The Power – The New Thailand

In response to the article “Crisis Fever” from the December 8th Time Magazine (P. 38 – Asia: Thailand)

For a long time, Thailand has been a welcoming country. Its golden spires and white-sand beaches have lured many tourists to contribute huge amounts to Thailand’s economy growth, until now. The recent conflict between Somchai’s government and the PAD (People’s Alliance for Democracy) has risen from a national crisis to an international crisis. Recently, the PAD has takeover its country’s airport, forcing tourists to stay.

The PAD, which is formed mostly by urban middle class citizens, has firmly stood against the government since the last PM, Thaksin, was elected. In fact, the PAD’s mission was neither to serve the majority of Thai or to pursue the values of democracy, it is simply to eliminate all the influence Thaksin has to government. The PAD has succeeded in deposing Thaksin during his term with the military’s coup, but this time the military is remaining still. Although the military can overthrow Thaksin, he returned in the form of Somchai, his former bother-in-law. The post coup elections happened under the military’s control, so it is embarrassing to admit it has supervised a corrupted election. In effect, the military only urged Somchai to return power to the people.

This is an interesting situation. Although Thaksin, a billionaire who is accused to be a dictator, obviously is hiding something, he is after all elected by the people. The majority of poor Thai like Thaksin so much that they gave him a record electoral mandate. Thaksin has won fair and peaceful, although he might have bought a certain amount of votes. In contrast, the PAD is violent and irrational. Not so long ago, they besieged Somchai’s office, causing turmoil in the Thai’s politics. If the PAD succeeded in overthrowing Somchai, they promised to avoid corrupted vote buying by appointing a parliament. This is very ironic. Thaksin has at least bought votes. The PAD are saying WE will appoint, which certainly is no different than buying votes, except there is no cost at all. The PAD accused Thaksin of willing to destroy the country for his personal gain, but on every day’s news I can only see the PAD messing around.

In the end, the question revolves around this: Who is Thaksin? He certainly is a person willing to devote his time in Thai politics. But is he trustworthy? Is he a good man? I can go to wikipedia and search about him, but I am not that interested in Thai politic, so I will end my blog with this question. Perhaps, my intelligent blog viewers and classmates can answer my question in the comments!