Final thoughts on the Thai political crisis

We left Wednesday just as the red shirt supporters of former Prime Minister Thaskin Shinawattra were beginning to gather en mass in a major effort to shut down the government. As I write this the protesters have succeeded in forcing the cancellation of a planned summit meeting this weekend in the resort of Puttapaya of the leaders of the Asian nations that are members of the organization, ASEAN. Their main demand is that the present Thai Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva stand down and restore Thaskin to office. Thai politics since the end of WWII has been consistently tumultuous alternating between military coups and civilian democratic governments that are rarely in power for more than three years at a stretch. As I noted earlier politics there seems more personality based then ideological based although Abhisit claims to a populist representing rural Thais who have been left out of Thailand’s rise in the last 10 years as an Asian economic tiger. In reading the Thai English press you can pick up on a current of weariness with politics as usual by the Thai people and understand, a little at least, the genuine devotion and love they have for their king. Pictures of Bhumibol Adulyadej adorn office buildings and shopping malls throughout Bangkok. Thailand has lese majeste laws that makes criticizing the king or the royal family a crime. All of the tourist guides to Thailand warn against saying anything that could be construed as an attack on the king. Just as we left Bangkok a man was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for posting a You Tube video deemed offensive to the monarch. One of the taxis I rode in had a small shrine to the king on the dashboard. The driver expressed in very broken English his admiration for the king. The king is above the rough and tumble of Thai politics also by the very nature of his being a constitutional monarch. Even with lese majeste laws you can’t rightly be criticized for your political leadership if you hold no political power to exercise. The talk is that if the continuing crisis between the two rival political factions is not resolved soon (and there’s a lot of anxiety that this is negatively impacting on tourism that makes up 20% of the Thai economy) then the King will be compelled to step in, as the Emperor Hirohito did in Japan in the summer of 1945, and push both sides to resolve their differences for the good of the country.