Yesterday (10 April), the Thai government launched an armed crackdown on the red-shirted protestors of the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD). At the time of writing, 20 people are dead and over 900 are injured. This is the worst political violence the capital has seen since 1992 when a military regime led by General Suchinda was overthrown by street protestors.
Background
The backdrop to this bloody incident is the month-long protests held by the red-shirts in Bangkok designed to force the Democrat-led Abhisit government to call fresh elections. The roots of the protest lie in the deep conflicts within Thai society between sections of the rural and urban poor and elements of the ‘new rich’ on the one hand, and the Bangkok middle classes, the network monarchy and the ‘old rich’ and sections of the state apparatus (especially the army) on the other.
These tensions came to the fore from around 2004, when the government was led by Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai Rak Thai party. Thaksin had managed to build a populist alliance between Thailand’s oligarchic business class and the poor, promising to provide healthcare and other assistance in exchange for mass electoral support. This enabled him to defeat the middle-class Democrat party in elections in 2001. Thaksin delivered on his promises to the poor and became increasingly popular, winning the first overall parliamentary majority in Thai history at the next general elections. This, coupled with his increasingly corrupt and illiberal style of governance, attracted the hatred of Bangkok’s middle classes, and a growing anti-Thaksin protest movement emerged during 2004, led by the so-called People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD). The PAD are also known as yellow shirts – a colour selected to emphasise their affinity with the king (whom they called upon to intervene and weaken Thai democracy) and traditional Thai values. The Democrat party, which is based in the Bangkok middle class and the Thai south, was repeatedly unable to defeat Thaksin in elections, and was also unable to topple the TRT by boycotting elections called to resolve the emerging crisis. It was not until Thaksin alienated important sections of the business community and the oligarchic interests clustered around the palace that the establishment moved against him. A military coup overthrew the government in 2006, citing the need to maintain the country’s peace and stability. The TRT was forcibly disbanded.
A period of military-led rule followed in which Thailand’s political institutions and laws were reformulated (including through the introduction of new electoral laws and a new constitution) to attempt to prevent any reincarnation of TRT from taking power. These efforts failed miserably, since the rural and urban poor continued to support Thaksin. The old TRT leadership simply reconstituted themselves as the People Power Party (PPP) and managed to form a government in February 2008. The forces arrayed against the TRT/PPP therefore moved to oust the new administration using a variety of methods. These included politically-motivated lawsuits, aided by a thoroughly politicised judiciary stuffed with anti-Thaksin personnel during military rule, which led to PPP being disbanded and the prime minister and foreign minister being forced to resign. The PPP reconstituted itself as Puea Thai with a new leader and staggered on. It was not until December 2008 that the Democrats were able to lure away a group of Puea Thai allies (led by a notorious political ‘godfather’, Newin Chidchob) through some sort of backroom deal, enabling them to oust Puea Thai and form a coalition government.
Since then the country has been racked by instability because the forces aligned with Puea Thai have refused to simply cave in to the forces arrayed behind the Democrat-led government. The UDD has engaged in a series of long-running protests and dramatic interventions designed to topple the government, knowing that if fresh elections were held, their favoured party would win. The Democrats know this too and have consequently hung on for dear life, adopting some Puea Thai policies in a vain attempt to increase their electoral appeal among the poor.
The UDD movement is often not understood in a very sophisticated fashion. They are often referred to as “loyal to former PM Thaksin Shinawatra”. This is far too simplistic. Thai government supporters often claim that the telecommunications tycoon is always the one pulling the strings, trying to return as Thailand’s “dictator”, motivated only by a desire to regain the assets seized from his family by the government. Although the UDD doubtless grew out of the oligarchy-poor alliance forged by Thaksin and TRT, it is now a very complex and loose grouping with many different elements, and is certainly not simply under Thaksin’s control. As is usually the case when hundreds of thousands of people are directly mobilised and millions more drawn into political debate, the consciousness and ideology of the red-shirts has developed considerably, as has the capacity of red-shirts to self-organise, self-fund and self-direct. There are elements of the UDD which simply adore Thaksin and want him to return. But there are also elements with a more radical agenda which are more interested in properly enfranchising the poor than in the return of an ousted oligarch. Some red-shirt factions want a republic. Others just want proper democracy instead of what they call the “Amartyatippatai”, the aristocracy system. There is no single leader and recent events have made clear that the collective senior leadership does not necessarily strongly control or direct the membership.
The Crackdown
The immediate context for the crackdown in Bangkok has been the red-shirts’ efforts to force the Abhisit government to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections. Large-scale protests have been staged in the capital for a month, and although the huge numbers first mobilised have dwindled somewhat, a hard core of UDD members remained determined to occupy key strategic locations including important road intersections.
Throughout the protests, the government has emphasised its determination not to use force and to adhere to “international standards”. Abhisit has always appeared desperate to ingratiate himself in Western capitals since coming to power in order to convince key allies like the US to keep backing his dubiously-constituted administration. His speaking tour to the UK last year, which embroiled me in controversy when he visited Oxford, was designed to burnish his “democratic” credentials. These were severely tarnished by (amongst other things) a brutal crackdown on red-shirt protests in April 2009 in which two people were killed and many more injured. Abhisit seemed keen to avoid any re-run of these events. At key moments of confrontation the army and police seemed to prefer to withdraw than to use force.
For a few weeks it looked as though the red-shirts might have been outfoxed. Their strategy of issuing ultimatums for the dissolution of parliament led to repeated defeats when the government held firm, and efforts to paint the government as military-backed by pouring UDD members’ blood over the threshold of key government facilities seemed in stark contrast to the state’s placid response. However, the red-shirts also refused to budge, setting the scene for a potentially long, drawn-out stand-off.
A number of incidents then began to ratchet up the tension. Last week there were a number of unexplained grenade attacks on businesses linked to the government and a 5kg bomb was said to have been discovered near Chulalongkorn University. UDD sections were also involved in what appeared to be wild-cat actions in response to what they branded as provocations from the government. A group of red-shirts occupied an army barracks and were only forced out by water cannon. 20 red-shirts stormed into parliament after claiming that soldiers had fired incendiary bombs into their crowd outside the compound; terrified MPs fled the scene. The red-shirts withdrew without incident, having captured tear-gas canisters and a rifle from a military policeman on duty, which they displayed as proof of the government’s violent intentions. The government then moved to shut down a pro-red-shirt satellite TV station for broadcasting “false” information (part of the government’s increasingly draconian clamp-downs on freedom of expression in the country). Red-shirts mobilised to storm the station and forced the government into backing down.
These incidents led the government to step up its response. Initially Abhisit had invoked the Internal Security Act, a bill passed during the military interregnum, which essentially suspended the rule of law in Bangkok and the immediate surrounding provinces and enabled emergency measures to be taken. Now he moved to impose a State of Emergency, which went even further. It’s this which provided the cover for the government’s decision to try to clear out the sites in the city occupied by the red-shirts. When the red-shirts resisted, the army used force.
Analysis
The incidents which led up to the State of Emergency being imposed were all quite unclear. The government of course claims that it has been forced to respond to attacks not only against the government but the state as a whole. It might well be that the UDD has been trying to provoke the government into an over-reaction through the bombings and raids on government facilities. If so, this was an extremely risky strategy – but it has worked. Another view would be that the government has provoked the confrontation in order to give them the chance to suppress the red-shirts. If so, this was a risky strategy that has failed miserably, since the UDD is battered but not beaten and is still resolved to remain in-place in Bangkok and is now demanding the immediate dissolution of parliament and calling for Abhisit to resign and go into exile. Possibly the most convincing explanation relates to desperation on both sides: the UDD became increasingly desperate to find a way to force the government to dissolve parliament, while forces within and behind the government became increasingly desperate to find a way to disperse the red-shirts.
Just as we need to disaggregate the UDD and recognise that some parts seem to operate semi-independently, it’s always important to disaggregate states. States are complex, potentially incoherent entities interpenetrated with different societal groups and shot through with social conflict themselves. If we look closely there are signs of internal divisions within the Thai state.
The Abhisit government has consistently tried to maintain its liberal-democratic veneer and adhere to “international standards”; this was reiterated even as police and troops began to move on the red-shirt camps yesterday. However, there are obviously elements within the Thai state that have very little respect for “international standards” and are principally concerned to defend their own interests at any cost. There are real questions as to how much influence and control Abhisit actually exerises over the latter elements, particularly the army. He is, in a sense, the acceptable face that the forces arrayed behind the current government need in order to remain credible internationally and domestically — military rule just won’t cut the mustard. To this extent, these forces need him; but Abhisit also needs them, since he is only really in power by dint of secret deals with notoriously corrupt and even criminal elements and the support of powerful oligarchic factions and elements within the army. Abhisit might well have wanted to resolve the protest crisis peacefully, but when the UDD resisted being dispersed, army commanders on the ground might simply have seized the opportunity to use force.
At the same time, it is also clear that the UDD have sympathisers within the state apparatus. This became apparent last year in a series of incidents in which the government appeared unable to maintain order using the police in particular. The April 2009 ASEAN summit in Pattaya, for example, was stormed by thousands of red-shirts and abandoned, with riot police doing virtually nothing to restrain them. In this latest round of protests, troops have openly fraternised with red-shirts as confrontations have been defused. Red-shirts have also been able to persuade riot police to withdraw from sections of the city very amicably, with police being cheered by the protestors, shaking their hands, and even waving UDD hand-clappers to show their support for their movement.
At the very least, then, elements of the security apparatus appear reluctant to use force against their own countrymen and are thus politically unreliable from the government’s perspective. It may even be that growing sympathy and common feeling for the red-shirt cause has developed within the state, perhaps owing to the similar social and economic backgrounds of some protestors and police/soldiers. In any case, this can only have been alarming for the forces behind the government, which ultimately rely on coercion to maintain order and remain in power.
The government has apologised to the families of the dead and promised an inquiry, but given that it is already peddling blatant lies it is clear what such an inquiry would be expected to find. Since Abhisit states that he and the government (not out-of-control hard-liners) are responsible for the crackdown and are still responsible for law and order in Thailand, the only decent thing that they can do is resign, since they have the blood of hundreds of people on their hands. They show no sign of willingness to stand down, of course, because they have far too much at stake. Nonetheless, Abhisit is a busted flush: for all his smooth talking and supposed commitment to “international standards”, his government now stands clearly exposed as relying on the use of force against unarmed civilians to stay in power.
What happens next is, as always, very difficult to predict. The red-shirts are, for the moment, staying put, and the troops and police have withdrawn. This is different to April 2009, when the use of force shocked and disorganised the red-shirts and forced the UDD to reassess its strategies, giving the government several months of breathing space. For the moment, the red-shirts seem saddened by the deaths but not dismayed; they have probably been steeling themselves for something like this and so far seem determined to carry on until parliament is dissolved. However, it’s not clear what they might do next to accomplish this goal.
Similarly, though, it’s not obvious what the government will do next. It does not seem to be able to muster the force and will required to completely suppress the red-shirts, its troops and police having been beaten back or persuaded to withdraw. With the government’s authority shaken it will be even harder to mount a second attempt to displace the protestors. Yet because so much is at stake – literally the future of the Thai state and the broader balance of power within Thai society – the government is very unlikely to simply back down and dissolve parliament as demanded. The last resort is always a military coup, but the army generals seem to know that they are no more capable of resolving the crisis than the civilians.
The outcome of any conflict is ultimately determined by its scope. So far the forces involved have been in deadlock for several years – temporary advantages have been won but neither side is actually capable of establishing hegemony and taking society forwards. If both sides continue to hold firm, perhaps what will determine the next step will be the reaction of those Thais beyond the hard core of the red/yellow divide. There is now very little room left in Thai politics to sit on the fence. The choices of those at the margins of this struggle could help swing the balance one way or the other. Many moderates have been gradually won over to sympathise with the red-shirts due to government repression in the past and would favour fresh elections (even if they are somewhat naive about the capacity of elections to resolve the crisis). If more people swing over to the red-shirts, especially if this includes sections of the security apparatus, this could compel the yellow-shirts into accepting a compromise solution that would recognise and redress the genuine grievances of those Thais long excluded from social, economic and political power. Their obstinacy, and their refusal to accept the poor’s participation in politics as valid, has been a constant element in this crisis, and so long as it is backed by coercive force, it cannot be overcome. The crackdown might help move this deadlocked war of position into a war of movement, shifting the political landscape to make a solution possible.
Sadly, this seems rather unlikely, at least in the short run — there is just too much at stake and the conflict is too far advanced for negotiations to seem possible, let alone for a negotiated settlement to emerge. Even fresh elections would not resolve the crisis because the yellow-shirts would refuse to accept a red-shirt victory (and perhaps vice-versa). The situation is a classic ‘Caesarist’ one, analysed by Marx in Napoleon Bonaparte’s 18th Brumaire: the opposing social forces are basically evenly matched and neither is capable of fully dominating the other. Such conditions of deadlock, Marx (and later Gramsci) argued, provide opportunities for the emergence of a ‘Caesar’ (Napoleon III in the case of 1870 France) capable of dominating the state and achieving relative autonomy from the contending forces, in the name of national and societal unity. In Thailand today, however, there appears to be no individual or group capable of playing this role. We seem to have a Caesarist situation with no Caesar in sight.
ASEAN’s Unchanged Melody? The Theory and Practice of Non-Intervention in Southeast Asia
Abstract: The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is widely supposed by theorists and commentators of many persuasions to have elevated the principle of absolute non-interference in the internal affairs of states into a central pillar of Southeast Asian regionalism. Non-interference is also criticised for retarding ASEAN from taking meaningful action over economic crises, problematic members like Myanmar, and transnational security threats. This article critiques this consensus, arguing that the norm has never been absolute, but has rather been upheld or ignored in line with the interests of the region’s dominant social forces. While the principle formally remains in place despite such challenges and serious instances of violation, it is now subject to competing demands and contestation.
