Thailand Perfects Hold On Power

After a long series of tumultuous coups with blood filling the streets upheaval-rich Thailand has demonstrated in convincing manner that the days of gory changes of power have come to an end. In a most impressive, clinically executed fourth de facto coup against fugitive Thaksin Shinawatra, the Thai kingdom’s disgraced prime minister, Judgement Day on February 26th, 2010, made it once and for all clear that tanks, guns and elections are no longer needed to achieve and maintain power, taking presented democracy to a whole new level.

There may still be some collateral damage along the way, but coups in Thailand are no longer what they once were, due to constant fine-tunings and adjustments in the execution and implementation of thereof. Already the first of the series of coups against authoritarian populist Thaksin on September 19th, 2006, saw tanks decorated with flowers and sexy pom pom girls dancing around soldiers who were smilingly sporting their guns. Even cute female soldiers were stationed at strategic key positions to please the cameras of locals and tourists alike. The world loved this distinctively Thai “flower coup.”

The second coup, the Charter Court’s removing from office of Thaksin’s nominee prime minister Samak Sundaravej in September 2008 on the grounds of his love for cooking, this second coup d’état was a judicial coup that made history even before this stroke of genius hit the headlines. Thailand’s powers that be made the impossible possible by spinning a seemingly irrelevant fact so cunningly that prime ministers around the world stopped cooking immediately.

The third coup, the sacking of dedicated short-time prime minister Somchai Wongsawat only a few weeks later by the Constitutional Court barred Somchai, Thaksin’s brother-in-law, from politics for five years and dissolved his party. The verdict’s exact logic remains contended, but this second judicial coup was so perplexingly straightforward that the word “coup” wasn’t read or heard a single time in any news coverage.

The fourth coup, the Supreme Court’s recent seizing of more than half of Thaksin’s fortune with an option on the remaining 30 billion baht, was presented as a seven-hour long drama with beautifully dressed judges in front of a captivated nation heroically fighting to not doze off. Subversive elements called it a latest attempt of consolidation of power and an outright robbery without parallel in modern history. Their hero, they alleged, was not that stupid to “hide” ill-gotten wealth openly in public Thai banks.

History’s so far biggest heist is considered to be Saddam Hussein’s stealing of one billion U.S. dollars from Iraq’s central bank the day before the United States began bombing his Baghdad in March 2003. And he didn’t get away with it. Due to his bad karma: “Villains are sure of getting robbed,” said Megaporn Mairuulueang of the Citizen Front for the Beautification of Democracy (CFBD), an arm of the Internal Security Operations Command’s (Isoc) public relations department.

All the authorities had to do, explained Megaporn, was to “accelerate Thaksin’s karma.” Megaporn herself is a graduate of a nameless Isoc elite unit and is said to have access to access-less inner circles, a rumor she neither confirms nor denies.

“It is here where we introduce bloodless power politics”, said Megaporn. The entanglement of jurisprudence and political and religious indoctrination – “wrongly called brainwashing by some,” Megaporn warned – this entanglement not only creates an intransparency that makes it impossible to safely distinguish good from bad. This entanglement confuses and therefore strengthens each citizen’s sense of duty and obedience which herewith forms the very basis of a strong, stable regime.

“Take Judgement Day,” explained Megaporn. “It could have gone either way, but our implementation of the Thai psyche in politics combined with our control over what people read and talk lets us basically do whatever we want, as long as its presented in an impressive, plausible manner.”

And plausible it was, to follow the Supreme Court’s day-long Shakespearean drama culminating in a verdict that actually everyone expected, but humanizing words such as “not fair” and “in the name of justice” made the judges martyrs for the good of the whole world. Not unlike saints they handed back a slice to the outlaw, a generosity rarely seen since genesis, affirming the newer trend in Thai politics that coup-politics may not sound right, but they sure do the job better than the electoral college.

“Look what’s already priced in. Even the recent bomb attack against Bangkok Bank. Doesn’t matter who did it or what the motives are. Give anything some time, repeat it and repeat it – and soon the most outrageous stuff looks plain normal. You can sell them a cat for a dog. Or,” she smiled, “a traitor for a savior. As someone recently said: But then again, we Thais have a thing for deifying human beings, don’t we? Now they’re beatifying Thaksin.”

The CFBD’s Megaporn recently signed an exclusive contract with an American publisher. In the making is a compendium detailing and exporting this unique Thai art of a bloodless hold on power. The book will be sold by invitation only, but Khun Megaporn has learned that she could have actually hit the jackpot with this project. Judging from hourly crackling phone calls she receives she assumes demand is especially high in African countries that are rich in crackling phone lines.

She keeps her “secrets close to my chest,” she laughed. “Close to my chest. Maybe that’s why the all want ‘em, 555.”

Looking the interviewer straight into the eye, she continued: “Key is to make everything look nice and beautiful. The nicer and more beautiful a change of power and a hold on power look, the less interested the world is, and critics keep quiet. Look, it’s this blood factor dominating international news since 9/11. The international media by now largely ignore our coups. Because they’re clean, so they’re not interesting.”

“Yes, some call our new politics a letdown. We get complaints where they are, the good old Thai heyday politics,” said Megaporn. “Whatever happens, our judicial scenarios are ready to roll. We got quite some of them.”

“We’re in for the long run,” she assured. “And we’re really lucky. We got a nice and beautiful head of government resulting in a nicer and more beautiful life is for all of us. In the end,” said Megaporn, “it all boils down to a feel-good perception.”

“Ah, one more thing,” said Megaporn. “If things go wrong, imagine a drop of blood on our bright shirts. On theirs, you don’t even see it. You’ll never notice.”

Asked if elections couldn’t be a cruel game changer, Megaporn smiled compassionately: “Is that what you think? Just wait and see.”