In all the stage-managed circus show of Thaksin’s birthday celebrations in Nonthaburi, the most interesting props were not the monks bowls or the wintergreen vine or even the adept’s knife, but the cardboard cut-outs—those propped-up images like the frozen air-hostesses ushering you to the airline lounge. The rituals on that day had little to do with religion or tradition, but were the kind of party tricks made up by monks and charlatans in recent years. They do not appear in the manuals of saiyasat (supernaturalism) which have a long tradition. Real saiyasat is complex and difficult, using rare substances and complex formulas, and requiring long training and exceptional capacity for mental control. The Nonthaburi ceremonies were conjuring tricks designed for front-page photos and TV news. A proper adept’s knife is made from many rare metals in an arcane and complex process. The knife used to cut strip the vines from the Thaksin cut-out looked like the ones on sale in the corner-shop.
But the cut-out itself was just right. For many, it was an anti-climax. The advance media had promised a 3D speaking hologram of Thaksin straight out of Star Wars. The frozen tacky cut-out of the leader might have seemed like the ultimate disappointment. But it was absolutely appropriate. Thaksin is now a two-dimensional being. This is not said in mockery. Nor is it a reason for his enemies to rejoice. 2D can be dangerous.
Ever since he was removed by coup almost three years ago, Thaksin has been shrinking towards this 2D form. While he was still present in the flesh, still had the third dimension, and was still animated, he was a highly complex mixture of a desperately greedy businessman and a uniquely talented politicians. His commercial interests and his political ambitions were hopelessly confused. Because he lacked any form of principle, social or ethical, he had no stability or constancy, but kept changing before our very eyes like the flickering images in a music video. In a handful of years, he could metamorphose from nationalist saviour of the Thai economy, to authoritarian proto-populist, and then to a revolutionary enemy of privilege and dictatorship. Along the way, he espoused initiatives and visions with no sense of theme or consistency. The Elite card and the At Samat experiment. Thundering against the IMF while seeking FTAs with any country that would cooperate. Blabbing about his commitment to education while destroying the process of education reform. Fighting poverty without any policy on agriculture. He was not only a fully three-dimensional being, but each dimension was fragmented into splintered planes, reflecting light from all directions like a disco prop.
Since the coup, he has been physically removed from the scene except for the short sojourn between his tarmac-kissing return and his baggage-laden escape. During that sojourn, he kept mostly out-of-sight, obscured behind the security detail. From exile, he was reborn in the two dimensions of the digital flat video screen. However large these screens may be, they expand only in two dimensions. A third dimension never appears. But still the images on the video-links could move and could speak. In the Nonthaburi cut-outs he was reduced even further, not only two-dimensional but also mute and devoid of animation, frozen with a single expression, a single hand gesture, and a single suit of clothes.
The meaning of Thaksin has shrunk in the same way. It has lost its complexity, inconsistency, and instability. He has become simpler, more static, more obvious—for both his enemies and his fans.
For his enemies, he is simply evil incarnate, the source of all problems. Whatever he does is wrong. Whatever his supporters do is wrong. For some, he is also the excuse which legitimizes their own lack of principle and inconsistency, the ultimate cover story.
For his supporters, he is equally simplified. He is the agent who will solve their problem, whatever that problem is. He will reignite the economy for the businessman, bring back the tourists for the taxi-driver, reduce the price of eggs for the housewife, restore the price of paddy for the farmer, get the bureaucrats off their back for everybody, whatever. Most importantly, he has become the symbol of opposition to oligarchic politics—the combination of military strongmen, political wheeler-dealers, shady businessmen, and various “third hands” which has re-emerged so effortlessly in recent months. In truth this combination represents normality in Thai politics, and Thaksin was very much part of that normality for all but a final few weeks of his long political career. But that doesn’t matter. In the process of compression from three dimensions to two, a lot gets squeezed out and thrown away. This is not about truth or history.
There is nothing new about Thaksin’s conversion into this new form, nor its importance. Exiles, émigrés and martyrs play a big role in the politics of many countries precisely because they can be imagined as something simpler, more apposite, and more powerful than anyone can be in mobile, upclose, 3D reality. Most successful religions have a few martyrs in their crucial early history. Especially in the great age of revolutions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, history was strewn with such exiles and martyrs.
Even if Thaksin is reduced further from two dimensions to one dimension or zero dimensions, his role in future politics seems assured. He now represents the unsatisfied demand for fair treatment, for a reasonable deal from the society, for some shift in the hugely skewed distribution of wealth and power, for a chance of justice. In his fully animated 3D form, Thaksin was far too complex, inconsistent, self-interested, flaky, and blatantly self-contradictory to represent something so simple and powerful. But squashed flat into a cut-out, a badge, a mask, a T-shirt graphic, a greetings card, he is becoming much more powerful.