Bangkok is not a city that lacks colour and vibrancy; a quick tuk-tuk ride can expose you to a whole host of visual sensations. Yet the sea of red that confronts you, particularly in the areas around the Grand Palace, starkly contrasts the rest of the city. It is a hot Sunday afternoon and vast swathes of people in red shirts lie on the road under ramshacked tarpaulins, snoozing in the hazy heat of the day. The only sense of foreboding is the roadblock guarded by men decked in black, their faces covered by balaclavas. They are themselves flanked by riot police but even these men cannot resist a sly smile to a foreign stranger as I pass.
Protests emanate from the microphones of United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (the UDD) members. They are demanding new elections be held against what they consider to be the illegitimate government of Abhisit Vejjajiva, who originally came to power after a military coup in 2006 ousted the popular Prime Minister Thanksin Shinawatra under claims of corruption and power abuse. Yet there seems to be little reaction from the crowd. This is certainly not what one would expect from a political ‘protest’; there is no wild frenzied mob, just a quiet, dignified crowd playing a patient waiting game.
The western media has failed to see the virtue of the patient masses that have, thus far, refused to relinquish to throes of passionate violence. Instead, the media has focused on the UDD’s resorts to sacramental curses, making the streets run red with their own blood outside the Government House and residence of the Prime Minister. Such actions have been branded irresponsible, unhygienic and inevitably futile by western onlookers. They believe that no amount of peaceful blood spilt on the streets will shake a government. The only effectual political method of change would be to attempt to form a coalition government to shift the balance of power away from Vejjajiva.
However, the essential issue which the west seems to have overlooked, is that Vejjajiva was never directly elected. In the Thai elections of 2008 the pro- Thaksin People’s Power Party achieved a landslide victory but was condemned by the Supreme Court for electoral bribery and banned from politics for five years. It was only after this, and the defections of some previously pro-Thaksin supporters, that Vejjajiva was able to form a coalition government and become Prime Minister without calling fresh elections. So whilst the protest methods of the UDD may appear somewhat medieval, their argument is one that should appeal to any politically-conscious witness. It seems then, that the disdain with which the western media has viewed the protests of the UDD to effect change are somewhat callous.
Perhaps the contempt for the political methods of the UDD is the result of improper analysis of their plight through a western framework. In a secular country where religion and politics can no longer be conflated, the use of religion to invoke misfortune on a political regime will of course seem ludicrous. But one only need behold the temples in Thailand to realise that these are an intensely religious people. Indeed, the Thai authorities themselves were quick to suggest the freak rainfall, which aided their clean up operation of the protestors’ blood, as an indication of divine condemnation of the UDD. Moreover, it is no surprise that a group of peasants fighting against what they believe to be the illegitimate and corrupt monopoly of the bureaucratic and military elite, should find their only source of justice and recourse in that of the divine.
It is only western arrogance that renders the attempts of the UDD as futile. Of course the UDD are entertaining high hopes; effecting the change of any political regime is not easy. But if we all only worked when the odds were with us we would live in a terrifying world, a hopeless world no less. The UDD has a good point about the election of Vejjajiva and whatever the west thinks of their expression of that point, as far as I can see, they had sufficient conviction to pursue their hopes of new elections. One protestor claimed she had camped in the streets of Bangkok for thirty days and was determined to remain until change was achieved. The only thing which may well dent the crowd is the onset of the farming season, due to start in a few months, which will deflect some attention away from Bangkok as the peasants will have to consider their own subsistence living. Only time will reveal the course of the UDD’s plight, but until then, they should be able to cherish and express their hopes without invoking the contempt of others.
photos by Kate Hodge
