There is no point in ranting about the execrable Vongthip, there really isn’t. She is an excellent example of the kind of mindless jackanapes (definition: ORIGIN early 16th century (originally as Jack Napes): perhaps from a playful name for a tame ape, the initial n- by elision of an ape (compare with newt ), and the final -s as in surnames such as Hobbes: hence applied to a person whose behavior resembled that of an ape) that the Thai propaganda system is intended to produce.

She could no sooner have a thought outside of her pitiable conditioning than she could fly in the air.

Cool my man, this world needs its idiots, if only to serve as a horrible example to the rest of us.

Rich

Towards the end of the article there is a report of an interesting, jointly sponsored ceremony at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. I wonder was Vongthip involved? Does anyone know?

I don’t want to anyone to suggest that I would be in favor of limiting the free expression of religious belief. You know, even under emergency law, any group of like minded people is entitled to get together for a religious purposes, and this article mentions ceremonies by political parties also … Nevertheless, when the Internal Security Operations Command, the Thai Bankers’ Association and the Thai Chambers of Commerce organize their own merit making ceremony its seems fair to speculate on why they might want to do that? Any one care to offer a rationale for this expensive and obviously significant alignment of interests? Anyone see a pattern perhaps?

Thais were on their own.

Some blame Chamlong for the violence, though he was already imprisoned when it broke out. Those who gave orders to the troops were also probably influenced by reports of looting and arson in the city and so had formed a violent image of the demonstrators.

I guess it was a tough choice for all sides, if there was any choice at all, considering the pressure and the circumstances. If it was a choice, they have to live with it, I’m not so quick to judge anymore, I wasn’t there, in front of a bus ramming though police lines.

“… a Democrat candidate, former deputy minister of foreign affairs responsible for “hunting down” Thaksin as he flew all over the world in his private jet.”

Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner live again!

I have read a bit about 1992 and it sounds like it was much worse than the recent events but my sense of that tragedy is more of an impression than a measured reponse so I certainly can’t comment on who fired what at where etc. etc. Its not really on topic but if you know any good sources of information I’d be most interested. The sources that I have for 1992 are really my skimming of a couple of books. I attempted to read an academic work called The Funeral Casino a few years ago but it proved too densely packed with information to be easily digested. I also skimmed a Christopher Moore novel that used 1992 as a backdrop. Sometimes fiction seems to be a safer medium for the discussion of some subjects … I haven’t read newspapers from the time, nor have I read anything that had much historical detail on what took place. I would welcome the opportunity to do so as it would be interesting to compare the two events.

Have you read these stories from 1992 Bangkok Post?

http://2bangkok.com/09/1992headlines08.shtml

At one point they commandeered fully packed buses, with some protesters even sitting on the roofs, and charged them at soldiers who, in response, sprayed them with gun fire.

I’m afraid it wasn’t as black and white as you want it to be.

There’s more there:

http://2bangkok.com/09/1992headlines.shtml

So the opposition comment should be responded to.

Actually, I should reiterate that there is no point in opposition except as a kind of customary dissenting that dissociates what will happen next from anything that I might be accused of supporting.

Perhaps the pro-government propaganda is correct and such opposition as might truly exist is biddable. Thaksin’s offer has merely to be countered with a somewhat better option and the situation will be defused. Or at least that seems to be the view as expressed in the letter above.

Whatever …

There really is no opposition now except in the pro-forma sense. This government now has a free hand. My view is that it will fail to sway sufficient people to support its purpose and consolidate its position. That failure will lead inevitably to another cycle of unrest etc.

That’s it really, no point in criticizing the policy. If the people who have formulated it are right and reform can be conveniently bought off then I will be proved absolutely wrong in my analysis and stand convicted of undue pessimism and a defeatist mentality. As there is no significant public entity to voice opposition to the government’s policies (Bangkok by-election notwithstanding) they are being carried out in somewhat of a critical vacuum. I guess we will all have the opportunity to judge their success or failure shortly. Let’s wait and see …

I still stand by my view. But I could, and indeed I well may be, completely and utterly wrong. That won’t make the moral quagmire of Thai political calculation any more attractive to me but it may serve to show that judging the actions of people like Vongthip solely on the basis of their absence of any moral sensibility is both ill considered and unreasonable. We will all see I guess.
BTW … Now writing in Barcelona, Spain which is, as you might imagine, quite a pleasant place to be. Interestingly, Beevor’s book states that the Paris rising against the Germans in 1944 took the Barcelona insurrection of 1936 as its template. In my experience, both French and Spanish (perhaps I should specify Catalan) societies enjoy quite exceptional standards of public service and the wide availability of public resources means that private means are largely reserved for the purposes of luxuriousness. I would say that it is hard to find a higher quality of life, particularly for a working person, anywhere on the planet. Of course, I am sure Scandinavia and perhaps Germany are comparable but the combination of culture, climate and cuisine has left me in awe of what these democracies have achieved. When one considers that Franco’s Spain once mirrored Thailand in backwardness and a tendency to regress through the prison of tradition it really shows what can be achieved in a comparatively short space of time … It’s been over thirty years but the locals haven’t forgotten. All over Barcelona this summer there are large tableaus of life under the dictatorship. Not that anyone over the age of 40 needs any reminding of the stagnation of the society under the dictatorship. It’s my view that Thailand has everything except the political will to bring it rapidly into the developed nation that it should have been long ago. The forces of reaction will resist this though.

What about the letter then? The idea that Thailand will gradually improve if the same people who have taken control in the last few years are allowed to just continue in power long enough to tweak the system back to a point where politics returns to “normal” is central to this letter and a very attractive one to its prospective audience.

Her last sentence sums up the establishment’s presentation of the current reality:

“Ultimately mutually acceptable solutions would materialize as Thai society learnt how to constructively work out their differences and share the wealth of their nation more equitably.”

The tone of this statement is absolute and invites no contradiction. After all what other alternative is there really? Traditional respect for authority and for those with the power, education and the veto over democratic elections, continues to dominate the choices on offer in Thailand. There is no other choice now and the smug, self-satisfied rhetorical flourishes of the apologists for this version of corporate fascism, while they might incite me into ranting a bit, are also a fact of life for the immediate future.

Why should I bother to kick against the pricks (as a countryman of mine once put it). I suppose its a sense of outrage and disgust that inspired me. It’s quite futile though. These people are been given a free hand now to do what they feel is expedient given the nature of the situation. A mixture of carrot and stick is being promoted, and as this has long been the traditional establishment response to popular disturbances, neither the intent of these policies, nor their consequences, are unprecedented. We will hear a great deal about the carrot from people like this creature. And, assuming the attempts to censor the net continue to maintain their standard of crass incompetence we should also be able with a little digging to find plenty of information on how the stick will force those who cannot be encouraged in other ways …

It’s just so predictable what will happen over the next few years. Efforts will be focused on dampening down the opposition to a point where it appears that the desire to have control over their own destiny has faded from the minds of the dissenting population. Eventually the authoritarian element will loosen their controls over politics and society and the slide towards another cycle of Thailand’s stop start modernization process will begin. Unless Thailand wants to become a more sophisticated version of Burma, sooner or later a popular politics is going to return which will once again threaten to disrupt the interests of the privileged classes. And so long as the same insular, authoritarian and occasionally psychopathic personalities retain their hold on power there is only so far that reform and very limited commitment to a redistribution of wealth can go before it becomes a problem for the very people claiming now to be in favour of these ideas. The proposed initiatives expressed here seem to imply that very day serious reform can be delayed is worth the baht invested in spurious subsidies and incentives to the less well off …

So spending money to delay real change or reform seems to represent good value for organizations that are motivated solely by profit according to Vongthip. But given given the late reign circumstances of the moment and the deep pockets of the opposition there is little doubt that this time the cycle back to more popular disturbances and revolt will be a lot quicker than the people who are promoting expenditure to delay reform might believe. The inevitable failure of their attempts to thwart popular politics and impede progress are sickeningly predictable but what the consequences are for Thailand if politics is limited this way are not predictable at all. And when it comes to the question avoided in this letter, the wielding of the metaphorical stick to enforce social and political discipline, one wonders whether a new extremism, at the moment driven underground by the ISOC etc. might appear at a very vulnerable point in Thailand’s development. It all looks under control now but then it would do wouldn’t it.

Vongthip seems in some ways to represent the views of what are sometimes called “rightminded” people. It seems to me that while well intentioned people (who supported the PAD and later the Democrat Party led government) claimed that their efforts were to prevent the creation of a Thaksin dicatatorship they have now fallen into the trap of creating a different but equally disturbing authoritarian Thailand based on existing institutions. Whereas Thaksin’s dictatorship was always a matter of conjecture there can be few illusions now about the disturbing nature of the current dispensation exercising power in Thailand.

These people largely support the status quo in Thailand and as such can be seen as resistant to the idea of significant social or political reform. Some reform is unfortunately necessary in order for them to hold on to their privileges but this is a limited offer only of course … This is their government now. And while the consequences of this regime’s choices are as yet unknown, it’s pure hubris to assume that the so called reconciliation process is likely to succeed nor even indeed to be what it purports to be … Their government now has a relatively free hand and is keen to demonstrate its competence. We’ll see … What future has it really with characteristics like no real popular support, reactionary attitudes amongst prominent leaders including Abhisit’s potential heir Korn, money politics for the moneyed, reliance on force in places where the government’s writ cannot be enforced in any other way, shady political partners with their own potentially subversive agendas, etc. etc. etc. Even in cultural matters it continues to promote a nonsensical version of Thainess that relies on creating an arbitrary version of Thai culture that has no basis in real historical tradition …

I’m just going to stop describing what I think is a train wreck of a government in process … My inclination is to tune out of the inanity of the present and wait until it’s time to tune back in to Thailand’s next political eruption which cannot be that far off in the future.

(BD: You still call that an opposition?)

BangkokDan

You have, in the past, demonstrated that you are capable of making credible and legitimate criticisms.

But, basically every time Vongthip Newsletter is posted, I can be sure to find your comment going on a rampant orgy of personal attacks and irrelevant ranting. I might as well watch family guy if I want to be entertained by random jokes that do not stick to the plot.