to avoid
bloodshed - as happened in October 14, 1973 and
May 17, 1992." Chaianant Samudvanija, director of
Varijavudh College, added that "people are afraid
Thaksin will have absolute control over the
military, the house and even the senate."
Thaksin chose this juncture to stage his
latest coup de theater. Back from an Asia-Pacific
summit in South Korea, he decided to gag himself -
complaining that the printed media had
"misreported" his comments on a number of issues,
but more pointedly invoking that "Mercury is not
in an auspicious orbit right now" and was
interacting badly with his star.
What this
means in practice is the cancelation of Thaksin's
weekly meet-the-press sessions until January. From
now on, Thaksin's only channel of communication
with Thais is his weekly Saturday morning radio
program - where his monologue does not risk being
contradicted. Opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva
did not fail to notice that Mercury would be
conveniently leaving the prime minister's orbit
every Saturday.
Thaksin may have taken
comfort in a poll released early last week,
according to which 44% of respondents considered
the Thaksin-Sondhi battle as the most serious
issue facing Thai society at the moment - while
only 13% believed the main problem was the
government's inability to deal with Muslims in
Thailand's deep south. But significantly, in a
society deeply deferential to authority, only 12%
felt it was up to the prime minister to do some
explaining the multiple allegations of corruption
and abuse of power.
Revered abbot Luangta
Maha Bua then staged his own coup de theater,
inviting Thaksin and Sondhi to his temple in Udon
Thani for a frank discussion. In a remarkable
scene, about 600 saffron-robed monks of the
Dhamayut order - the so-called "forest monks" -
traveled more than six hours overnight by bus and
arrived early morning at the Manager Media Group's
offices in Bangkok, sitting down at the garden in
the lotus position and delivering the abbot's
invitation.
Sondhi duly accepted it.
Thaksin refused - not publicly because after all
he had gagged himself, but via a government
spokesman who mentioned a tight schedule. A Thai
Rak Thai parliamentarian, Kuthep Saikrachang,
expressed what the party really thought about all
this, warning that Buddhist monks should remain
neutral and not meddle in politics.
Meanwhile, calls were mounting for a
review of the 1997 constitution. According to
Amorn Chadrasomboon, one of Thailand's top legal
experts, the current constitutional provisions do
not prevent politicians in power from abusing
state-owned property. So he advocates the
interference of revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej to
help amend the constitution. "Why do we need to
seek help from the king? Because we are sinking
beneath the earth and we must hold fast, or else
heaven and earth shall be separated". This was a
reference to a strong tradition in countries such
as Thailand according to which the king represents
heaven and the people represent the earth.
Somewhere between heaven and earth,
Thaksin felt compelled to reassure his cabinet he
was not contemplating early retirement. "I confirm
that I will not dissolve parliament or resign
because nothing will disrupt [this
administration's work] before the election
scheduled for April 2009." By mid-week, Bangkok
was rife with rumors of a coup (Thailand had 17
coups in 59 years, but none in the past 14).
The financial markets panicked.
Interestingly enough, it was not Sondhi, the
opposition Democrats or anyone else who evoked the
possibility of a coup, but Deputy Transport
Minister and Thaksin ally, Phumtham Wechayachai.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at
Chulalongkorn University, helped put things in
perspective. "Given the military support for
Thaksin, any coup is likely to reinforce the
incumbent rather than get rid of him."
Thaksin then deployed the other half of
his silent strategy, as his lawyer Thana
Benjatikul duly filed a sixth lawsuit against
Sondhi and his talk show co-host Sarocha - this
one a defamation suit concerning the prime
minister allegedly helping his family-owned
company to buy mobile phone and Thaicom satellite
concessions, as well as helping shareholders buy
shares of Thai Petrochemical Industry at cheaper
than normal prices.
But the pattern
remained. The more lawsuits and government
intimidation, the more support for Sondhi and the
bigger his virtual and live audiences. The court
order barring him from criticizing Thaksin was
dropped. Sondhi ended last week solemnly protected
by Luangta Maha Bua. The popular abbot said,
"Sondhi has now become a person for the nation and
if he dies then it means the death of everyone in
the country as well."
The answer is
blowing in the wind Thaksin wields money,
might and raw power. Sondhi relies on moral force
and the power of civil society.
An
undisputed political effect of the "Sondhi
phenomenon" is that even though he still controls
the armed forces, the police and government
bureaucracy, Thaksin's perceived aura of
invulnerability is being eroded. In Bangkok, there
is a widespread perception that the government is
losing its mandate. Sondhi already has a captive
audience of several hundred thousand - live, via
satellite or over the Internet, ready to explode
into the millions. Thai Rak Thai politicians
believe that Thaksin is invincible because he
controls the financial spigot to rural Thailand.
But rural Thailand may finally be paying attention
as week after week Sondhi unleashes tales of
corruption, cronyism and abuse of power.
Sondhi is now out to reshape Thai
politics. It's not what he wanted in the first
place. "The government forced me into it. All I
was asking for was freedom of the press. But they
have tried to silence me by any means, while not
giving any justification to their crooked
practices." Sondhi may not be saying anything
substantially new - as Bangkok has been awash for
months with tales of lack of transparency,
cronyism, corruption scandals and fishy deals.
Thaksin had already polarized Thailand
when Sondhi became more vocal. As analyst Thanong
Khanthong put it in The Nation, "Thai businessmen
in general now live in a climate of fear. They
don't want to speak out for fear of losing their
business through governmental retaliation." What
the "Sondhi phenomenon" has managed is to become
the catalyst of all things Thaksin-adverse - or
related to the prime minister's notorious
arrogance of power and his relentless drive to
turn Thailand over to big business.
The
government strategy for the moment seems to have
evolved into a variant of "speak nothing and carry
a big stick" (Thaksin's self-imposed gag order
plus the avalanche of lawsuits). Still,
unsatisfactory explanations are now carried out by
cronies with varying degrees of credibility. It's
not working because Sondhi comes up with fresh
corruption allegations every week. A fascinating
parallel may be drawn with President George W
Bush. Like the American president, the prime
minister is fast losing his "political capital".
Call it the curse of the second term. Perhaps
taking a cue from Bush, Thaksin has set up his own
rapid response team, led by minister Phumtham -
the same one who spread the rumor of a military
coup.
Sondhi said he's aware there will be
numerous attempts to discredit him. "But I learned
something from all this. If you believe in what
you're doing, go for it. Even if they are playing
dirty tricks against you." He recalls he started
thinking critically about Thaksin in power as
early as August 2004, after "many sleepless
nights" reflecting on questions of legitimacy. He
rules out any possibility of a "deal" with Thaksin
- a possibility branded by some analysts in the
Thai media. His demands today are quite specific -
and he's aware they have no precedent in Thai
history.
The 1997 constitution must be
rewritten, and a petition to this effect will be
drafted requesting the intervention of the king -
who is traditionally above politics. Will it work?
"I don't know. But we must try," Sondhi said.
Anything could happen on December 9 - or
even before. The king's birthday is on December 5.
If hundreds of thousands of people show up in
Lumpini park four days later, and the "Sondhi
phenomenon" is unmistakably translated into a mass
political movement, there's every possibility the
crowds will demand that the constitution - which,
until a year ago, was dubbed the "people's
constitution" - be rewritten. It's fair to argue
there would be no other way out for Thaksin than
to agree.
Neither Thaksin nor Sondhi
control what happens next. Thai citizens do. What
if the "Sondhi phenomenon", by the sheer force of
momentum, translates into something more
revolutionary - even though the conditions are not
there? The consequence would be a dissolution of
the house, or even Thaksin's resignation. Talk
about (talk show) people power. Is Thailand ready
for it?
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online
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