Color-coded contest for Thailand's north

Red Shirts group gathered at Sanam Luang July 31,2009

Southeast Asia

Jul 31, 2009

AN ATOL INVESTIGATION

Color-coded contest for Thailand's north

By Shawn Kelley

CHIANG MAI - When a government delegation led by Thai Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij landed in Chiang Mai earlier this month, it was met at the airport by some 200 anti-government protesters wearing red shirts, including one with a loaded gun. The would-be assailant circled the airport several times in his car before being stopped and arrested by police.

The protesters later hurled rocks and small homemade explosives into a crowd that inflicted minor injuries to around a dozen or so police officials near a local police station. The incident represented the latest show of force by Thailand's sometimes peaceful, sometimes volatile red-shirt movement, which draws inspiration from former prime minister and fugitive from Thai justice Thaksin Shinawatra.

The exiled former leader's popularity continues to run strong in northern and northeastern regions due to the pro-poor policies he implemented and marketed through state media during his six-year tenure. His populist message has had special resonance in Chiang Mai, where he was born and from where his family hails.

How far Thaksin's red-garbed protest movement, known broadly as the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), is willing to go to press its demands for new snap elections, the restoration of the 1997 constitution and broadly an end to a political order they say is dominated by the military and royalist elite will be key to stability in the months and perhaps years ahead.

The UDD last ramped up their protests in April, when Thaksin called radically for a "people's revolution" against the government and a broad "aristocracy", including apparently the members of the royal advisory Privy Council that UDD leaders pilloried during their on-stage protests.

Thaksin's rally call from exile galvanized a crowd of tens of thousands in early and mid-April and later sparked scenes of chaos and violence on the streets of Bangkok that were eventually put down by the military. More recently, his supporters held a remote birthday party for their exiled leader, to which the now 60-year-old called in by satellite link and sang a song. The UDD is now leading a controversial petition drive, calling for a royal pardon for Thaksin.

Prime Minster Abhisit Vejajiva and his Democrat Party-led coalition government have presided over a three-month period of relative political calm, notwithstanding the occasional red-shirt rally. His party plans to ramp up fiscal spending and made-for-media roadshows to market government projects before calling new general elections, expected some time in 2010.

The northern region, which accounts for some 75 MP seats out of 480 total, will be pivotal to whether the Democrats beat out the Thaksin-aligned Peua Thai Party, which configured as the now banned People's Power Party won the 2007 elections. But as Abhisit and his party push to win support in the northern provinces, where the Democrats previously had substantial influence before Thaksin's spectacular rise in 2001, the contest for hearts and minds in the region will be especially pitched.

Finance Minister Korn has said the north will receive the greatest share of the US$44 billion the government recently earmarked for fiscal stimulus, money that they clearly hope will achieve electoral results. But the reds could yet stir enough instability and civil disobedience to render that electoral strategy ineffective.

Thailand's conflict has variously been portrayed as a struggle between rich and poor, urban and rural, feudalists and democrats, with the red shirts claiming to represent the latter in the characterizations. But the country is more clearly divided on regional lines, with the wealthier Bangkok and southern region favoring the Democrat Party, and the poorer but more populous north and northeastern regions leaning strongly towards Thaksin.

The broad brushstroke categorizations, however, do not account for the many exceptions, particularly in the northern city of Chiang Mai where there are plenty of rich and poor on both sides of the political divide. Nor do they account for the many northerners who would rather steer clear of taking political sides, either out of fear, lack of interest or distrust of the competing red and yellow shirt protest leaders.

Yet even those who claim neutrality in the north often share the red shirts' frustration with the military's political resurgence and cynicism about an electoral process in which their elected representatives are frequently deposed through perceived undemocratic means, including through court decisions they believe are politically biased.

Rowdy reds
That sentiment has been mobilized in recent red shirt protests. When the April protests reached their chaotic height in Bangkok, hundreds of red-shirted protestors across the north blocked major highways and stormed the offices of state-run television stations to protest the government's perceived biased reporting on the events and the forced closure of the Thaksin-aligned D-Station satellite TV network.

Yet despite that strategic response, northern Thailand's red shirt groups are varied and only loosely aligned with one another. Many have adopted martial symbols, taking on names like Phayao Army, the 24 June Democracy of Chiang Rai, named to commemorate the date of the fall of the absolute monarchy in 1932, and the Lanna People's Council, to emphasize northern regional identity.

Some groups take their cues directly from the Bangkok-based UDD, while others are more independent and in certain instances have turned their backs on Thaksin and the UDD entirely. A number have formed along neighborhood lines, led by people who have broken away from the main red shirt leaders because of personal differences. Some broke ranks because they felt unfairly compensated for their efforts in mobilizing local support for red shirt causes.

The most active and controversial of the northern red groups, led by hardcore Thaksin loyalists who first came out three years ago to oppose his military ouster, calls itself Rak Chiang Mai 51. But the group's sometimes violent protest activities have belied to some degree the broad red shirt movement's rally cry for "real democracy".

Months before their attempt to thwart the finance minister's visit to Chiang Mai, in November the group instigated a mob of a few hundred people, many armed with guns, knives and homemade weapons, to blockade the entrance to the home and office of Terdsak Jiamkitwattana, a radio journalist and former Thaksin supporter who switched political sides after the 2006 coup.

The shut-in lasted several hours and gunshots were reportedly fired at Terdsak's Radio Vihok news station. As Terdsak's 60-year-old father, Setha, himself a former news reporter, attempted to drive through the cordon, he was dragged out of his automobile by protestors and savagely killed after being beaten, stabbed and shot. Fearing another round of attacks by red shirts, Terdsak delayed the funeral for several weeks.

Other northern red shirt groups have deployed less brutal but still violent tactics. During a by-election campaign held in January, former Democrat prime minister Chuan Leekpai was pelted with eggs and water bottles while canvassing for a local candidate in northern Lampang province. His van was later assaulted with eggs and other objects as he traveled to neighboring Lamphun.

A few years earlier, in the lead-up to the April 2006 elections which the Democrat Party boycotted and Thaksin's then Thai Rak Thai party statistically won, Chuan was struck by a chair thrown by a Thaksin supporter and other top Democrat party members were run off stage at an event in Chiang Mai city held to explain their withdrawal from the race.

The red shirts' message doesn't resonate across all northern constituencies. In February this year, aggrieved corn farmers who were camped in front of city hall requesting government assistance clashed briefly with Rak Chiang Mai 51 after rejecting overtures to join their more politically oriented demonstration. Several days later, a few dozen red shirts confronted organizers of a gay awareness parade in Chiang Mai city, declaring it a violation of the region's traditional values, and forced its cancellation moments before the procession was set to begin.

There have also been signs of dissension among the northern red shirt ranks. After disrupting the gay pride parade, at Chiang Mai city's railway station a minor altercation broke out between Rak Chiang Mai 51 members and two other red shirt groups that had broke away after falling out with key Rak Chiang Mai 51 leaders.

In the aftermath of the April protests, police issued arrest warrants for about a dozen or so red shirt leaders in the north and raided a handful of their aligned community radio stations for inciting the unrest. Lampang police reportedly seized nineteen .22 caliber pistols, 950 rounds of ammunition and computers from the Lanna People's Community Radio station.

The station was run by Natchai Insai, leader of the Chumchon Hak Lampang 51 (Lampang Loving People 51) and head of the pro-Thaksin Lampang Province Silver Plaque special tutoring school. Authorities later allowed the radio stations to resume broadcasting under the condition that they refrain from inciting supporters to disturb public order.

The crackdowns prompted former culture minister Worawat Ua-Apinyakul, a Peua Thai MP and prominent red-shirt organizer in the northern province of Phrae, to declare his intention to take the group's anti-government struggle underground, ominously warning that the north could turn more violent than the country's deep south, where a Muslim insurgency has claimed thousands of lives since re-igniting in 2004.

A Western intelligence official based in Chiang Mai says red shirt threats to wage a "people's war" or underground guerilla campaign against the government reflect the movement's feeling "cornered and frustrated" and slipping into "crash mode". Worawat's call echoed Bangkok-based UDD leader Jakrapob Penkair, who after the April military crackdown on the UDD's protest told international media of his intention to launch an underground armed struggle against the government. Jakrapob is currently in exile and so far there are no indications the mainstream red shirt movement supports his call to arms.

Kanyapak Maneejak, a popular red shirt-affiliated radio host in Chiang Mai better known as DJ Aom, dismisses the threats of armed struggle as so much posturing. She claims that many red shirt leaders in the north ramp up the rhetoric in hopes of gaining greater recognition and potential financial support from Thaksin.

DJ Aom, a frontline leader and regular radio presenter for Rak Chiang Mai 51, says she spent her childhood living at the Shinawatra family compound in nearby Sankhampaeng district, where her grandmother still lives. The offspring of the Shinawatra family's former groundskeepers now lives at the red shirts' main headquarters in Chiang Mai, at the Grand Worowot Palace hotel, a small, derelict building best known for its 24-hour snooker hall.

The snooker club's owner is the now daring but previously obscure Pechawat Wattanapongsirikul, the top leader of the red-garbed Rak Chiang Mai 51. The Lamphun native previously owned a small construction company and reportedly has close links to the locally influential Phuttapuan family. The Phuttapuans are political chameleons and have fielded candidates for elections under several party banners, including Thaksin's former Thai Rak Thai party, the Democrats and the former Chart Thai.

After the 2006 coup that ousted Thaksin, Petchawat initially formed the Thaksin Loving People group, before changing its name to Rak Chiang Mai 51 in August last year, or 2551 in the Thai Buddhist calendar. In the by-elections held in January, he was defeated by a Democrat-supported candidate, Khayan Vipromchai. Some here attributed the red shirt loss to his group's violent killing of radio commentator Terdsak's father last November and to a broader rejection of the red shirts' violent tactics.

DJ Aom claims the mob killing was an "accident" and blames a few unruly individuals for escalating the situation. She insists that her red shirt group remains popular, claiming at least 50,000 card-carrying members and at least twice that many unofficial members - although Rak Chiang Mai 51 events are seldom attended by more than several hundred supporters.

Besides staging demonstrations against government officials, the group also holds regular gatherings at the Worawot hotel, where leaders take to a stage set up in the street sometimes to launch tirades against their opponents or clamor for Thaksin's return. They also deliver more cogent talks on democracy and the need to bridge inequalities in Thai society.

The group has also organized boycotts of big businesses believed to be linked to Thaksin's rivals. In May, about 500 red shirts in Chiang Mai closed their personal accounts at Bangkok Bank, which they claim financially supported Thaksin's overthrow.

According to DJ Aom, red shirt supporters withdrew millions of baht and then ceremoniously burned their Bangkok Bank bankbooks. Similar campaigns are planned by Rak Chiang Mai 51 against local branches of Kasikorn Bank, Bank of Ayudhaya and the agribusiness conglomerate Charoen Pokphand, all considered by the group as part of a broad royalist elite.

Not-so-mellow yellows
At the same time, many in Chiang Mai profess allegiance to the yellow-garbed People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) movement, the reactionary royalist street protest movement that paved the way for Thaksin's 2006 ouster and crippled the workings of two Thaksin-aligned governments last year, including by seizing Bangkok's domestic and international airports.

The PAD was previously associated with the Democrats, due to the fact one of the protest group's co-leaders was an elected MP with the party. That link is now less obvious as PAD leaders criticize Abhisit and the Democrats for not getting to the bottom of an April assassination attempt against PAD leader Sondhi Limthongkul.

Radio host Terdsak, a PAD supporter, claims that the yellow-shirt network numbers at least 100,000 "official" members across northern provinces. He says their core consists of teachers, state enterprise workers, farmers who opposed free trade agreements and other liberalizing policies during Thaksin's governments, royalist military forces, non-governmental groups, and people who suffered from Thaksin's 2003 war on drugs campaign, which saw the indiscriminate killings of many innocent victims in the north, particularly among ethnic hill tribes.

It also includes a broad swath of the middle class that once supported Thaksin as a son of the north and his bold economic initiatives, but later turned against him for the various large-scale development projects, including cable cars, highway overpasses, and a heavy-handed land grab for a new zoo, that many believed directly benefited his family's or political cronies' business interests.

Among those who switched sides is northern Thai folk singer Suntaree Veychanon, who previously supported Thaksin's tough stand against narcotic drugs. Later, however, she joined mass efforts to drive Thaksin from power and is now a member of a loose network of yellow shirt sympathizers that goes by the name Paa Kee Hak Chiang Mai, or Love Chiang Mai Party.

She understands first hand the rough and tumble tactics of some of Thaksin's local supporters: days after she first appeared on the PAD protest stage in Bangkok in 2006, an unexploded grenade was found in front of her popular riverside restaurant where she performs nightly.

Suryian Tongknukiat, the PAD's chief organizer in Chiang Mai, is a veteran NGO worker from the southern province of Pattalung who married a woman from Chiang Mai and has worked for several years with farmers and hill tribe groups in the north. Handpicked by the PAD leadership in Bangkok, he has been tasked with building the PAD's northern network.

His mission, he says, is to empower common folk, keep the government in check and to spread word about its contentious "New Politics" policies, a conservative platform that once called for a reduction in the number of elected representatives to the Upper House, based on the premise that common voters are too naive to make their own political decisions.

The PAD's decision to advance these vague policies as a proper political party has divided its national network, with one camp feeling their interests are better served as a street movement than by a formal institution, and another that believes a party vehicle will give their ideas more legitimacy. PAD party organizers in the northern province of Chiang Rai recognize the transitional challenge, conceding that they would be lucky to win 20 seats - out of a total of 480 - at the next general elections.

The military, in its campaign for northern Thais' hearts and minds, has by most indications fared poorly in getting its message across. In late April, the Internal Security Operations Command, or ISOC, held seminars across the north to brief local village leaders about its side of their handling of the April UDD-led riots. The military has claimed no protestors were killed in the melee, while UDD supporters have claimed some were killed.

At one such seminar held in Chiang Mai, attended by some 2,000 village heads, district chiefs and other community officials, nearly half of the room walked out in protest, claiming the meeting was a waste of time. Leaders from Chiang Rai and Phayao reportedly interrupted similar meetings by shouting pro-Thaksin slogans and ridiculing the event's military organizers before leaving the seminar early.

Whether the Democrats fiscal efforts, which will be heavily marketed in the north under their Thai Khem Kaeng, or Thai strength, campaign will sway rural support from Thaksin is still unclear. Yet it will likely hold the key to the next general elections with its more mixed political loyalties than other regions. The former Thaksin-aligned PPP won 47 of the region's 75 seats at the 2007 polls, with the Democrats notching just 16.

Already some of the Democrat party's populist ploys, including a 2,000 baht (US$60) handout scheme for over 11 million low-income earners and a new pension plan for senior citizens, have been coolly received in the north, say some locals.

That local skepticism deepened when the Democrat-led government later announced a series of tax hikes on cigarettes, alcohol and gasoline. A middle-ranking police officer in Chiang Mai, requesting anonymity, jokingly accused the government of handing out money with one hand and then snatching it back with the other. Like many people in his village, he sometimes joins red shirt gatherings, but considers himself only a casual supporter.

In April, the village headman where he lives in Mae Hia district organized a group to join the red shirt rallies in Bangkok. He said that he and his neighbors were offered 500 baht (US $15), a free red shirt and transportation for the four-day trip, which included only a one-day commitment at the demonstrations.

The expenses-paid trip, he says, doubled as an opportunity for some to visit their children or relations working around Bangkok, or to visit nearby beaches with family and friends. The police official, wary of spending that long away from home but under pressure to support his red shirt-aligned village chief, instead joined a smaller red shirt caravan on an overnight shopping trip to a nearby border market.

To be sure, not all support for red or yellow shirt groups in the north is purchased by powerful Bangkok-based patrons. Plenty have come out on their own accord, with the reds' rhetoric against the skewed concentration of power and wealth, and the yellow's rants against corruption in government, ringing true with a growing number of northerners.

Many share across the color-coded divide a perennial sense of neglect from the central government. Protest groups' broad pleas for democracy and social justice have perhaps unintentionally sparked new calls for stronger local government and other decentralizing reforms. They are calls for political change that, judging by their histories and actions, neither Thaksin and his reds, nor the Democrats and their more loosely aligned yellows, appear to represent.

Shawn Kelley is an independent political risk consultant and Visiting Fellow at Chulalongkorn University's Social Research Institute in Bangkok. He may be reached atsjkelley88@gmail.com.

Source : atimes.com