Response to Congressman Turners Thailand report and letter to President Obama

 

 This is a letter to President Obama by a US-Thai national, Vanina Sucharitkul a US trained lawyer, in a response to a report by Congressman Turner about Thailand. The Congressman's report appears biased and recommends supporting the interests of a known criminal and human rights violator.

Letter to President Obama regarding Thailand's Political Crisis - A Response to Michael Turner

President Barack Obama

President of the United States of America

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW

Washing, D.C. 20500


17 January 2014

Dear Mr. President,

I am writing in response to Congressman Michael R. Turner's letter to you yesterday, urging you to publically voice opposition to the anti-government movement and support the election on 2 February 2014. With all due respect, Congressman Turner's letter is misguided and shows a lack of understanding of the Thai political crisis.

As a U.S. trained lawyer, and citizen of the U.S. and Thailand, I am pro-democracy. Indeed, I have often volunteered for voters' assistance groups to inform Americans on voting registration, necessary documents for voting, and finding the right precinct to ensure that their votes do get counted.

The anti-government protestors are also pro-democracy. The movement is not to rid Thailand of democracy. It is to rid Thailand of the most tyrannical and dictatorial regime in history. Throughout history, many dictators have been democratically elected. Saddam Hussein received 100% of the votes. Hugo Chavez, whom you publically called authoritarian, was also elected by the majority.

The Thaksin authoritarian government, elected through vote-rigging, proved to be the most corrupt and the gravest human rights violator. In order to fully appreciate the current political crisis, one must examine the telecommunications Tycoon' legacy. To name a few examples of Thaksin's egregious conducts:

In February 2003, Thaksin launched a "war on drugs" campaign resulting in 2,800 extrajudicial killing in the span of three months. In 2007, official investigations concluded that more than half of those executed had no connections with drugs. The UN Human Rights Committee raised serious concerns yet perpetrators were never prosecuted.

In 2004, Thaksin's security forces shot, suffocated or crushed to death 85 southern protestors in what is known as the Tak Bai massacre. Human Rights Watch has condemned this atrocity and urged independent criminal investigation but again, to no avail.

According to Amnesty International, 18 human rights defenders were either assassinated or disappeared.

Due to Thaksin's censorship and intimidation of the press, human rights violations remained unreported and any dissent was silenced.

In an attempt to circumvent conflict of interest laws, Thaksin illegally transferred billions of baht in assets to his maids and drivers, without their knowledge.

Thaksin aided his wife to purchase government land at a reduced rate of 1/3 in violation of the law prohibiting political leaders from engaging in business dealings with the government. Thaksin was consequently sentenced to two years in prison but fled the country and never served his sentence.

Thaksin approved a US $127 million low-interest government loan to Myanmar's military-run government to purchase satellite services from his telecommunications business.

During his tenure as prime minister, Thaksin sold his stakes in telecoms giant Shin Corp to Temasek holding, evading taxes worth $16.3 million.

Thaksin's countless measures to benefit his telecommunications business prompted the Supreme Court to unanimously find him guilty of 4 counts of policy corruption and order seizure of $1.4 billion of his frozen $2.3-billion fortune.

These are just examples of the myriad ways in which Thaksin abused and robbed this country. Although in self-imposed exile, Thaksin continues to run Thailand and implement the policy of corruption through his sister. In a guised attempt to foster reconciliation, the current Thaksin regime passed the Amnesty Bill, designed to pardon protestors from all sides for engaging in political expression. At 4:25 am on a Friday night, the Thaksin-controlled parliament passed the final version of the bill that would now pardon all politicians ever charged or convicted of corruption since the coup. The revised bill also provided for the return of assets seized. To state the obvious, this law was passed solely to pave way for Thaksin's return as a free man with all his wealth restored.

In a ploy to control both the parliament and the senate, Thaksin's current government attempted to amend the senate structure and bar appointed senators who are professionals from all sectors. Eliminating this system would result in Thaksin's party controlling the legislative branch without any checks and balances. The Amnesty Bill or any other laws to enable Thaksin's corruption can then easily pass. Although the Constitutional Court struck down the senate-restructuring measure, Thaksin's government openly declared that it would defy the court's decision.

It is this blatant systematic policy of corruption and abuse of power solely for the benefit of Thaksin that fueled Thai citizens to stand up and say, enough is enough. The protestors want democracy. But first, Thaksin's dictatorship must be eradicated.

Over a decade of being under Thaksin's regime, one thing is clear. Our current democratic system has failed us. It has allowed for an authoritarian regime to usurp power and strip the nation's wealth. When a system accepts voter fraud and places corrupt politicians above the law, citizens must question and rise up against this broken system. The citizens are calling for reform. A true democracy with transparency, accountability, and most importantly, balance of power.

We want democracy. And it is through this civil obedience that we will achieve it.


Sincerely,

Vanina Sucharitkul

cc: Congressman Michael R. Turner

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The Last Gasp of Thai Paternalism -New York Times

By DUNCAN MCCARGO

Published: December 19, 2013 

original article

New York — Thailand is not one democracy, but two. In the 1990s the Thai political scientist Anek Laothamatas argued that the middle classes of Bangkok, educated and sophisticated, opposed corruption and embraced democratic values, while the uneducated masses in the rest of the country were susceptible to manipulation by unscrupulous politicians. This narrative is now being repeated by the middle-class Bangkokians who have recently taken to the streets en masse and occupied government buildings, forcing Yingluck Shinawatra, the democratically elected prime minister, to call for early elections in February.

In fact, the protesters themselves are proving Mr. Anek wrong. Now it’s the urban middle classes who are being manipulated by wayward politicians — like Suthep Thaugsuban, a former deputy prime minister who resigned from Parliament last month to lead the demonstrations — and who oppose holding fresh elections. And it’s the voters from the countryside who are backing electoral democracy.

Most administrations have traditionally comprised unstable coalitions of warring factions, which means the traditional elites in the military, the royal palace and the judiciary called most of the shots because they could bring down prime ministers at will. Monarchism is to Thailand what Kemalism is to Turkey: a founding principle that the military can always invoke to justify seizing power on grounds of national security.

At least that was the case until 2001, when Thaksin Shinawatra, Ms. Yingluck’s older brother, won his first election, paving the way for the victory of pro-Thaksin parties in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2011. An upstart Chiang Mai police officer turned telecommunications magnate and then political hustler, Mr. Thaksin is a controversial and polarizing figure. He was ousted in a military coup in 2006. Now in exile abroad, he faces jail time should he return home. Yet he has managed to consolidate power in the hands of a dominant ruling party, which has survived two court-mandated dissolutions and other judicial challenges.

Thailand’s oldest political party, the Democrat Party, last won an election in 1992; its conservative, pro-bureaucracy bases in Bangkok and the south are not big enough for it to secure a national majority. And this very sore loser is now playing a central role in trying to oust an elected government. Its members have resigned from Parliament and joined the demonstrators who are calling for an end to the broader “Thaksin regime” and claiming that pro-Thaksin politicians have been buying rural voters.

But the protesters are failing to grasp that the Shinawatra family is simply the astute beneficiary of seismic changes in Thailand’s political economy. Although money undoubtedly plays a role in all Thai elections, Mr. Thaksin, Ms. Yingluck and their parties have built up a huge and genuine following, especially in the very populous northern and northeastern parts of the country.

Full-time farmers hardly exist in these regions any more. They have become urbanized villagers: provincials only on paper, who have migrated to work in greater Bangkok but vote in their home provinces. General elections in Thailand are now determined by some 16 million or more urbanized villagers, who make up around a third of the total electorate.

Urbanized villagers have incomes not much lower than their urban middle-class counterparts, but they are often in debt, have insecure employment and have to work more than one job. Unlike the villagers of old, they are not interested in subsistence agriculture; they want to enjoy the benefits of consumer society and send their children to university. Like most Democrat Party supporters, they dream of socio-economic advancement, yet for more than a decade, the pro-Thaksin parties have locked in their support with populist policies such as subsidized healthcare programs and village-development funds to promote small businesses.

The current antigovernment protests in Bangkok are the last gasp of Thai dynastic paternalism. They reflect the determination of the old elite and its middle-class allies to check the rising power of the formerly rural electorate by bringing down the Yingluck administration. They are calling for the creation of a “people’s assembly,” an unelected temporary governing body representing different occupational groups that would oversee a process of political reform — in effect, a dictatorship of the capital over the rest of the country.

The protests are taking place in a climate of growing national anxiety. This nervousness has several sources: fears about royal succession, as the long reign of King Bhumibol Adulyadej approaches its twilight; fears about secession, as one of the world’s worst insurgencies by Malay-Muslim separatists continues to rage in the southern provinces; fears about alienation, as pro-Thaksin groups have established thousands of “red-shirt villages” in the increasingly psychologically isolated north and northeast — and above all, fears among Bangkok’s middle classes about being outvoted by low-class urbanized villagers.

It was all so unnecessary. Just a few weeks ago, Ms. Yingluck was governing Thailand with the tacit support of the military and the monarchy. Her government had numerous failings, but for two and a half years there had been no serious political protests and the country’s deep divisions had been largely papered over.

A new pact among the pro-Thaksin and pro-royalist elites is urgently needed. This time, however, it should be broadened to engage the wider public. More urbanized villagers should be allowed to register to vote in and around Bangkok. Power should be decentralized in favor of the provinces, with some form of autonomy granted to the troubled south.

Instead of occupying ministry buildings in Bangkok, the Democrats would do well to make serious attempts to woo provincial voters. Urbanized villagers cannot be wished away by the Bangkok elites; they rightly expect to share the benefits of Thailand’s remarkable economic success. When they no longer are treated as underdogs, their pragmatic ties with pro-Thaksin parties will wither — and Thailand will stop being two democracies and become one unified nation. 

Duncan McCargo is professor of Southeast Asian politics at the University of Leeds and a senior research affiliate at Columbia University.

Thailand's 'red villages' eye Bangkok protests

 



original story

By Jonathan Head BBC News, Udon Thani, Thailand

The village of Nhong Huu Ling is an unremarkable rural community in north-eastern Thailand.

There are fields of vegetables, growing in the sandy soil, and clusters of fruit trees shading the houses.
Yet Nhong Huu Ling, just south-west of Udon Thani, now calls itself a "red village", as do thousands of others in the region, which is the heartland of support for the governing Pheu Thai party of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.
The declaration is little more than a symbolic statement of allegiance to the wider so-called red shirt movement that loosely incorporates the government's mass support base.
Villagers get together to share ideas on practical issues, like supporting small businesses or controlling illegal drug use. They also discuss politics. And these days, there is a lot to discuss.
On the day I visited the village head's house - with a giant-sized poster of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in ceremonial robes covering one wall - there was a heated discussion about the comments being made by the anti-government protest movement in Bangkok, in particular the call for the entire Shinawatra family to be forced to leave the country - a call that at one point had reduced Ms Yingluck to tears.
The villagers were outraged by this, and were considering all changing their names to Shinawatra in solidarity.

They were also feeling aggrieved by the common refrain among the protesters that the people of Isaan, as the north-east is known, are too uneducated to know what they are voting for.
"Well, I know they have more education than me," said one old woman, who told me she had left school at the age of 10.
"But at least I understand what democracy is. Those people in Bangkok, who have been to university or studied overseas, how come they don't understand democracy?"
Throughout the recent crisis in Bangkok, the red shirts have been almost invisible.
That is partly because their leaders did not want to risk a confrontation with the protest movement which might prompt military intervention, and partly because their own movement has become factionalised and hard to mobilise from across rural Thailand.
People in the north-east repeatedly expressed frustration that they had to stay put, and watch the Bangkok protesters trying to overthrow the government they elected.
The loudest complaint I heard was about the allegation that the red shirts had been bought by the governing party.

 Rice farmer Daoruang Sinthuwapee (front) says the rice subsidy scheme has greatly benefited his family

They were insulted by the notion that a few banknotes handed out during election time could induce them to give years of unwavering loyalty to Thaksin Shinawatra, and now his sister, Ms Yingluck.
Unprecedented help? But what about the more sophisticated allegation that they had been bought by populist policies?
At a rice mill in Udon Thani, farmers had started queuing from the early hours of the morning to sell their harvest.
It's an annual ritual that begins with their trucks being weighed, samples of rice taken to assess moisture content, and then the sacks are opened, and the rice poured onto the growing mountains of grain stored at the mill.
In the past, they could never be sure what price they would get. Today, they are guaranteed a very generous price by the government.

"It means we have money left over to spend," farmer Daoruang Sinthuwapee told me. "We have enough to school our children, and more for the family. We never had this kind of help before."
But there was some uncertainty over when the farmers would be paid.
The Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives, which makes the payments, has been unable to raise enough funds on the bond market this year to cover the huge cost of the scheme.
In other parts of Thailand, farmers have started protesting over late payments.
The benefits of the rice scheme may ensure most farmers in the north-east vote for the governing party in the February election. But many economists expect the scheme to collapse, because the massive rice stocks cannot be sold on the international market for the price the government paid.
It could backfire badly on the prime minister.
Her decision to raise the minimum wage is also popular with workers. But not with factory owner Pornthep Saksujarit.

 Pornthep Saksujarit's factory was squeezed by the government's decision to raise the minimum wage

He employs 400 people at his plant, making sensors and other electronic components for cars and cameras. It is the kind of investment that is helping the north-east move away from dependence on agriculture.
He told me the sudden rise in the minimum wage, to 300 Baht ($9; £6) a day, squeezed his margins to the point where he has had to stop workers from doing overtime.
"We would like help from the government, with infrastructure, or cutting taxes or the price of utilities," he said.
"But next time they want to raise the minimum wage, please do it gradually."
'Die for democracy' The verdict on Prime Minister Yingluck's populist policies will certainly be a lot harsher than on her brother's, from his time in office, which are still widely praised, even by his opponents, and are the ones most often cited by his supporters to explain their loyalty; the low-cost healthcare scheme, and the micro-credit Village Fund.
Plern Thienyim is a passionate red shirt supporter, but she wasn't always.
"Until Thaksin came along, we always voted for the Democrat party," she told me. "Even when Thaksin was campaigning for the first time and making all these promises, we didn't believe him."

She was working in a textile factory at the time. Then she borrowed from the Village Fund to start a small tailoring business, which she has gradually expanded. No other prime minister had ever given her an opportunity like that, she said.
So in April 2010 she and her brother Wasan joined the red shirt protests in Bangkok, against the then-Democrat government. Wasan was killed by a shot to the head in the first armed clashes with the army.
She is bitter about what she sees as the different treatment given to protesters from her side, and those now in Bangkok, and the attempts to depose the government she voted for.
That sense of injustice is driving even sceptical red shirts to stand by their party, and put aside the reservations some of them have about the continuing influence of Thaksin Shinawatra, and some of the government's policies.
"We won't accept another coup, like in the old days," said Khamsaen Chaithep, wife of the village chief in Nhong Huu Ling.
"We will fight to keep the government we elected."
"And if the military tries a coup again, we are ready to come out, to die for democracy."






 

In Thailand, Standing Up for Less Democracy -New York Times

A man held a poster of King Bhumibol Adulyadej during a government opposition ceremony to mark the king's 86th birthday in Bangkok earlier this month. The nostalgia surrounding the king's reign and the respect for him is profound among protesters.

By THOMAS FULLER

original article

 BANGKOK — In a world now accustomed to democratic upheavals, including the Arab Spring and the Saffron and Orange Revolutions, the weeks of political upheaval in Thailand stand out for one main peculiarity. Protesters massing on the streets here are demanding less democracy, not more. 

From their stage beneath the Democracy Monument, a Bangkok landmark, protesters cheer their campaign to replace Parliament with a “people’s council” in which members are selected from various professions rather than elected by voters.

The embattled prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, has proposed new elections as a solution to the turmoil. But that is just what the protesters do not want.

“I am one of the people who will not allow this election to take place,” Suthep Thaugsuban, the main protest leader, told a group of business executives in Bangkok on Thursday. Continued protests “might hurt businesses,” he said, “but just in the short term.”

In today’s fractured Thailand, a majority wants more democracy, but a minority, including many rich and powerful people, is petrified by the thought of it.

Because a number of the protest leaders are members of Thailand’s wealthiest families, some have described the demonstrations here as the antithesis of the Occupy Wall Street movement. This is the 1 percent rebelling against the 99 percent, they say.

The reality is more complicated — the protesters include rich and poor, Bangkok residents and many people from southern Thailand who feel disenfranchised by the current government and its northern power base. What unites the protesters is the desire to dismantle Ms. Yingluck’s Pheu Thai Party, which has won every election since 2001.

That Thailand is being convulsed by an antidemocracy movement is somewhat surprising. The country was one of the earliest in Asia to adopt democracy, and both women and men were allowed to vote in local elections in 1897, more than two decades before the 19th Amendment in the United States banned voting rights discrimination on the basis of sex.

The antidemocracy protests, which have been some of the largest in Thai history, call into question the commonly held belief that a rising tide of wealth in a society will naturally be followed by greater demands for democracy. Thailand today is much richer than it was two decades ago, but it is also much more divided.

To outsiders, and many Thais, some of the protesters’ rhetoric seems to come from a different era.

“I can’t believe we are now arguing about suffrage. Is this 2013 or 1913?” wrote a Thai Twitter user who goes by the handle Kaewmala.

The antidemocratic ideas put forward by protest leaders are a jarring contrast with the image of Thailand as a cosmopolitan country open to the world.

At the Democracy Monument, in Bangkok’s historic district, tens of thousands of protesters gather nightly to speak of their skepticism of the notion of one person, one vote. A block over on Khao San Road, a street legendary with generations of Western travelers, backpackers watch English Premier League soccer, drink beer and enjoy $7 foot massages.

On the face of it, the crux of the protest appears to be a classic power struggle between a dominant majority and a minority frustrated by its losing streak in elections and its inability to influence national policies in a winner-takes-all, highly centralized system.

But Thailand’s crisis is multifaceted and tightly intertwined with the fact that King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the country’s 86-year-old monarch, who during more than six decades on the throne has been revered to the point of quasi-religious devotion, is ailing and that the country is bracing for his death.

A crucial component of protesters’ grievances is a feeling that the king and the monarchy have been undermined and threatened by the popularity of Ms. Yingluck’s elder brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister and patriarch of the Shinawatra clan, Thailand’s most powerful political family.

“This is a war between Thaksin and the king,” said a 64-year-old corn farmer from central Thailand who gave her name only as Muai and was among the thousands of protesters in the streets on Thursday. “Thaksin has been insulting the king for far too long.” 

 Mr. Thaksin has never publicly spoken ill of the king, but many of his supporters have been convicted by the authorities for lèse-majesté, a law that has been aggressively used in recent years to clamp down on dissent toward the monarchy. 

Mr. Thaksin was removed in a 2006 military coup, an event that helped give him the aura of a martyr and allowed his supporters to overlook the controversial aspects of his rule, including numerous allegations of large-scale corruption and a war against drugs that left more than 2,800 people dead within three months.

Verapat Pariyawong, a Harvard-trained lawyer and commentator, says the powerful bureaucracy and courtiers around the king fear that new elites, symbolized by the rise of Mr. Thaksin, will replace them.

The Crown Property Bureau is by far the largest landowner in Bangkok and has controlling stakes in some of the biggest companies in the country. The managers of this fortune are among those “acting behind the scenes,” Mr. Verapat said.

More broadly, Somsak Jeamteerasakul, a leading Thai scholar on the monarchy, argues that Thailand’s protracted political turmoil has been exacerbated by the contrast between a deified king and politicians who appear crass and venal in contrast. “We have an image of monarchy that is flawlessly excellent in everything,” he said in 2010. “If we had not built this image in the first place, we would not have so many problems and complaints with politicians.”

Respect for the king, and the notion of his near-infallibility and beneficence, are deeply ingrained in Thais from the earliest years of schooling.

Some speakers at the protests in recent days have labeled the abandonment of the absolute monarchy in 1932 a mistake; protest leaders have called for the king to appoint a prime minister.

Anuchyd Sapanphong, a Thai soap opera star, recently posted on his Facebook page that he disliked corrupt politicians so much he wished he had been born during the time of the absolute monarchy.

“I don’t think we are suited for democracy right now,” he said on his page. “We don’t understand it that well — including me.” 

Economic Realignment Fuels Regional Political Divisions in Thailand - New York Times

Economic Realignment Fuels Regional Political Divisions in Thailand

 A protester posed for a photo with two riot police officers in Bangkok, where security forces took a softer approach on Tuesday.

By THOMAS FULLER

Published: December 3, 2013 

 BANGKOK — Anand Panyarachun, one of Thailand’s leading statesmen, recently noted that his country seemed to have everything going for it — plentiful natural resources, good weather and fortunate geography free from typhoons or volcanic eruptions. 

Yet Thailand, he said, was “pulling the plug” on itself with destructive politics.

“I cannot explain what continues to overshadow all of this goodness,” he said.

The repeated bouts of violent unrest over the past seven years, including the grinding protests that began here last week, are often attributed to the highly personalized battle between opponents and allies of Thaksin Shinawatra, the tycoon and former prime minister who was removed in a 2006 coup but who remains a force in Thai politics.

Yet researchers and historians say something deeper is ailing the country, a steady unraveling of an old consensus about who wields political power and who receives government largess, questions that will linger long after the last protester in the latest demonstrations goes home.

“What has been happening in Thailand is not about Thaksin or not even about conflicts among the elite — it’s socioeconomic change, enormous change that has taken place for the past two decades,” said Nidhi Eoseewong, a prominent historian.

Mr. Nidhi said the country had changed in tandem with Asia’s rapid economic growth. Millions of peasant farmers have risen into the middle class and are clamoring for more representation. “The old elite, including the established middle class, doesn’t want to tolerate their participation,” he said.

The protests of the past week have illustrated how the old establishment feels threatened by the power of the provincial masses.

The leader of the protests, Suthep Thaugsuban, a former executive in the Democrat Party, Thailand’s oldest political party, has demanded that the country abandon its electoral system in favor of an unelected and ill-defined People’s Council.

The source of mistrust of electoral politics seems clear. The Democrat Party has lost every election since 1992, mainly because it has failed to gain support among the emerging rural middle class in the north.

The electoral power shift from Bangkok to the northern provinces is all the more destabilizing because it comes amid uncertainty about the future of Thailand’s monarchy. In his more than six decades on the throne, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who turns 86 on Thursday, has helped define the country’s identity and provided cohesion for its linguistic and ethnic groups. But some analysts say the adoration of the king has been a crutch for the nation and that his death could further test the fragile relationships between the powerful military, the elites and the emerging middle class.

Power struggles between Bangkok and the provinces, especially the populous northeast, go back at least a century, according to Charles Keyes, an American scholar and the author of a new book on the integration of the northeast into the Thai state.

An insurrection by northeasterners was brutally repressed by government troops in 1902. Half a century later, an authoritarian government ordered the killings of a number of prominent northeastern politicians.

“There’s been a pattern of trying to negotiate a right to be recognized, to have a political voice and to determine their own future,” Mr. Keyes said of northeastern Thailand, whose inhabitants speak Lao, which is distinct but related to Thai. “We see a lot of echoes of that today.”

Electoral politics, and especially the rise of Mr. Thaksin’s party and its focus on rural areas, has allowed the northern part of Thailand to assert itself. Northeastern Thailand, once considered a backwater, is still poorer than Bangkok but outpaces the capital in economic growth. From relying almost exclusively on subsistence farming, the northeast now has industries, shopping malls and universities.

Home to a third of the country’s voters, the region now effectively makes or breaks governments. The government’s policies cater to the northeast, including a highly contentious program that pays farmers a price well above market rates for their rice — at great cost to the state.

For voters in Bangkok, that is hard to bear. 

“I understand that democracy means being governed by a majority,” said Chaiwat Chairoongrueng, a 36-year-old civil servant protesting last week. “But you cannot use the majority to rule over everything.”  

Protesters did little to hide their sense of superiority, echoing the leaders of the demonstration who repeatedly described the demonstrators as “good people” fighting evil.

“We are the middle class, we are educated and we know best,” said Saowanee Usanakornkul, 43, from southern Thailand who took part in the protest. “We know what is right and wrong,” she said. “But the poor don’t know anything. They elect the people who give them money.”

One of the most contentious issues in recent months, and one of the sparks for the protests, was a battle over whether the country’s Senate should be fully elected.

The military, which has historically represented the interests of the Bangkok elite and the royal court, named a committee after deposing Mr. Thaksin in 2006 that allowed for roughly half the Senate seats to be appointed by judges and senior civil servants.

Mr. Thaksin’s party, which swept back to power in 2011 — a reflection of the electoral might of the emerging middle class in the countryside — passed a constitutional amendment this year to restore direct elections. But before the amendment was signed into law, the country’s constitutional court struck it down, saying it violated the rights of the minority in the country.

This and other rulings against the governing party have engendered mistrust in the country’s institutions among people in the provinces and fueled the constant cycle of volatile street politics.

In recent days, as the protests flared, Bangkok was rife with rumors about shadowy groups commandeering the demonstrations; the Thai news media carries perennial stories about the prospect for another coup.

In discussing Thai politics soon after the last violent clashes in Bangkok — a military crackdown that left more than 90 people dead in 2010 — Benedict Anderson, an expert on Southeast Asia at Cornell, quoted the political thinker Antonio Gramsci to illustrate his fears: “When the old refuses to die, and the new is struggling to be born, monsters appear.”

Mr. Nidhi, the historian, said it might be years before Thailand reached a new ruling consensus and the country was more settled.

“In all societies, politics needs time to adjust to large social transformations,” he said. “You have to give Thailand more time.”

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Protesting against Thailand's Big Brother  ALJAZEERA Last updated: 03 Dec 2013 07:29

Nepotism, corruption and negligence by Shinawatra's government are the root causes of the demonstrations.  The government of PM Yingluck Shinawatra "has destroyed the 'true democratic value' the Thais hold dear", writes former FM Piromya [Rob Kennedy/Al Jazeera]  Kasit Piromya  on Facebook The protest movement in Thailand is not triggered by class differences as described by many foreign journalists. It is, in fact, inspired by the discontentment towards the unprecedented levels of governmental corruption, the elective dictatorship in parliament, and doubts about the Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's expertise and competence to lead the country based on good governance and respect for the rule of law.   In 2001, many middle class Thais voted for Thaksin Shinawatra believing that he entered politics to contribute to the development of Thailand. However, it turned out that he came to power to exploit the country for his personal business interests. Thaksin’s era can best be described as the era of unprecedented nepotism and corruption. The self-exiled former prime minister has many corruption and political malpractice charges currently pending in the Thai courts, charges from which he has intentionally fled. All cases were investigated by a special task force set up to perform as an ad hoc attorney general, and by the Office of the National Anti-Corruption Commission. All legal grounds and juridical procedures were based on Thailand’s criminal laws, and not by any special law.  It is a well-known fact that Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, Thaksin's sister, who has no background in politics whatsoever, acts as his proxy. The majority party in parliament - the Puea Thai Party - is still under total control of Thaksin, given the fact that many Puea Thai members of parliament, as well as cabinet members, still travel abroad to pay homage to Thaksin as a symbol of  "the Big Boss", and in order to receive instructions from him. Yingluch, herself, does not have any leading position in the party. She is neither the leader of the party nor a member of its executive committee.   Governmental negligence                                  At present, governmentally-enabled nepotism is widespread in Thai society and has crept into the civil service and law enforcement agencies. The fact that this government has shown its "true colour", contrary to their promised manifestos, has brought the people to the street.          Additionally, the peaceful demonstration is triggered by the rampant corruption of Yingluck's government. To name a few, the Rice Mortgage scheme, which Thaksin explicitly and publicly claimed as his program, and the current government has wholeheartedly implemented as policy, has caused the country to lose not just $13bn, but also Thailand’s competitiveness in the rice export market. The scheme has many loopholes which allow people with government connections to embezzle money. This government has also tried to circumvent the budgetary practice by submitting a bill to allow them to get $70bn for infrastructure megaprojects - projects that are, at best, vague and in embryonic stage. The bill is only four pages long, lacks any details, and will subject the country to a 50-year loan. The final straw? The main cause that has united the demonstrators, is that the government has circumvented the rule of law by submitting the Amnesty Bill to exonerate Thaksin from all the corruption charges. Moreover, the Amnesty Bill, which is now pending for confirmation by the House of Representatives, will prohibit any investigation into Thaksin’s involvement in the governmentally-ordered extrajudicial killings and abuse of human rights in the restive southern border provinces, as well as the criminal crime cases in the war on drugs, while he was prime minister. This bill also aims to reimburse Thaksin from approximately $1.5bn which was seized by the verdict of the Supreme Court in 2010, when he was found guilty on five counts of corruption, deliberately hiding his wealth, and masking ownership of shares in his family-controlled telecommunications company, Shin Corp. The court also found that Thaksin's government pursued policies that enriched his family's companies, including through loans to countries like Myanmar. Additionally, the demonstrators find the government’s populist policies intolerable. Examples of such policies are, in addition to the rice mortgage scheme, reduction of excise tax for first-time car buyers, credit card for farmers, revolving credit, and free electricity and water for villages. These policies are enacted solely to gain votes while, in turn, bring the country deeper into debt. Responsible politicians do not consciously and morally introduce such policies knowing that they will cause irreparable damage to the country's fiscal situation, as well as imbuing a "culture of beggars" among the people. These policies are not only contrary to fundamental economic principles, but also shake the core of universally accepted democratic values. Populist policies may buy votes, but, they take away the determination for self-improvement and the value and ethics of hard work. Finally and significantly, this government has destroyed the "true democratic value" the Thai hold dear. We value transparent and accountable government, and politicians who respect the rule of law. While the government keeps on insisting that they are lawfully elected within the democratic process, they have intentionally forgotten to mention that the last election was full of electoral fraud and vote rigging. Checks and balances no longer function as Prime Minster Yingluck, her cabinet members and the Puea Thai members of the House of Representative, continuously feign ignorance of the parliamentary system. Censure motions are treated by the government as a joke. The Prime Minister does not answer questions posed by the opposition and rarely attends parliamentary debates. The Principle of the Rule of Law, checks and balances and separation of powers eroded further, when recently, some Puea Thai members of the House of Representative filed rebellion charges against the Constitutional Court judges over their ruling on an amendment to the constitution regarding the composition of the Senate. The Court ruled that the charter the government wanted to amend, violates the constitution, and that the procedure was improperly implemented. Moreover, some Puea Thai parliamentarians committed fraud by voting by proxy. The question is how can we, the Thai people, place our faith and trust in the government when they are the ones abusing, by every means possible, their executive and legislative powers for personal gain and not for the interest of the nation? The Thais have a legitimate right to protest against a corrupt and unlawful government. It has done enough damage to our beloved country. We cannot allow them more time in power to cause more damage. Kasit Piromya ia a former Thai Foreign Minister. He is currently a member of the Thai parliament.