The Suvarnabhumi siege and the Songkran rampage overshadow the images of the movements of red and yellow. But as politics-as-usual returns, it’s worth reflecting on what these movements represent.
The first roots of the yellow movement go back to 2005. Farmers, teachers, state enterprise workers, activists against free trade agreements, human rights defenders, and environmentalist groups came out to oppose Thaksin. This was a revival of the energetic civil society activism of the 1990s that had been crushed in the early years of the Thaksin government.
The second element was Sondhi Limthongkul and his urban middle class audience. In the pre-crisis boom, Sondhi’s Manager newspapers had best captured the confidence and aspirations of a new, modern middle class that saw themselves as the leaders of the future. Sondhi’s split from Thaksin in 2005 may have resulted from personal conflict, but also reflected a broader political shift. Many middle class people were deserting Thaksin because of his corruption, his growing authoritarianism, and his shift towards populism. They looked on both Thailand’s large remaining rural population and its corrupt, corner-cutting businessmen as a drag on the country’s conversion to first-world style modernity. After being thrown off television, Sondhi drew an audience to his Lumpini rallies and ASTV broadcasts by thundering against corruption and promising to lead a middle class crusade to clean up politics. He also made common cause with the civil society activists by backing their causes and inviting them onto his stage.
Still, the movement almost died in January 2006. Sondhi had already called a “farewell” rally when the Shin Corp sale was announced. Disgust at the trickery behind the sale deepened opposition to Thaksin across the middle class, but especially among the ranks of small businesspeople, officials, professionals, and white-collar workers who see themselves as respectable, honest, tax-paying citizens. Ten years earlier they had cheered Chamlong Srimuang’s drive to clean up Bangkok politics and national politics. Now Chamlong re-emerged to join the anti-Thaksin alliance.
The People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) was formed on 9 February 2006. The fifteen founder members included Sondhi along with leaders of students, teachers, workers, NGO activists, other protest groups, and various artists. Chamlong joined a few days later.
The civil society activists recruited support through the dense web of personal networks woven over the protest campaigns of past years. Chamlong brought along his “Dhamma Army” committed to this-worldly Buddhist activism, and his ranks of old, mainly lower middle class admirers. Through ASTV, Sondhi broke the state’s stifling grip on broadcast media, and created a new genre of political television that was fascinating simply because it was so novel.
Sondhi swathed the movement in yellow, portrayed Thaksin as a threat to the monarchy, and called for royal intervention to remove him. This provoked a crisis behind the PAD stage. Several civil society activists objected to this strategy. Some peeled away, while others remained but with less influence over the movement. PAD started a debate on why Thai politics was dominated by a minority of not-so-honest businessmen, and how to move beyond this system so Thailand could progress.
The red movement has two main streams: hardcore Thaksin enthusiasts, and a broader audience that supports democracy and opposes military intervention in politics.
Thaksin had won support in the northeast and upper north among people who felt benefited and empowered as never before. After the coup, they protested through community radio, and resisted military intimidation. In parallel, anti-coup protests in the capital attracted a few thousand activists, mainly veterans of democracy campaigns in 1973-6 and 1992.
In February 2007, Thaksin loyalists tried to set up a cable TV network to rival ASTV but were blocked. Following Sondhi’s example, they instead took the campaign into street rallies. In June, they announced a “united front”, combining the democracy activists and the Thaksin loyalists under one umbrella. Over the following months, they campaigned for rejection of the junta’s constitution. After the 2007 election, the movement became dormant but revived in May 2008 to counter the PAD rallies.
As governments were toppled, parties banned, ministers removed, and more coups threatened, the movement attracted more support among people who felt democracy was under threat, including many who had earlier supported PAD. When the movement began mass rallies in October 2008, the audience included quotas bussed down by pro-Thaksin ex-MPs from the north or northeast, along with a growing number of walk-ins from the capital. In his early phone-ins, Thaksin talked mainly about himself, but he soon switched his theme to reflect the changing weighting in the audience. He began to speak about “full democracy” and rail against its enemies. In January, the movement founded Dstation on the model of ASTV. In March it launched a mass protest in Bangkok and provincial centres.
The appearance of these two movements is the most dramatic change in Thai politics in three decades. At the core of both is a revival of the civil society activism of the 1990s. The big innovation of these movements has been to break the state’s grip on electronic media and so gain the means to recruit mass support through political broadcasting. Of course, in the background there is Thaksin’s money and ambition on one side, military power and meddling on the other. But those should not be allowed to obscure what these movements represent. Thai politics is often criticized for being dominated by small self-interested cliques of businessmen and generals. Both these movements want to move beyond. The two represent very different social forces, and very different ideas about the future. They have the potential to transform Thai politics were they fighting inside the system rather than on the street.
Their main enemy is not each other, but the old, old politics desperate to resist this challenge. Consider the past week. An ambitious general. An unsavoury, opportunistic political clique. An official mob recruited by the interior ministry. A billionaire concession-hunter. Coup rumours. Controls on media. Fear-mongering. Intrigue. The desperate gray politics of survival.