(photo credit: Ratchaprasong on Flickr)

Chang Noi writes in The Nation about another red-versus-yellow battle in the upcoming Bangkok by-election (to be held on 25 July):

[…] In short, this constituency is a true marginal and so the result will be heavy with meaning.

And that meaning is colour-coded. Panich Wikisreth is not so much a Democrat as a yellow, a protégé of Kasit Piromya, a fanatical yellow-shirt. The New Politics Party was somehow persuaded to exit the contest so that the yellow vote would not be split.

Kokaew Pikulthong is not so much a Pheu Thai member as a red. He took a prominent role in the recent demonstrations, and is now in jail on the ridiculous terrorism charge. Panich has a background in local government and fully qualifies as a member of the establishment, an ammat. Detention confirms Kokaew as a member of the unfree masses, a phrai. The symbolism is exquisite.

Pheu Thai pretty much wrong-footed everyone else when they picked Kokaew to run in this by-election. Earlier they even contemplated choosing the more high-profile Natthawut Saikua but some technicalities stood in the way. Nonetheless, that the party decided to make a prisoner their candidate for a public office at all is quite astonishing in the Thai context. And of course, the symbolism wouldn’t be complete without a reference to Bobby Sands, which was duly made by the (still free) red leader and PT MP Jatuporn Prompan (see here).

If the choice of Kokaew shows how close the red shirts and Pheu Thai are to each other, the PAD’s withdrawal from the contest reveals how close the Democrats still are to the yellow shirts. Despite the occasional verbal spats between the two, it’s pretty much undeniable that — in Bangkok at least — the PAD and the Democrat Party rely on broadly the same support base. As Chang Noi points out in the article, the presence of a candidate from the PAD’s New Politics Party in this by-election would unnecessarily split the anti-Thaksin vote.

One thing is clear: it is reassuring to see the two colours, for once, willing to stay calm and allow people to speak their mind at the ballot box. Here’s hoping that the result will be honoured and respected by all sides.

h/t on_off_course

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1. Implications of Abhisit’s ‘Road Map’
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3. Kasit and Foreign Diplomats

(photo credit: central_vietnam on Flickr)

The Nation reports:

Bangkok Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra has vowed to mediate any peace effort between the government and Thaksin Shinawatra if his Democrat Party would allow him to do that.

The only man on the government side who has met Thaksin lately, Sukhumbhand told The Nation in an exclusive interview that reconciliation depends as much on the Thaksin camp as on the Abhisit administration’s efforts.

The keywords are “if his Democrat Party would allow him to do that”. It does not seem likely that this government will enter into talks with a man it brands a terrorist.  It appears that, over the last four or five months, Sukhumbhand has been something of an outcast among the Democrats. When it was revealed that for a while he conducted secret negotiations with key red-shirt figures, virtually no one in his party came out to support what the Bangkok governor was doing.

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(photo credit: isriya on Flickr)

The Nation‘s resident rant machine Sopon Onkgara in his latest piece:

With the appointments of three committees on political reform, reconciliation and fact-finding – each comprising prominent personalities – we are seeing the familiar act of buying more time to remain in power, while feigning ignorance of the real crisis, with Thaksin as the sole root cause.

The first act of courage by Abhisit and the committees in gaining credibility and public acceptance will be the utterance of a name: “Thaksin”. If we do not hear this word from them, it will be a waste of Bt600 million of taxpayers’ money in a futile three-year exercise of shadow chasing.

Sopon must be the only person in the whole of Thailand – no, let’s make that the whole planet – who thinks Abhisit or anyone associated with this government is ignoring Thaksin.

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Deputy PM Suthep Thaugsuban surrounded by reporters (photo credit: Prachatai on Flickr)

When things get tough for you in a debate, accusing your opposite party of being unpatriotic has been a tried and trusted method of ending the conversation – so long as you don’t care how silly that will make you sound.

According to at least three Thai-language sources (see here, here and here), Deputy PM Suthep on Friday had a heated exchange with reporters over the issue of the April-May red-shirt crisis. One particular thorny question was who were responsible for the violence and the deaths. When a reporter asked him what the CRES (the vastly powerful government-military agency set up to oversee the emergency situation) would do about people’s belief that civilians were shot by army troops, Suthep at once pointed to that reporter’s face and angrily asked “Are you Thai?” before quickly disappearing into his office.

As is repeated time and time again, the official version of what transpired during the red-shirt encampment is that all violence was perpetrated by “some” red-shirt protesters and mysterious unaligned paramilitary forces. None of the deaths were caused by the army, who, lest we forget, were authorised to fire live rounds in the protest zone.

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[T]he government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva clearly cares about how foreigners view Thailand and how foreign takes should be consistent and conform to official positions.

The government does not seem to detest the foreign media per se. It selectively prefers the foreign perceptions that toe the official worldview from Bangkok, support the status quo, and obey the mainstream narrative.

For example, the appointment of Ambassador Sihasak Phuangketkeow, Thailand’s permanent representative in Geneva, as president of the United Nations Human Rights Council, has been touted and portrayed as the acceptance and understanding by the international community of the Thai authorities’ handling of the domestic unrest and deadly violence in recent months.

Prior to this high-level international appointment, senior Thai officials have lambasted certain foreign governments for allowing convicted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra freedom of movement in their countries.

I suppose the government is not worried as much about the Thai media, given that Colonel Sansern seems to have been attracting much of their recent attention.

p.s. Read more about Sihasak’s appointment as the UNHRC president here.

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(photo credit: Prachatai on Flickr)

No matter which government we have in power, human rights remain essentially an alien concept in Thailand. The Rohingya affairs, the drug war, the perpetual emergency decree – you name it. And yet things have taken a strange, or should I say depressing, turn when the country was elected as president of the UN Human Rights Council (see here). Yes you heard it right. A country with serious human rights problems like Thailand now gets to chair a global agency in charge of promoting civil liberties and scrutinising human rights situation worldwide!

The Nation was quick to portray this as a significant achievement of the Abhisit administration:

Kudos must go to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya, who did not budge when they were urged by international and Thai human rights groups to withdraw from bidding for a seat at the Human Rights Council.

The result was telling. Thailand came in second with 182 votes after the Maldives (185), despite the political crisis that was brewing on the streets of Bangkok. The result indicates the country’s diplomatic and human rights credentials. [...]

However, Pokpong Lawansiri in The Guardian provides an illuminating insight into what actually happened during the selection process (emphasis added):

Can this election of the council’s presidency be viewed as a realistic reflection of Thailand’s human rights standards?

The council was set up in 2006 to replace the contentiously debated UN commission on human rights. The election of the presidency is done on a rotating basis from five regional groups: Latin America and Caribbean, eastern Europe, Africa, western Europe and other states, and Asia. Since 2006, representatives of all four regional groups have served as presidents to the council, with the exception of Asia.

Based on this, Thailand was not competing against countries with better recognised human rights records such as those governments of Switzerland or Norway. Instead, Thailand was competing against countries in Asia, namely Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan and Maldives – all of which are criticised by rights watchdogs as human rights violators.

[...]

Maldives, a relatively young democracy, has only just emerged from a history of military coups and held its first democratic election in 2008. The country was ruled by Maumoon Gayoom, who denied free and fair elections, for 20 years. Being a small country, the Maldives lacked the political leverage required to convince member states of their leadership.

This is how the council was left with Thailand. As chair of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2009, Thailand had strong support from the member states in addition to many other states that could be provided by its ambassador.

Interestingly, one thing that The Nation and Pokpong seem to agree on is that this new privilege will also increase the pressure on the Thai state to do more to protect civil liberties and rectify existing human rights violations in the country. If pressures from rights groups around the world have not been strong enough for the government to act, now it has the added burden of chairing a UN body to live up to.

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Kiat Sittheeamorn (photo credit)

Asia Society will be hosting a live webcast-only event featuring Kiat Sittheeamorn, a Democrat member and Thai Special Envoy to New York and Washington. He will be discussing the political situation in Thailand. The live webcast will take place on 14 June 2010, 4:00 – 5:00 ET and can be watched at www.AsiaSociety.org/Live.

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Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva (photo credit: Flickr)

Clearly, the conflict over the last couple of months in Thailand has gained considerable attention from the international community. The European Parliament even dedicated a session to the Thai situation and the use of violence was roundly condemned by MEPs. The media-savvy  Thai government obviously knows the importance of international perception, particularly as some of the most prominent news outlets on the planet have portrayed the clashes in a way that is unlikely to please the the Thai state too much…

Eager to win support from foreign governments, the PM called a special press conference on Saturday where diplomats and members of the press were given an opportunity to listen to the ‘official’ side of the story as well as to ask him questions. Video clips of the event are now available on Youtube and the links to them can be found below. There are eight clips in total.

Note that Abhisit only starts answering questions in Clip 3. There are also minor audio problems here and there.

Clip 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4-hEoESykk

Clip 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHsE6uLQYA0

Clip 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL1GBht7vvY

Clip 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56XUERrfUQI

Clip 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oju0Dt9VjXA

Clip 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptBf5fFVKk4

Clip 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVbj0vOQ9qM

Clip 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr8DLa13vOE

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[...] But Mr Abhisit, whose term ends in late 2011, said in a speech on May 23rd that his commitment to an election date no longer applies. He would have to wait to see if orderly elections could be held.

Such backsliding, even if founded on a realistic assessment of the risks, is bound to antagonise his opponents. They will take it as proof that he always intended to wriggle out of the offer they rejected. Nor will they set much store by Mr Abhisit’s demand for an independent investigation into the violence. The army, which stands behind Mr Abhisit, has a long history of covering its tracks. That a few red shirts were armed will be used as justification for killing those who were not. Thai media can mostly be relied on to stick to the official narrative. And without an election timetable, all of this will be seen, as a senior Western diplomat puts it, as “window-dressing”.

The rest of the article is well worth reading.

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(source: here, via this link)

The above photos purportedly show a couple of red leaders, detained and branded as terrorists by the state, looking relaxed and living in reasonably comfortable surroundings a day after they surrendered themselves to the police. They are also seen greeting a group of people,  allegedly well-wishers. Red leaders are said to be detained in the seaside resort town of Hua Hin.

The photos have provoked outcries from those who expected tougher treatment of the red detainees. They also have raised questions. Is this part of some kind of a deal thrashed out beforehand between the reds and the government? Who will take responsibility for putting ‘terrorist’ suspects in such privileged conditions? Does this prove that indeed there are red sympathisers within the police and the military top brass?

Needless to say, this is such an anti-climax.

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