After eight weeks of confrontation during which the world’s attention was focused on Thailand, the streets Bangkok have been cleared of Red Shirt protestors with a terrible loss of lives – about 80 people died in the violence.
While main news reports largely framed the Red Shirt demonstrators as mainly trying to restore the deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, people close to grassroots movements say that interpretation is superficial and false.
Junya Yimprasert, leader of Thai Labour Campaign during a recent visit to Finland said the political violence that convulsed the country had as it’s a core a struggle for democracy.
And what distinguished it from previous democratic struggles is that this time it was initiated by the true working class, contrary to the widespread perception that it was mainly the supporters of the deposed prime minister Thaksin Sinawatra.
“The government has labeled the demonstrators as terrorists and the demonstrations as a struggle for one bad prime minister against the current one, which is not true”, she said.
“After 78 years of struggle of democracy the country has never had a complete democracy or what they call a people’s democracy until now”, said Yimprasert – in reference to 1932 when the country ended the rule of absolute monarchy and became a constitutional monarchy. Free democratic elections were held the following year.
Yimprasert also hinted that after clearing the Red Shirts from the streets of Bangkok, the government is likely to turn and target trade union members with political persecution. Therefore part of her mission in Finland is to galvanize support from international trade union movement to pay close attention to the political situation of the country and intervene on behalf of their Thai counterparts.
“There is now talk of political victimization of labour activists unions, academics, journalists, regional leaders and politicians who are going to be detained and so there is a need to mount an international campaign to draw attention of the international community towards the situation in Thailand”, she said.
A real working class [1] struggle
Yimprasert also revealed the internal political dynamics that was behind the government’s show of force against the Red Shirt demonstrators.
The current government of prime minister Abhisit Vejajeva, she said, is very loyalist and has closely tied to the military. However, the current monarch king Bhumibol Adulyadejis who is 84 years old is seriously ill and has been in hospital for over a year. The country’s elite, however, would like to have a loyalist government in place in order to usher in a smooth transition in the event of his death.
The fear is that if the current government is ousted, a Thaksin or Thaksin-backed government would turn the monarchy into a formal head of state without any actual political influence such as in Britain or Sweden. And that explains why the military was involved in the overthrow of the Thaksin government in 2006 in the first place.
The Thai king is a very revered figure all over the country and some people wear red dress on Mondays to signify the day he was born.
According to Yimprasert, the recent street clashes have been very critical because it is the struggle of a real working class. The history of the struggle for democracy has always began with the intellectuals which was then transmitted to students and to the middle class. But this time it began with a real working class struggle. The majority of the Thai people are working class, up to 80 per cent of the population. [2]
There is widespread concern that Thailand may be entering a real battle for political reform. Since the current government is monarchist and backed by the military, many people would probably choose to go underground and so the violence might escalate with anarchist burnings, signs of which are already beginning to show in the provinces, Yimprasert said.
The lack of real participatory democracy in Thailand is illustrated by the fact that the military is constantly breathing down on the necks of civilian governments. In the past 78 years the country has had about 20 military coups.
During the Thaksin government the military budget was slashed but the current government of Abhisit Vejajeva has scaled up military spending from 86 billion bahts to 200 billion bahts.
Even though Yimprasert admitted that mobilization effort of the Red shirt demonstrations was initiated by core supporters of the deposed prime minister, millions of others who joined from the provinces, when interviewed said they had nothing to do with Thaksin and that they joined of their own accord.
The core demand of demonstrators was a call for election and that they were prepared to accept any government which won a majority of the votes and not merely calling for a reinstatement of Thaksin.
“We are calling for ballots and why are you meeting us with bullets”, the demonstrators wondered.
Linus Atarah