• by Marwaan Macan-Markar (khon kaen, thailand)
• Monday, September 14, 2009
• Inter Press Service

A year after Thailand’s last coup d’état, in September 2006, a village that straddles the northern boarder of this provincial city took on a new name. It began to call itself Baan Samaki Phattana, which translates to Unity Development Village.

'The idea came from our village headman,' says Sawaen Seenakhanath, who earns a living scavenging through the streets of this north-eastern city when he is not herding cattle in the nearby flat, green fields. 'He wanted to have unity because there were divisions in our community after the coup.'

But the village headman’s hope still remains elusive, admits Sawaen, a 60-year-old resident of the village, which is home to over 100 families. 'We are more divided about politics now compared to three years ago. Sometimes it (the division) is even in one home, between the husband and wife.'

The political faultline that runs through Sawaen’s village — where people earn a living farming the rice fields that surround Khon Kaen or working in government offices and commercial establishments — surfaces in other parts of this city and its rural fringes. It pits those who are strong supporters of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was turfed out of power by the military three years ago, against the anti-Thaksin crowd.

And like the rest of Thailand’s colour-coded politics that has emerged since the 2006 coup, Khon Kaen, too, mirrors the national trend. Those who continue to back Thaksin identify with the views of the pro-Thaksin protest movement, the United Front of Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), which stands out for the colour of the shirts its supporters wear — deep red. His opponents, spearheaded by the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), the protest movement that, despite its name, backed the coup and military intervention in politics, has its own distinct colour of identity — yellow shirts.

'There are more red-shirt supporters in the villages, among the farming communities. The city is divided; it has yellow-shirt followers,' says Bamrung Boonpanya, senior advisor to the Non-Governmental Organisation Coordinating Committee for Development in the North-east (NGOCord), a grassroots lobby. 'Both groups are very passionate about their views.'

'Three years after the coup, one thing is clear: people are more aware about political issues and their rights than before,' Banrung explained during an interview with IPS. 'They are getting their information from many sources, and people are expressing their opinions more openly. Go to a coffee shop and you will hear it.'

The political discussions in the villages 'is a sign of what has happened here since the coup,' says Khon Kaen resident Paiboon Phuanphan. 'Earlier, people never thought that much about politics. They felt it did not matter in their lives. But Mr. Thaksin changed that for them.'

'I have learnt a lot from these discussions on politics and social issues,' 53-year-old Paiboon, who works as a security guard, told IPS. 'People are more conscious now about the kind of government that is good for them; about what is right and wrong.'

The deep support that the ousted premier Thaksin continues to enjoy in this heartland of Thailand’s rural north-eastern region has to do with the pro-poor policies he implemented during his five-and-a-half years in power, say villages that make a living as rice farmers.

Thaksin, who currently lives in exile to avoid arrest on corruption charges, led a government that was elected with unprecedented majorities in the 2001 and 2005 elections. They were victories shaped by the backing he got from the country’s largest constituency — the rural poor in places like Khon Kaen — who gained from a raft of welfare measures, such as universal health care, easy credit to boost grassroots economies and a debt moratorium for farmers.

The Thai military, however, had different ideas when the troops and tanks took over the streets of Bangkok on the evening of Sept. 19, 2006, marking this country’s 18th putsch since becoming a constitutional monarchy in 1932. They accused Thaksin, who had become an increasingly authoritarian figure by then, as one who threatened this kingdom’s unity.

Among the reasons the junta gave to justify its actions were allegations that the Thaksin administration had spawned 'conflict, partisanship and disunity on a scale unknown in the history of the Thai nation.' The ousted premier, who was at the United Nations headquarters in New York at the time, was also accused of presiding over 'widespread corruption and malfeasance in government administration.'

The military’s intrusion in politics was paved by the street protests in Bangkok led by the PAD. The yellow-shirt crowds gathered in the tens of thousands through the first half of 2006, angered by charges linking the Thaksin administration with corruption, nepotism and abuse of power.

But the military intervention that the PAD sought and achieved have done little in the past three years to see Thaksin out of the political picture and the country more united. Both the yellow-shirt wearing PAD and the red-shirted UDD have taken to the streets since the junta handed over power in early 2008 to an elected administration.

The political passions have exposed how far from reality the military is when it promised to unite this South-east Asian nation through a coup. The PAD, which draws it support from the urban middle class, the aristocracy, the entrenched elite and pro-royalists, have stuck to their guns, stopping at nothing — even taking over Bangkok’s largest international airport late last year — in their anti-Thaksin tirades.

The UDD, which has strong support among the urban and rural poor, have refused to cave in to the political moves plotted by the military and the conservative political establishment to keep pro-Thaksin political parties from gaining power.

'The political divisions that we see today are deep yet different from the way the last time Thailand was politically divided, in the 1970s,' says Thanet Aphornsuvan, a historian at Bangkok’s Thammasat University. 'Then it was an ideological divison, shaped by the Cold War. This time it is about the nature of the government the people want and how to get it.'

The red-shirt movement has also asserted a view that is reshaping Thai politics since the 2006 coup, says Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. 'They have become stakeholders in the political system, which was not the case before, since politics was dominated by the Bangkok elite.'

'The red-shirts are the newly enfranchised and are demanding their space in the system and the policies they want,' he added in an interview. 'This stakeholdership is a lasting legacy of Thaksin.'

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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