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
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 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.”
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