Hypocrisy wears yellow

Source: Photo by AP, taken from Hurriyet.com

I honestly think that the decision of the Thai Constitutional Court to dissolve the ruling political party, the People Power Party (PPP), was a mistake. I'm not going to mince my words here: I think the PAD are a bunch of wayangs. They call themselves the "People's Alliance for Democracy", but what they are essentially fighting for is nothing but democracy. They are actually fighting to change the Thai Constitution and create a system where only 30 per cent of the Parliament are directly elected - the rest are appointed, meaning that 70 per cent of the Parliament would be proxies for the PAD. And here they are, cursing the now deposed Thai Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat as a proxy for Thaksin. Hypocrisy wears yellow, indeed.

The PAD's idea of democracy is one where the rural population should not be allowed to vote because they are too backward or too stupid to understand the intricacies of politics, meaning that they can be easily bought over by any politician with a deep pocket. Thaksin has built a strong rural base of political support because he had provided cheap medical care and loans to the poor. The PAD calls that "buying the poor over". I don't give a rat's ass what they call it. The fact is that for once a politician was doing something for the poor, regardless of what his motives were, and is it any wonder that the poor became strongly loyal to him? Notice that Thaksin did not resort to cheap transient tricks to "buy over the poor".

A slight digression here as a way of comparison: The Taiwanese Government plans to give out S$3.7 billion worth of shopping vouchers to the population to stimulate the economy. You don't need an economics degree to know that this kind of measure is one-off and is likely to have short-term impact. As a lump sum it might seem huge, but divided over around 23 million Taiwanese, it only comes to around $160 per individual. Let's just assume that the individual is a prudent one who wouldn't jump on a ship to Macau and gamble away his money the moment he has it. What can you do with $160, really? Buy maybe one or two months' worth of groceries, pay the electricity and utility bills for the month, and then what's next? This kind of one-off measure is a cheap political trick to shore up quick support, but has a very short shelf life. You have all sorts of governments around the world who resort to this trick, especially before elections. A more meaningful measure is to boost consumption by easing loans or giving tax breaks to small and medium businesses, so in turn they don't have to retrench workers, on top of being able to keep the price of their products competitive.

What Thaksin did for the rural population of Thailand can be called his legacy. By providing cheap medical care and loans, he had made the lives of the poor better in a meaningful and lasting way. Sure, he's not a saint. He did sell Shin Corp to Temasek Holdings in a tax-free deal, and perhaps made other dubious business deals, but there's no perfect politician.

Now let's first look at who the PAD are. The PAD are mostly an alliance among the middle class, the so-called royalists, academics, and some elements of the military. In other words, they belong to an elite segment of the Thai society, which is concentrated in Bangkok. They call themselves champions of the Thai people, but strip them of their grandiose rhetoric and you can easily see them for who they really are: a vehicle for the elite to alter the Thai political system to benefit their own kind. The reason why they are so hell-bent on changing the political system from one-man-one-vote to a directly appointed one is because they feel threatened by the collective voting power of the rural population. They adamantly refuse a snap election because they know that the huge rural voting base would put the PPP back in power.

Now back to my statement right at the beginning: The decision of the Thai Constitutional Court to dissolve the PPP was a mistake. The Court essentially abolished a popularly elected party to bow to the demands of a bunch of thugs. What the Thai Court had done was like handing a carte blanche to these thugs, so if they are unhappy with just about anything they can take off to the streets and make plenty of noise and then the Court will relent.

Yes, the PAD are thugs (although some concession has to be made to those who were manipulated). What else do you call a bunch of people who attacked the police with clubs, sticks, knives and even firearms and then cry repression when the police retaliated in self-defense? What else do you call a bunch of people who pretty much paralyzed the entire Thai economy for the next one to two years? You think you can just sit in the Thai airport for more than a week, bring the entire airline industry into a standstill, create a public relations disaster with pictures of thousands of stranded tourists splashed on global newspapers, destroy the livelihood of millions of Thais who depend on tourism, and then just say byebye and go home? Sondhi Limthongkul, the PAD leader, said it's worth it because it's for the entire country. Why don't you look into the eyes of the ordinary Thais who can't put food on the table because no tourist dares to come to Thailand and say that what you did is for their own good?

The PAD had taken the entire country as hostage for their personal vendetta. If they had any shred of love for their country, as they often proclaim, they would surely know that what they are doing is like smearing elephant dung on the face of Thailand. Instead of giving the Thai Government a chance to get the economy back on track, they deposed every single government starting from Thaksin's. Instead of trying to improve Thailand's international image, especially with the impending Asean Summit which was originally to be held in Bangkok, they illegally occupied the Government House for months and turned it into a giant pasar malam. If anyone has the notion that the PAD are heroes, do perish the notion.