0		Thaksin, Speech, and, UDD, Rally, More, Commentary

Catching on a few posts in draft, here is one on the rally last week.

Strait Times:

The merchandise and the slew of information materials, as well as the packaging – even the chairs outside the stadium proper were red – clearly showed the pro-government, pro-Thaksin Shinawatra camp had after months of fumbling, finally had its act together.

At 6pm when the national anthem played, the stadium reverberated with the sound of 70,000 voices.

At the other end of town the few thousand yellow-shirted PAD supporters still occupying Government House were doing exactly the same thing. But the Rajamangala event has changed the complexion of the game.

It was a calibrated response to the yellow-shirted, royalist People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) which still occupies Government House demanding that the ruling People Power Party (PPP) mentored by Thaksin – a wanted fugitive from the law in Thailand – resign to pave the way for sweeping political reform.

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In a measured address, he said he had been invited to invest in many countries – but was not welcome in his homeland. He mentioned the economic damage Thailand is enduring because of the long political conflict coupled with the growing global recession.

He was ''on message'' as political handlers would say. The crowd listened with rapt attention. And erupted in cheers when he ended.

The show of strength – the PAD has been hard put to muster more than 10,000 people on the streets, much below their halcyon days of early 2006 when Thaksin was in power – meant the battle has been joined.

The taxi driver who took me back home to write up my report, was wearing a red T-shirt and was almost giggling with delight on the long drive from Ramkhamhaeng to Sukhumvit. Like many taxi drivers in Bangkok, he was from Isan – Thaksin's stronghold. As he dropped me off, he announced that he was going right back to the stadium.

The mood at the event – under the banner of the pro-government Truth Today TV station (which if truth be told is considered boring government propaganda by many viewers) the mood was festive but importantly, also orderly.

There was no bad-mouthing or rabble-rousing, and the feared violence did not occur. Most of the crowd was pro-Thaksin, but several I spoke to seemed to resent being branded pro-Thaksin and said they were in favour instead of one person, one vote democracy – and definitely against the idea of military intervention. [BP: I went to observe one UDD rally with a journalist and a couple of people we spoke to said the same thing]
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Earlier on Saturday as I arrived at the stadium around 5pm, I spotted former foreign minister Noppadon Pattama in from the cold. Noppadon – forced to resign earlier this year when a court found he had violated procedure in agreeing that Cambodia could apply for World Heritage status for the disputed Preah Vihear temple – was at a stall busily signing copies of a freshly minted autobiography.

In another stall former cabinet minister Jakrapop Penkair was signing red T-shirts with the word ''Dictator'' on them crossed out in black. The man has a charge of lese majeste – insulting the monarchy – hanging over him, but was grinning from ear to ear as the crowds flooded in.

''Huge show of strength'' the pro-PAD daily The Nation said in its story under the banner headline ''Thaksin: Reconcile'' with the report focusing on his speech.

The front page was dominated by a fish-eye picture of the full stadium taken around 6pm, with the bleachers still empty.

The Bangkok Post had a similar picture but taken later, with all the seats full. The paper led with the headline ''Only royal kindness can get me home'' – a line from Thaksin's speech, interpreted as a plea for clemency from the King.

Organisers of the Nov. 1 rally, including the United Front of Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), are excitedly talking of attracting close to 60,000 supporters for the event. [BP: They actually get more than that]

Expectations for the success of the event are being shaped by the successful rally organised by the UDD and its media partner, a popular television programme called ‘Truth Today’, held on Oct. 11 at an indoor stadium north of the Thai capital. Some 10,000 people, dressed in red shirts, packed the stadium to hear speakers talk about the threats to democracy and elected governments.

The message offered a lifeline to the beleaguered six-party coalition that governs Thailand and whose functioning has been crippled by anti-government protests since May.

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‘’The red-shirt rallies are the reaction to what has happened in the country, that an elected government has not been able to function,’’ says Jakrapob Penkair, a former minister in the current government and a speaker at these events. ‘’We see this rally as a form of political education to make people aware about what is wrong with a coup.’’

‘’We hope that Saturday’s rally will serve to awaken more people... that they cannot sit idle if there is another coup,’’ he added during an IPS interview. ‘’The success or failure of that rally will point to where Thailand is moving as a democracy.’’

Such rallies are breaking new ground in this country’s nascent democratic culture. Never before have the public openly demonstrated in rallies ahead of possible military moves to turf out an elected government. Nor have there been large rallies soon after a putsch to openly challenge the new junta in power.

In September 2006, the last coup, troops and tanks were greeted with flowers and cheers from adoring supporters of the army in Bangkok. That takeover, led by Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratglin, was Thailand's 18th coup since the overthrow of monarchy.

The country has come under military rule several times between 1947 and 1991, but power generally changed hands without any real violence taking place and it would take months for public responses to emerge.

‘’I don’t think we have seen something like this before of mass rallies to warn the military against launching a coup,’’ says Chris Baker, a British academic who has authored many books on Thai politics and economics. ‘’The only voices we heard before were limited to human rights groups or a few NGOs [non-governmental organisations]. And that would often happen after the event.’’

What it reveals is ‘’a new commitment to electoral democracy. People are finding a need for more expression, to speak out, because there is a greater understanding now about what the vote means,’’ he told IPS. ‘’This is the result of the enormous expansion of electoral democracy in the country over the past decade, where the political system has been decentralised at the local levels.’’

Yet at the same time, Saturday’s rally, being held under the theme ‘No Coup’, will inevitably sharpen the political divide in Thailand if it succeeds in drawing the expected thousands from Bangkok and from areas in the country’s poverty belt, in the north-east. This division has taken on a rural versus urban divide since the 2006 coup, which forced from power the then elected government of prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
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But such verdicts have not stopped the PAD from targeting the current government, led by the People’s Power Party (PPP), which is closely affiliated to Thaksin. Yet this hostility is proving to be counterproductive, with many voters beginning to identify the PPP as a more representative symbol of democracy than the PAD or the military.