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The Slow-Motion Revolution

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The Slow-Motion Revolution Spectator auStralia Bangkok-based foreign media euphemism to avoid the world’s most draconian lèse majesté The slow-motion laws, his notional heir Vajiralongkorn ‘carries less of the personal prestige than his father’, who after 61 years is the world’s longest-ruling revolution monarch. Despite popular entreaties, the for- ever-young Bhumibol wasn’t the direct calm- ing player in this crisis as he was in 1992, the Thailand has been spared its Tiananmen moment, says last time the military killed Thais in Bangkok, probably because he’s medically unable to. Eric Ellis, but Thais now know what civil war looks like And if Bhumibol does know Thais as well as his courtiers insist, and he’s physically able urderous though May and al liberties, a containment of corruption, even for conscious, rational decision-making, he’d the months before it were a democracy-of-sorts) were actually intro- know that his sudden public intervention in Bangkok, this was not duced in China in the post-Tiananmen years, would shock, his wizened appearance more 1989 as it spontaneously and are evident today in rampant China. As alarming than soothing. rose in Beijing. Casualties for their critical demand — for actual power The amart will also struggle with Abhisit’s Mwere measured in Thai tens not Chinese — Deng and his Politburo were never going evocation of ‘civil society’ in his plan. The Thai thousands. Unlike the People’s Liberation to allow it. This differs little to what skilled elite are imbued with generations of belief of Army, the Royal Thai Army was quick, pro- politicians do anywhere, even in democra- their own self-worth, regarding their societal fessional and exercised considerable restraint cies: condemn opponents, purloin their bet- primacy and privilege as a celestial birthright, in its purge, just as it did when seizing power ter ideas, manipulate the polity and placate one endorsed by the semi-divine monarchy. (again) in 2006, the most recent major mile- the constituency. The happy outcome is often The feisty reds chose the wealthy commer- stone precipitating this drama. prolonged rule and stability. Singapore’s Lee cial and residential heart of Bangkok for their Nor is there a vermillion-hued Thai ‘Tank family is an arch-exemplar of this. stand as a class statement, one expressed not Man’ to rally international sympathy around. While he sent the tanks in, Thailand’s just by the ritzy locale but in the self-descrip- Absent the defining media image of oppres- Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva began sell- tion triumphantly emblazoned across red- sion these events usually highlight, the royalist ing a five-point roadmap to peace. Most of its shirted chests – prai, Thai for ‘serf’. It wasn’t establishment is winning the propaganda war, language is woolly twaddle, but it boils down ironic. mostly because the venal billionaire scheming to an election on 14 November, from which Whether Abhisit has the political moxy to in the not-so-distant background of this strife some of his allies are already backing away, pull off his plan or, more to the point, even presents much more a clear and valid demon saying the country is not ready for it. This is believe in it, is quite another matter. He’s to dehumanize than China’s nerdy, naïve — not good, but Abhisit, and that shady tycoon accused — not unjustly — that he’s a pup- and unarmed — student democrats ever did. Thaksin Shinawatra, knows that his govern- pet of the palace and the military. ‘Mark’, as And, save a few clueless foreigners such as ment is reviled outside Bangkok, and is frag- he was known at Eton and in his PPE years the Australian Conor David Purcell, it’s hard ile, a big reason why Abhisit was so reluctant at Oxford, presents as a very clubbable chap; for the ‘land-rights-for-gay-Tibetan-whales’ to acquiesce to red demands for a poll. His polite, urbane, the type of bloke you’d be crowd to get touchy-feely about ‘freedom coalition hinges on two dozen parliamen- delighted your precious daughter brought fighters’ who are hate-spewing homophobes tary votes of a floor-crossing parliamentary home and married. If there’s a rod of steel who vow to kill foreigners as they torch the faction headed by a former Thaksin crony. embedded in his backbone, it’s not evident. city (but only the parts of it not commercially When Abhisit’s Democrats, which had either Indeed, Abhisit and his fellow England-born connected to the reds). The clinical remov- badly lost or boycotted four previous elec- Oxonian, finance minister Korn Chatikavanij, al of the red barricades is a battle won for tions, finally got power in December 2008, boast pedigrees better equipped to be Thailand’s royalist amart — Thai for the elite the educated rumours sweeping Thailand running England than a country aflame: — but it will require profound trust, skilful was that it cost about $US23 million ($US1 Cameron-Clegg prototypes most comfort- politics and behavioural adjustment to win million per parliamentary vote) to deliver the able transacting power in discreet corners of the war or, more to the point, avoid plunging best government money can buy. the Athenaeum Club. Of the two, Korn is the Thailand into a very nasty one. And then, as always in Thailand, there’s the more impressive, with a hardness infused by But Tiananmen does provide useful question of the monarchy. The yellow-hued, white hot dealmaking — he ran JP Morgan instruction — and an opportunity — for royally-advantaged amart argues that it’s in Thailand before becoming a pol. He knows Thailand’s powerful gathering of brass, aris- not for questioning: the first of Abhisit’s five what he is doing, one reason why the econo- tocrats and the monied to resolve the deep points is to ‘uphold the monarchy’. The yel- my has been relatively unbruised through all social and economic fissures that the red- lows would like the world to believe that even this. For all the turmoil since the 2006 coup shirt revolt against them reveals. The Chinese the hardline reds honour the Buddhist throne that ousted Thaksin, the biggest bruising Communist Party’s response to the 1989 of Bhumibol Adulyadej, Rama IX of the came from the establishment’s own protest, Tiananmen Square protests was brutal and Chakri Dynasty. But that’s simply not true, the unpunished 2008 airport shutdown when absolute; thousands massacred and survivors not in a country where slabs of the neglected billions’ worth of trade, never mind the hap- purged as the state machinery neatly obfus- south is ethnic Malay Muslim and has been less tourists that obsess the media, couldn’t cated events and language to the point that allowed to fester to the edges of insurgency, make it through the pickets. many of today’s debates over Tiananmen, while swathes of the backward north, now It’s too glib for the amart to say the peas- often waged against the backdrop of China’s licking their Bangkok wounds, more than antry is manipulated by a billionaire’s black world-insuring economy, are — remarkable, ever openly question the throne’s usefulness, hand. Thaksin’s influence is exploitative, but this — launched with discussions of where, at clear personal risk. to blame him entirely betrays the Thai elite’s when and whether something now reduced to In the latter years of his premiership, cultural arrogance and ignores the genuine ‘an incident’ took place at all. Thaksin virtually became the de facto shadow grievances of the impoverished countryside But the communist sledgehammer masked Bhumibol, mimicking the King’s grand chari- which Thaksin exploits. Such attitudes have a later pragmatism toward its opponents — table gestures. to change for Thailand to be saved from itself, and ultimately neutered them — that Thai That Thailand fails as the reclusive Bhumibol from its slow-motion revolution. leaders could do worse than at least note. ails is no coincidence. Underpinning all this Many of the student demands (wider eco- is the fear of the unknown: what happens Eric Ellis is a foreign correspondent specialis- nomic reforms and deeper prosperity, person- when the 83-year-old King dies. As goes the ing in Asia. viii THE SPECTATOR AUstraLIA 29 May 2010 www.spectator.co.uk.
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