I am a frequent visitor to Thailand having been coming here since 2001. Once again I am in Bangkok to witness the yellow shirt "shut down" of the city. I think it's a pity that, in general, the outside world has been slow to condemn the outrageous nature of the yellow shirt demands. The truth is, they are in a battle against the modern age that they cannot win. Yes, they might succeed in shutting down Bangkok, forcing a coup and setting up an unrepresentative "council of good people" to run the country. However, a year or two down the road and the situation will return to base camp with the organizing of elections that representatives of the so called "Thaksin faction" are sure to win--unless Suthep Thaugsuban and his cronies are able to rig the democratic voting procedure in favor of the urban middle class. And that, of course, won't be democracy at all. Make no mistake: some very good people support Thaugsuban in his demands. In fact all the people I care for in Bangkok buy into this backward looking nostalgia trip with elements of feudalism thrown in. Their fashionable clothes and pretty coloured flags and body markings cannot hide the essential truth: this is the last serious stand of entrenched Thai feudal power structures against the painful opening up of the country to new democratic and economic forces. The basic premise of the yellow shirts is that you can turn back history to a simpler and nobler time when rulers were non elected and their word was law. They say that the people of the rural north are "uneducated" and sell their votes to the Thaksin camp. Of course this ignores the fact that, in a sense, votes are always bought in a democracy. The people vote in their own self interest and after counting up the votes it is decided which group will govern for the next four or five years. If the government doesn't do a good job during that period it can be thrown out next time. The truth is that in Thailand the Democrats, led by U.K. educated Abhisit Vejjajiva are offering nothing as a party to the rural north except instructions about how to know their place and shut up. It would be naive to believe--as Vejjajiva, Suthep and co. would have it--that the rural voters are such hillbillies that they don't realise that Prime Minister Yingluck's brother--ex-PM, Thaksin Shinawatra--has a large say in choosing party policy. They know, but they don't care as the Thaksin parties address their needs and--using a sound enough economic strategy for developing nations--put their emphasis on promoting policies that bring the rural masses out of abject poverty. Yes, there has been corruption and Thaksin seems to have feathered his own nest in several ways. Yet his economic policies worked wonderfully well for Thailand during his tenure as PM with all important economic indicators showing real improvement during his governance. The unforgivable action, which actually precipitated the present chao, was the unconstitutional coup that was staged in 2006 while Thaksin was out of the country. Since then, things have just become bleaker and bleaker for all Thais. And it is the people--all the people--that continue to pay. The west should waste no time in making it clear to Thaugsuban and his cronies that they do not consider them a credible alternative to democracy. And the many good-hearted Thais who have been blinded by his nostalgic and backward looking rhetoric should open their eyes to what's actually happening in their country: the thrashing death-throes of the super elite and anti-democratic urban ruling class.
