A Coup For the Rich - Thailand’s political Crisis, 2007
A Coup For the Rich
Thailand’s political Crisis
Workers Democracy Publishers
P.O.Box 2049, Chulalongkorn, Bangkok 10332, Thailand.
Giles Ji Ungpakorn
Faculty of Political Science,
Chulalongkorn University
Dear Reader, if you are expecting a mainstream analysis of Thai politics and society in this book, you need read no further. Close the book and toss it away. But if you want an alternative explanation of events then read on....
Contrary to some views, Thai politics is not a mystery, unfathomable to the international mind. It only requires the right lenses in ones glasses in order to see the various patterns common to politics all over the world.
If you believe in “elite theory”, you will see all developments in Thai history and politics as being determined by great leaders and great minds. Such a view sees a slow linear progression of Thai society with little fundamental change. You are encouraged to believe that Thai or Asian societies are uniquely oriental and mysterious. You will support the idea that Democracy is a Western concept, unsuited to Thai society. You will believe that Thais worship Kings and dictators and all political events are due to the manipulation by Kings, Generals, Bosses or rich Politicians. The poor, the workers and peasants, rarely receive a mention, but if they do, it is only to blame them for their “stupidity”, weakness and their backwardness, which only goes to prove that they should never have any rights. But you cannot clap without using two hands. A one handed clap against thin air is nothing. Equally, an analysis that does not consider the relationship between the rulers and the ruled in a dialectical fashion is worthless.
When Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto that the history of humanity is the history of class struggle, they never implied that such a struggle would be pure and undistorted. It is impossible to understand Thai society and politics without a class struggle perspective. The 1997 economic crisis cannot be explained without looking at the competition to exploit labour, the fight for increased wages and the over-production in capitalism. The reform movement that led to the 1997 Constitution was led from below. It started as a struggle by the oppressed against the military dictatorship of 1991. It ended up being hijacked by right-wing liberals and money politicians. The Populism of Thai Rak Thai can only be explained by the power of the oppressed and their potential to revolt in times of crisis. But Thai Rak Thai Populism is a terrible distortion of class struggle because it is a mechanism to buy social peace by a capitalist party. The coup of 2006 can only be understood as a “Coup for the Rich” against the interests of the poor. Both Populism and the coup were only possible because of the weakness in politics of the Thai Peoples Movement. This weakness has historical roots in the defeat of a previous cycle of class struggle in the 1970s. Finally, the violence in the South can only be explained by looking at the repression of the Thai State against the Malay Muslim population and how that population is fighting back.
This book attempts a dangerous task. It attempts to analyse and sharply criticise contemporary Thai politics in a time of serious crisis. It deals with the Taksin crisis, the coup, the various sections of the elite, the Peoples Movement and the violence in the South. Many
events are unfolding as I write. The potential to make incorrect predictions is high. I live in a dictatorship where open discussion is not encouraged. Yet the climate of censorship and lack of critical debate about current Thai events is precisely why I am forced to publish this book now. Hopefully it will stimulate further debate and discussion which will lead to an even better analysis of events.
You may find that the spelling of many Thai names in this book differs from news reports and other mainstream documents. This is intentional. It is design to help the reader pronounce Thai names correctly.
Click on the link to read the whole book :
http://www.isj.org.uk/docs/CFRbook.pdf