THAILAND: DIRELAND: LETTER FROM A VELVET COUP DIRELAND POLITICS AND MEDIA----ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY FROM VETERAN POLITICAL JOURNALIST DOUG IRELAND My Bio
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from the U.K., was a colleague of mine on the late, lamented Soho Weekly News (the avant-garde paper for which he covered New York's counter-cultural scene), and has been dividing his time between Thailand and New York for the last few years. For background to this week's Thai coup, see his April 3 report from Bangkok for DIRELAND, "People Power, Thai Style," about the mass movement in opposition to Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Coup de Ville -- by Alan Platt Bangkok, Thailand -- Talk about a velvet revolution. The overnight coup d'etat which ousted the appalling Thaksin Shinawatra (right) and replaced him with a military and police alliance, was orchestrated with such seamless panache, that it recalls Thai Airways famous slogan, "Smooth As Silk". And as I now look out across the tranquil city of Bangkok the day after the-day-after, basking under glorious Wedgwood blue skies as rainy season starts to slide into South East Asia's legendarily balmy winter, I'm reminded of the old farmer in Maine who, upon being informed that the Nazis had marched into Poland, looked up at the sky and said, "Well, they've got a lovely day for it." Oh, one hates to sound frivolous at such a time, of course, but the very fact that one can is testament to the sophistication with which the country has so painlessly purged itself of the heinous Thaksin, or "Toxin" as he's known around here. I work here in Central Bangkok and so have not had the leisure to bike around on my little Honda - quintessential Asian accessory - to take in the sights. I have seen little more of the coup than any other working stiff has, watching CNN anywhere in the world, and therefore feel a bit of a fraud tearing off a dispatch, so to speak, being Direland's 'Man on the ground." There is no more a war-zone vibe here than there might be at an international cricket match. (Photo right: Thai soldiers guard a barricade decorated with flowers by supporters of the military coup. Photo by Ed Wray for AP) I have seen no tanks, no troop trucks, barely any agent of force whatever. The Skytrain slides serenely by, twenty seven floors below my office, swooshing past the tranquil Wat Pathumwanaram (left), a lovely gold-gabled temple where little bells tinkle occasionally to indicate prayers being said, presumably for the continued wisdom of the beloved, saxophone-playing King Bhumibol (right), whose swift endorsement of the coup and its leaders has put the icing on the cake and quelled any possible misgiving or regional uprising. This is the King's Jubilee year - 60 years on the throne and next year will be his 80th birthday. In a country that loves a celebration as much as this one does, such a double whammy is almost too good to be true. The year-long bash planned for His Majesty's birthday will come on the heels of the current year-long wing-ding that's been going on since January to celebrate the Jubilee. Everything here has been plastered in the King's color, yellow, since the beginning of the year, yellow ribbons everywhere, yellow flags on every available flagpole, lamp-post and gate-post, and yellow shirts worn to work by everyone every Monday. This last detail brings up an interesting bit of Thai trivia. The King's color is yellow not because it's the color of royalty, but because it's the color of Monday. He was born on a Monday. Had he been born on a Saturday, like me, the country would be festooned in purple. The King's nod is a massive relief to the population, containing as it does a tacit royal good-riddance to Thaksin, a man whose swaggering style he more than once publicly rebuked as being un-Buddhist and, well, just plain vulgar. The king is a very discreet man, retiring and modest in the extreme. So for him to
publicly admonish his Prime Minister for constantly congratulating himself on his 'successes' required great provocation, and Thaksin certainly provided it. As Thaksin's power grew, thanks to massive graft and strong-arm skullduggery, all of which is now coming to light, the PM strode about the country handing out money and favor like a grandee, trumpeting his shiny new CEO management style as the way of the future, a beacon for the entire region and he the star turn of ASEAN and a template for any future leader of the New Asia. There was a time here a few years ago, honeymoon still in full swing after his landslide election victory, that even the skeptical Bangkok intelligentsia were proud to be led by such a charismatic firecracker. The wise old King it was, however, who first pricked the bastard's balloon. He scolded him for his big-headedness, reminding him that he served the people, not led them, and that he represented them only for so long as it pleased them to let him do so. He told Thaksin that when he himself was a boy, his mother always cut him down to size when he got too big for his boots, and that he had learned his lesson well, a cocky Prince maturing into a modest King. The suggestion was that Thaksin had not been quite so well brought-up and should not get too high on his own bad self. Later, as the wheels began to fall off the Thaksin bandwagon and the endless litany of misdeed and malfeasance began to surface like body after dead body, when the press was calling for his blood and the People's Alliance for Democracy was holding almost nightly mass rallies thousands of ordinary Bangkok folks thronging the streets all dressed in yellow, the PAD's adopted color - and the Supreme Court was pressing His Majesty to throw the bum out by invoking a certain clause in the thereby constitution, assuming temporary royal power, it was the King again who, at just the right moment, and in just the right tone, defused the bomb. In doing so, he averted the civil war of which there was, at the time, a sporting chance. In what is brilliantly described as The Royal Whisper, he gently chided the Supremes to remember who they were. With exquisite irony hesuggested that maybe it was they who should resign, not Thaksin, and that it was their job, not the King's, to run the country. In asuperbly subtle civics lesson, and speaking, as it were, over the shoulders of the Supreme Court to address the people directly, he reminded the Thais that their most precious gift, after their Buddhist faith, was their democracy, and that the most powerful echelon within that democracy was the legislature, the Supreme Court itself, and that if it had fallen to him, their constitutional monarch, to point this out to them, well there was a certain poetry in that, was there not? And that was all it took. In a matter of hours, the planets realigned and the streets emptied. The newly emboldened Supreme Court moved on all fronts. They declared the flash election, which Thaksin had recently called to wangle himself a new and bogus mandate, illegal and void. The Electoral Commission, a supposedly disinterested body that Thaksin had, like everything else, simply bought, and which had run the election in a way that would have made Boss Tweed proud, were not only dismissed, they were jailed. A series of official investigations was launched into every aspect of Thaksin's criminal rampage through Thai politics and commerce. The star among these probes was the one into his sale of Shin Corporation, the source of his immense wealth, the principal component of which is the communications satellite network which acts as the de facto guardian of these Wedgwood blue Thai skies. He had the nerve to sell this
ultra-sensitive national asset to the Darth Vader of Asian finance, the vast and secretive Temasek Corp of Singapore, after first having slipped a whole slew of questionable measures into law which collectively had ballooned the value of Shin Corp astronomically and, worse, ensured that Thaksin would owe zero tax on the umpteen billion dollars profit he subsequently realized on the sale. This nifty bit of venality was the source of his other droll monicker, "Tax Sin". That was when even the sweet-natured Thais began to heckle him in public and pelt him with food, forming themselves into the PAD and taking to the streets in a singing, chanting carpet of bright yellow. It's been downhill for him ever since. His goose has been cooked for a long time now on all fronts as bodies continue to surface, and his arrogant trip to New York to address the UN on behalf of a people he no longer represents, not even legally, let alone morally, is a measure of what little of a damn he gives for Thai opinion or any semblance ofethical decency. And ironically, poetically, that was all the opportunity the boys in uniform needed. They surrounded the Royal Palace with tanks, theirguns pointed symbolically outwards in protection, not threat, a flash of semiotic genius lost on nobody, thus pledging their loyalty to the constitutional monarch, revered champion of the democracy they have sworn to restore a.s.a.p., in a matter of a couple of weeks, they say. We'll see. They also surrounded the main TV stations and cut broadcasts in the middle of that first night, only to restore them pronto the next day. Papers all continued to publish. Every edition on the first morning after that carried the headline "Coup D'Etat" or something similar, was sold out by mid-morning, everyone relishing a souvenir. I have my own copy. There are military vehicles puttering around town. There are bored platoons strolling around casually, here and there, usually out of step. Cute young soldiers walk around the Erewan shrine (left) next door to my office building, where the statue of Brahma is covered in marigolds and the soldiers' assault rifles are all wrapped in yellow ribbons. Stationed around the city are the tanks, but with no belligerence atall, their guns hung with fetching yellow streamers and the young soldiers posing, all smiles, with anyone who wants to take a snap on their mobile phone, in other words, with everyone and his wife and kids. (Photo right, Youngsters play in front of a tank on Ratchadamnoen Avenue in Bangkok yesterday.) One tries not to be blas. One paints a picture of toy soldiers and a national love-in of reconciliation, perhaps, but that's the mood here. It's a bit Woodstock right now, to be perfectly honest. Bomber jet planes Riding shotgun in the skies Turning into butterflies Above our nation Sorry, Joni Mitchell. Couldn't resist the quote. Nobody wants a coup, of course, if only because it makes this well educated, aggressively modern and fairly functional country sound like some sort of Asian banana republic. But in a way, it's provided the perfect outcome. Thaksin, his ex...