THAI POLITICS: is a subject I've avoided so far, because a) I don't consider myself enough of an authority to comment on it, b) it hasn't had a massive effect on our time here and c) south-east Asian politics are, in general, awful, like the best joke you've ever heard except that the punchline is the lives of millions of people - like, did you know that the 'democratically-elected' prime minister of Cambodia for the last twenty years has been a one-eyed ex-Khmer Rouge general? How funny is that! How about the fact that US Marines who are charged with rape in the Philippines can just sit at their base without fear - if they go a year without being found guilty they are considered automatically innocent! Hilarious! A laugh riot! That's what you get for letting the U.S. write your constitution for you! Zing!
But time to tackle the beast. Here's our cast of characters:
THE KING: We love the King. We love the King. Sometimes living in Thailand can remind one of that Simpsons episode with people in robes with blank eyes walking around blandly muttering "We love the leader". "We love the King" is written everywhere; it's a legal offence not to stand when the king's song is played at the cinema, before the start of a movie. No shit: this isn't one of those trivial, haha-look-how-antiquated-it-is sort of laws - people get arrested frequently for refusing to stand during the song, and you can get quite serious jail time. As a foreigner, you're unlikely to get arrested, though you will almost certainly be removed from the cinema.
But all this hardcore propagandizing is remarkable, really, because the king is actually a really cool guy. Without doubt, the coolest monarch of our time, and the only real moral force in Thai politics. It's a guarantee that you will be unable to find a Thai person willing to say a bad word about the king, who has stepped into the political realm a couple of times - with no legal power except the blinding respect and loyalty that all Thai citizens afford him - in order to "encourage" certain politicians into exile when they've done something incredibly vicious to the Thai people. Plus, he's an accomplished jazz musician who jammed with Louis Armstrong and several others during the 60's. He's in his 80's now, though, and though his influence on the Thai people remains massive, his ability to control it is waning.
THAKSIN "FRANK" SHINAWATRA: The villain of the piece, Thaksin is the ex-Prime Minister and Manchester City F.C. owner who was removed from Thai politics by force a couple of years ago. But Thaksin's not really an evil man; it's more that he's just a cold businessman who saw it as a good business move to become the leader of some sixty-million odd loyal customers - wait, did I say customers? I meant citizens.
A former corrupt police colonel turned telecommunications billionaire, Thaksin's major legacy was to make Bangkok miserable by enforcing a 1am closing time across the city, to restart the Southern Troubles (see below), and to claim the hearts and minds of taxi drivers everywhere by promising free money. During his [ahem] leadership, he announced that he would monitor surveillance tapes at the casinos along the Cambodian and Burmese borders to watch for civil servants; any he saw cavorting there would be immediately terminated. Now, of course, Thaksin owns a string of casinos along the Cambodian border.
Recently charged with tax evasion, 'Frank' was, for some reason, allowed to leave the country on bail and now refuses to come back (surprised?). Now living in England, where, apparently, the authorities consider him more significant as a Premier League club owner than as an international fugitive.
PRIME MINISTER / TV CELEBRITY SAMAK: When Thaksin was removed by the army, somehow one of his cronies was picked to replace him as prime minister.But surely they could have found a better cronie than this idiot. Samak considers it his national duty to lead these sixty-million odd viewers - wait, did I say viewers? I mean customers. No, citizens. Citizens!
Samak is a TV chef. Let me repeat for those in the back: a TV Chef. That's like letting Hewie run Australia, or letting Gordon Ramsay have a stab at Dowling St. And don't think my present tense was unintentional, either: Samak is a TV chef. As in, on top of his international obligations, he finds time to present a weekly TV show about how gorgeous the aubergines are this season. He also has two other weekly TV shows, one a typical Third World-dictator-ranting-at-his-enemies production, the other a 'classy' talk show called Talking Samak-style.
Well known for drooling during speeches and occasionally interrupting himself to give a 'bushman's blow' (gotta keep those synuses clear!), Samak is, as the old saying goes, about as useful as a one-legged man at an arse-kicking competition.
THE P.A.D.: The only real opposition, though as far as I can tell they're not so much a party as they are a group of unemployed students who congregate down near Democracy Monument everyday. Looked as if they were going to take Parliament House during a rally a couple of months ago, but they failed and the entire movement's fizzled a bit since then.
Just because they're the opposition doesn't mean they're any better, though. The PAD (People's Alliance for Democracy) shift their stance so often that they could be playing Dance Dance Revolution: they always appear wherever the poular breeze is blowing and were a main player in fuelling the ridiculous Cambodia crisis (below).
THE DEEP SOUTH: Um, does anybody realize how many people are dying in Thailand's south at the moment?
A lot. I'd almost be prepared to compare it to Baghdad. Everyday, people are shot by gunmen on the backs of motorbikes, killed by roadside bombs, kidnapped and beheaded while innocently sitting at tea-shops. It's insane. A couple of months ago, we took the train down to Hat Yai, which, despite the occasional bombing, is as far south as you can go and still be considered safe. Two weeks later the same train was ambushed by rebels who laid logs across the tracks and opened fire on the train with machine gunes, killing four people.
The reasons are the same reasons as everywhere - the people down close to the Malaysian border are of a different religion to the rest of the country and feel (with some justification) that they are being badly mistreated by the government. On top of that, however, is the fact that a lot of the violence is just teenage boys with guns, which translates into a high proportion of principals and schoolteachers being assassinated, as well as schools being torched.
The media here downplays the situation as much as possible because it's bad for tourism; but what's much worse is that politicians almost entirely ignore the issue - perhaps because they have no idea how to solve it. Several people are being killed violently every single day, yet the Thai government would prefer to focus on: The Cambodia Crisis.
THE CAMBODIA CRISIS: So exhorbitantly stupid that I can't even believe I'm wasting space writing about it, the Cambodia crisis boils down to this: Cambodia managed to get one of its temples put on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Thailand got jealous, and because the temple is close to the border, they claimed that Cambodia was trying to steal 4.6 square km of their land. Suddenly, everyone went mental.
Now, the land in question is disputable, but the Cambodians have had a market there for thirty years. Plus, did I mention it's 4.6 goddamn square km? It's jungle. Give it to them. Instead, the temple was closed and both countries amassed hundreds of armed troops at the border and started arresting each other's citizens when they crossed into the disputed zone.
The entire thing makes no sense because the big catch is: the temple is inaccessible from the Cambodian side, because of the abhorrent state of Cambodian roads. Oh, you can get there, but it'll take two or three days of hard travel from Phnom Penh, and you'll probably have to travel by ox-cart some of the way. What does this mean? That the only people to benefit from the UNESCO-listing would have been Thailand anyway, because all the tourists would have had to travel there from Bangkok. But now the temple's closed, the tourists have been scared off, and there was almost an armed conflict. Both countries lose everything.
But it only serves to demonstrate Thailand's complete inability to lead by example. Thailand is a wealthy country surrounded by some of the poorest countries in the world, but instead of being a guiding light for Southeast Asia it prefers to keep its neighbours poor so that they don't provide threats. When cyclone Nargis battered Burma, the Thai response was a gigantic, lazy "Meh". They provided supplies to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia throughout the 80's and 90's because it suited them to keep Cambodia weak.
Really, Thailand just wants to keep things the way they are. They want a weak, pliant Cambodia as a buffer between themselves and Vietnam; they want a weak, pliant Laos as a buffer between themselves and China; they want a weak, closed-off Burma as a buffer between themselves and India. And they want Malaysia and Singapore to do what they've always done, which is to say, to stay out of regional politics altogether and try to make everyone believe that they're not really part of Southeast Asia.
I guess that we don't have the same sense of history as peoples in other parts of the world. Nobody in Thailand has lived under Burmese occupation, much less under Cambodian control - but still they remember, they remember that those things happened before and could well happen again. During recent negotiations with Cambodia, the Cambodian leadership reminded everyone that "We must be good neighbours for many tens of thousands of years to come".
Tens of thousands of years? Has anyone ever heard Kevin Rudd saying that to Helen Clark? That's the way things are considered over here, though, as one long continuum.
No beginnings, and no endings.
THE KING: We love the King. We love the King. Sometimes living in Thailand can remind one of that Simpsons episode with people in robes with blank eyes walking around blandly muttering "We love the leader". "We love the King" is written everywhere; it's a legal offence not to stand when the king's song is played at the cinema, before the start of a movie. No shit: this isn't one of those trivial, haha-look-how-antiquated-it-is sort of laws - people get arrested frequently for refusing to stand during the song, and you can get quite serious jail time. As a foreigner, you're unlikely to get arrested, though you will almost certainly be removed from the cinema.
But all this hardcore propagandizing is remarkable, really, because the king is actually a really cool guy. Without doubt, the coolest monarch of our time, and the only real moral force in Thai politics. It's a guarantee that you will be unable to find a Thai person willing to say a bad word about the king, who has stepped into the political realm a couple of times - with no legal power except the blinding respect and loyalty that all Thai citizens afford him - in order to "encourage" certain politicians into exile when they've done something incredibly vicious to the Thai people. Plus, he's an accomplished jazz musician who jammed with Louis Armstrong and several others during the 60's. He's in his 80's now, though, and though his influence on the Thai people remains massive, his ability to control it is waning.
THAKSIN "FRANK" SHINAWATRA: The villain of the piece, Thaksin is the ex-Prime Minister and Manchester City F.C. owner who was removed from Thai politics by force a couple of years ago. But Thaksin's not really an evil man; it's more that he's just a cold businessman who saw it as a good business move to become the leader of some sixty-million odd loyal customers - wait, did I say customers? I meant citizens.
A former corrupt police colonel turned telecommunications billionaire, Thaksin's major legacy was to make Bangkok miserable by enforcing a 1am closing time across the city, to restart the Southern Troubles (see below), and to claim the hearts and minds of taxi drivers everywhere by promising free money. During his [ahem] leadership, he announced that he would monitor surveillance tapes at the casinos along the Cambodian and Burmese borders to watch for civil servants; any he saw cavorting there would be immediately terminated. Now, of course, Thaksin owns a string of casinos along the Cambodian border.
Recently charged with tax evasion, 'Frank' was, for some reason, allowed to leave the country on bail and now refuses to come back (surprised?). Now living in England, where, apparently, the authorities consider him more significant as a Premier League club owner than as an international fugitive.
PRIME MINISTER / TV CELEBRITY SAMAK: When Thaksin was removed by the army, somehow one of his cronies was picked to replace him as prime minister.But surely they could have found a better cronie than this idiot. Samak considers it his national duty to lead these sixty-million odd viewers - wait, did I say viewers? I mean customers. No, citizens. Citizens!
Samak is a TV chef. Let me repeat for those in the back: a TV Chef. That's like letting Hewie run Australia, or letting Gordon Ramsay have a stab at Dowling St. And don't think my present tense was unintentional, either: Samak is a TV chef. As in, on top of his international obligations, he finds time to present a weekly TV show about how gorgeous the aubergines are this season. He also has two other weekly TV shows, one a typical Third World-dictator-ranting-at-his-enemies production, the other a 'classy' talk show called Talking Samak-style.
Well known for drooling during speeches and occasionally interrupting himself to give a 'bushman's blow' (gotta keep those synuses clear!), Samak is, as the old saying goes, about as useful as a one-legged man at an arse-kicking competition.
THE P.A.D.: The only real opposition, though as far as I can tell they're not so much a party as they are a group of unemployed students who congregate down near Democracy Monument everyday. Looked as if they were going to take Parliament House during a rally a couple of months ago, but they failed and the entire movement's fizzled a bit since then.
Just because they're the opposition doesn't mean they're any better, though. The PAD (People's Alliance for Democracy) shift their stance so often that they could be playing Dance Dance Revolution: they always appear wherever the poular breeze is blowing and were a main player in fuelling the ridiculous Cambodia crisis (below).
THE DEEP SOUTH: Um, does anybody realize how many people are dying in Thailand's south at the moment?
A lot. I'd almost be prepared to compare it to Baghdad. Everyday, people are shot by gunmen on the backs of motorbikes, killed by roadside bombs, kidnapped and beheaded while innocently sitting at tea-shops. It's insane. A couple of months ago, we took the train down to Hat Yai, which, despite the occasional bombing, is as far south as you can go and still be considered safe. Two weeks later the same train was ambushed by rebels who laid logs across the tracks and opened fire on the train with machine gunes, killing four people.
The reasons are the same reasons as everywhere - the people down close to the Malaysian border are of a different religion to the rest of the country and feel (with some justification) that they are being badly mistreated by the government. On top of that, however, is the fact that a lot of the violence is just teenage boys with guns, which translates into a high proportion of principals and schoolteachers being assassinated, as well as schools being torched.
The media here downplays the situation as much as possible because it's bad for tourism; but what's much worse is that politicians almost entirely ignore the issue - perhaps because they have no idea how to solve it. Several people are being killed violently every single day, yet the Thai government would prefer to focus on: The Cambodia Crisis.
THE CAMBODIA CRISIS: So exhorbitantly stupid that I can't even believe I'm wasting space writing about it, the Cambodia crisis boils down to this: Cambodia managed to get one of its temples put on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Thailand got jealous, and because the temple is close to the border, they claimed that Cambodia was trying to steal 4.6 square km of their land. Suddenly, everyone went mental.
Now, the land in question is disputable, but the Cambodians have had a market there for thirty years. Plus, did I mention it's 4.6 goddamn square km? It's jungle. Give it to them. Instead, the temple was closed and both countries amassed hundreds of armed troops at the border and started arresting each other's citizens when they crossed into the disputed zone.
The entire thing makes no sense because the big catch is: the temple is inaccessible from the Cambodian side, because of the abhorrent state of Cambodian roads. Oh, you can get there, but it'll take two or three days of hard travel from Phnom Penh, and you'll probably have to travel by ox-cart some of the way. What does this mean? That the only people to benefit from the UNESCO-listing would have been Thailand anyway, because all the tourists would have had to travel there from Bangkok. But now the temple's closed, the tourists have been scared off, and there was almost an armed conflict. Both countries lose everything.
But it only serves to demonstrate Thailand's complete inability to lead by example. Thailand is a wealthy country surrounded by some of the poorest countries in the world, but instead of being a guiding light for Southeast Asia it prefers to keep its neighbours poor so that they don't provide threats. When cyclone Nargis battered Burma, the Thai response was a gigantic, lazy "Meh". They provided supplies to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia throughout the 80's and 90's because it suited them to keep Cambodia weak.
Really, Thailand just wants to keep things the way they are. They want a weak, pliant Cambodia as a buffer between themselves and Vietnam; they want a weak, pliant Laos as a buffer between themselves and China; they want a weak, closed-off Burma as a buffer between themselves and India. And they want Malaysia and Singapore to do what they've always done, which is to say, to stay out of regional politics altogether and try to make everyone believe that they're not really part of Southeast Asia.
I guess that we don't have the same sense of history as peoples in other parts of the world. Nobody in Thailand has lived under Burmese occupation, much less under Cambodian control - but still they remember, they remember that those things happened before and could well happen again. During recent negotiations with Cambodia, the Cambodian leadership reminded everyone that "We must be good neighbours for many tens of thousands of years to come".
Tens of thousands of years? Has anyone ever heard Kevin Rudd saying that to Helen Clark? That's the way things are considered over here, though, as one long continuum.
No beginnings, and no endings.
