Loved Only @ Home

Don’t accuse me of not trying. I tried very hard to uncover some positive international news reporting about Thailand. A task that’s doomed. There’s not only an irreconcilable division within Thailand. Thailand herself seems more and more misunderstood and isolated by the international media and community. Following the current spat between the two neighboring kingdoms Thailand and Cambodia, even news agencies seem at a loss of how to report Bangkok’s verbal and diplomatic saber rattling and its application of seemingly archaic laws without slightly sarcastic undertones.

A whole different picture in Thailand herself. Former prime minister Thaksin’s Cambodia gambit “is going down badly in Thailand, where many of Mr. Thaksin’s critics accuse him of selling out his country’s interests to help an ancient enemy instead,” reports the WSJ. “If Mr. Thaksin persists with this alliance with Cambodia, the nationalist backlash in Thailand will pick up, even among his own supporters,” says Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political science professor at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.

Writes the blog Thai Intelligent News in “Thailand Isolated Globally”: the Thai government has the Thai press on its side and “approval to go to war with Cambodia.” But as the post’s title says, this approval is a uniquely Thai thing. Written in the blog’s peculiar very own English the author lays down a long list of news wires, magazines and, yes, countries that turned negative on Thailand, intensely puzzled about Thai antics and the application of laws: Reuters, AFP, the Economist, Washington Post, New York Times, not to mention businessmen and diplomats. Has Thailand become an international embarrassment? And if so, is it a perception or rather a communication problem?

That the Thai government openly sides with a planned mass rally against Thaksin by ordering local officials to tell local people that the nationalistic royalist PAD had the constitutional right of assembly, that surely doesn’t speak of the Abhisit-government’s impartiality.

Government-sponsonsored mobilization of the masses has only a few parallels in today’s world, namely in North Korea, Venezuela, et al. You don’t wanna compare Abhisit to Kim or Hugo, do you.

The outside world just doesn’t seem to get that we have a potentially brilliant prime minister with great intentions who’s well read in political science and philosophy and impresses with that coy English accent. The outside world doesn’t fully understand why Thailand’s revered institution, the world’s richest, needs extra protection.

And as long as the outside world doesn’t understand, why bother about ignorance.

I still think Abhisit shouldn’t have accepted the premiership back in December. A better timing, a better PM. Under the government’s given shape and form he’ll never be allowed to be his own man. Even a perfect Thai smile can only hide so much.

I wonder though if he had a choice.




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November 13, 2009 | Filed Under Culture Shock, Politics, Society, The Thai Mind 

Comments

9 Responses to “Loved Only @ Home”

  1. Rich on November 13th, 2009 10.50 am

    Agreed, the governments failure to use the same legislative controls against the yellows (greens?) as they used against the reds is curious, and is despite the fact that the yellows are the ones whose use of violence has been most obvious last year and this year.

    This is yet another thing that will not play well overseas. More foreigners not understanding the way Thai people think I suppose. Always assuming they think at all, which frankly, is often in doubt.

    And agree with you 100% in your penultimate paragraph. Abhisit was never going to be a PM by electoral victory an sold his soul, gambling that he would sell himself to the Thai people and merit re-election.

    All that has gone by the board now and he has shown himself instead to be duplicitous by saying internationally one thing and doing domestically quite another.

    The army and the big house have got this little rabbit by the balls and they are not going to let go as Thailand drifts into the inevitable civil conflict. It seems that every defining social change requires a blood sacrifice, and I fear that the scale of the upheaval and bloodletting that I believe is inevitable will be just awful unless the elites decide to let go and negotiate.

    From along the corridors of the past I keep hearing echoes of the reeducation camps that Mao ran.

    I feel somewhat gloomy as to the prospects for keeping Humpty Dumpty on the wall, because nobody will be able to put him back together should he topple.

  2. Kit on November 13th, 2009 2.06 pm

    Written in the blog’s peculiar English

    - you say. Your own English is hardly exemplary, with several instances of poor grammar, punctuation and style.

    (BD: Mea culpa Kit, still learning over here, wasn’t meant condescending in any way. On the contrary. I like that emotional flavor.)

  3. Peter on November 13th, 2009 2.10 pm

    … are you guys sure you want this back?

    I wonder what they are noting down there?

  4. Steve on November 13th, 2009 8.43 pm

    Largely agree with the substance of your piece – though with two “buts.”

    1] (…) news agencies seem at a loss of how to report Bangkok’s verbal and diplomatic saber rattling (…)”

    Bangkok has largely been responding to Hun Sen’s escalating provocative rhetoric and actions. If one version doing the rounds is to be believed, the Thai MFA started by summoning the Cambodian ambassador – who was “too busy” to go herself and declined to send a deputy; hence the jump to recalling the Thai ambassador. My own take is that Hun Sen has been orchestrating the decline in relations quite deliberately (mainly with an eye to getting international arbitration on border disputes with bigger Thailand – particularly marine gas-field boundaries). Given the way diplo-pingpong usually works, Abhisit’s responses have been largely predictable and by the book. That said, I also think old hand Hun Sen has his junior counterpart exactly where he wants him – and see also Siam Report’s analysis for a more personal angle that fits well.

    Either or both ways – while I’m no fan of Abhisit – it looks like his hand has been forced; difficult to imagine that he could have done much less and still escape vilification from
    not just the usual suspects but also from the famously xenophobic Thai public.

    2] I still think Abhisit shouldn’t have accepted the premiership back in December.

    For sure it was a poisoned chalice – but that triggers the question, if not the Dems (and therefore Abhisit) – then who and what? Too early a year ago for a Newin-led regime (even with him behind the scenes and a totally* stooge PM out front). For what it’s worth, I do think that’s the way we may be heading – probably with a new “centre/unity” party into which enough soft/moderate Peua Thai, Democrats and sundry other minor party flotsam can move … leaving the “extreme” inconvenient elements (including busted flush Abhisit and close circle) out in the cold. But that’s thinkable only now – not a year ago.

    * As opposed to the partial stooge we see now.

  5. StanG on November 13th, 2009 11.30 pm

    That Thai Intelligent News blog didn’t provide any links.

    BBC feeds on Cambodian spat were nothing like he described, and I don’t think BBC is totally out of sync with the rest of Western media.

  6. anonymous on November 15th, 2009 5.19 pm

    I think it’s neither lack of communication nor foreign conspiracy. The product is just not all that marketable right now. If you look at Obama’s Tokyo speech, the protrusive paragraph is when he mentioned Indonesia and Malaysia in same breath without Thailand, whose only reference was routine as treaty ally. We are so out of whack and out of action, a longstanding source of my distress.

  7. Chris on November 15th, 2009 6.44 pm

    In his Tokyo speech, Obama said the following:

    The longing for liberty and dignity is a part of the story of all peoples. For there are certain aspirations that human beings hold in common: the freedom to speak your mind, and choose your leaders; the ability to access information, and worship how you please; confidence in the rule of law, and the equal administration of justice.

    Which might be construed to have a subtext directed not only at the Burma Generals but also at another Asean country which Obama will probably not be visiting soon …

  8. This, Dear Friends, Is Thailand on November 17th, 2009 6.34 pm

    [...] That’s according to the beautifully titled press release The Thai People’s Declaration to the World. On the stage though you heard contemporary fascism in action that would have put Hitler to shame. And all perfectly legal, protected by governmental blessing. [...]

  9. Karl Reichstetter on November 20th, 2009 9.37 am

    The international media has it wrong many times (just thinking about the war in Iraq) and seems not to be very well informed and historically educated. They seem to forget or not to know at all who Hun Sen is.

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