Assembly of the Poor

In Northern Thailand, a meeting of members of the Assembly of the Poor - a network of farmers, anti-dam protesters, indigenous activists, students, and unions.

Thai Politics: the Yellow and the Red.

Note: This has been adapted from ‘The Voter’s Uprising’ by Junya Yimpraset, 2009.

Since 1932 Thailand has had to face 21 military coups - 9 of them successful, 18 constitutions and 27 Prime Ministers. Only one elected Prime Minister has managed to complete the full 4-year term: the now convicted and self-exiled Thaksin Shinawatra. During the Cold War years Thailand’s military juntas concentrated on re-building and promoting the role of the monarchy - to legitimise the oppression of the rural poor. For the tens of millions of poor people in Thailand, it required the May 1992 uprising - that saw 48 citizens shot dead in the streets of Bangkok - to usher in the beginnings of democracy, and to establish, in 1997, a so-called People’s Constitution.
Thaksin Shinawatra a wealthy businessman, who had moved into politics in 1994, became Thailand’s first ever elected PM to complete a 4-year term in office (2001 - 2004). With a corporate style and approach to governance Thaksin was perceived as a threat to Thailand’s established, hegemonic order. This was exacerbated by his ‘rural-poor populist strategy’ which gave him his solid majority in the electorate. In 2001 he established Thailand’s first ever universal health-care scheme - the ‘30 Baht Scheme’. He oversaw the implementation of a ‘0ne Million Baht Village Fund’, a scheme that provided every village in Thailand with a one million cash bonus to be administered at will. He also attempted to promote village productivity and assisted farmers in managing their debt burden; and introduced cheap loan programmes for low-income people to buy houses. However, Thaksin was an enthusiastic promoter of neoliberal globalisation and negotiated Free Trade Agreements without popular consultation. Moreover, his War on Drugs’ saw 2 500 people lose their lives.

In February 2005 Thaksin won a landslide victory with 62% of the vote (19 million votes). In February 2006, the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), was founded by the Bangkok media tycoon Sonthi Limthongkul. Allied with members of the Democrat Party, and dressed in yellow, PAD consisted of a wide assortment of NGOs, celebrities, intellectuals and civil servants - predominantly middle-class Bangkokians. PAD’s vision of a ‘New Politics’ included replacing most elected politicians with appointed “good people”.

A military coup was staged for September 2006 - when Thaksin was in New York, attending a meeting of the UN General Assembly. The King approved the military junta that replaced Thaksin’s government and thus also the restoration of Thailand’s customary feudal order.
Following the coup the Junta’s annulled the People’s Constitution of 1997, dissolved Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai Party (TRT), and increased the military budget by 33%. General Surayud became Thailand’s 24th Prime Minister in October 2006 and scheduled a General Election for December 2007. Of the 377 elected Members of Parliament in the TRT Party (out of 480 in the Thai Parliament), 111 of the leading MPs were banned from politics for 5 years. Those not banned stood for re-election as the People Power Party (PPP).

The election of December 2007 saw the PPP taking 49% of the vote (14 million). The Democrat Party managed 34%. The PPP set up government under Samak Suntornvej. In response, in May 2008. yellow-clad PAD demonstrators laid siege to Government House. After 4 months of siege, on August 26 they occupied Government House and attacked National Broadcasting TV and the Ministry of Finance. In response, Samak gave the Premiership to Thaksin’s brother-in-law, Somchai Wongsawat. The PAD increased its attacks, assaulting several government offices; waging street battaes with the police in Bangkok, and shutting down Bankok’s international airport.

On 2 December the Constitutional Court ordered the dissolution of the PPP and also the two other main parties of Somchai’s governing coalition. Abhisit Vejjajiva, the leader of the Democrat Party, and active PAD supporter, became Prime Minister on 15 December, 2008.
In response the new United Front for Democratic against Dictatorship (UDD) – dressed in red shirts - was formed to protest the corruption of Thailand’s democracy, and called for mass mobilizations against the unelected government. On 26 March 2009 the red shirts began to assemble outside Government House. By 8 April half a million protestors, representing a wide spectrum of grass-root civil organizations, were holding peaceful assemblies in Bangkok and about 40 of Thailand’s 77 provincial capitals. Later that month 250 000 red shirts were mobilised in the capital, the largest number of protesters ever seen on the streets of Bangkok.
The UDD organised protests against , and forced the cancellation of, the ASEAN Summit (10 - 13 April) in Pattaya. In response, on April 11, Abhisit declared a state-of-emergency in and around Bangkok, and issued orders for demonstrators to be cleared from outside Government House within 4 days, and for all UDD communication channels to be cut, especially their on-line satellite TV, the so-called Democracy Station, ‘D-station’ or DTV, that had been set-up in January (2009) to counter the PAD’s Asia Satellite TV (ASTV).

On April 12 the Army attacked with tear gas and live ammunition, the ThaiCom building in north Bangkok where several hundred demonstrators had gathered to defend the ‘D-station’ transmission. The red-shirts set-up roadblocks and attempted to prevent the military advancing on Government House. The UDD leaders were arrested and charged, while the PAD leaders that had vandalised Government House and occupied the international airport now participate in the Abhisit ‘government’. Welcome to the land of smiles.

Alter-ego # 3

Bangkok Landing

The Royal Palace in Bangkok, loved by tourists and emblematic of Thailand's atrophied experiment in democracy.

Kyanjin Gompa video-view

The Last Days of Yellow House

Walls are splitting and crumbling
And paint’s peeling through the cracks
The air’s thick with hash and bullshit
The light thin like melted wax

The rooms ascend to the penthouse
The bathroom is five floors below
The owner’s doped out in the pink room
Even he has decided to go

Kumar, the sleepy-eyed fixer
Migrates to an available place
Subsidence and time and neglect
Distorts Lord Bhairav’s face

Giulia the tattooing artist,
Maps the city with coloured thread
Danielle the Vipasana drop-out
Meditates in front her bed

Andrea the futures consultant
Spends the time before he is off
Waiting on a Laxmi-fix visa
With his laptop and charas cough

The drunk gem-cutter is Australian
Hides behind sunglasses and tan
To Taiwan with his cashed-in pension
“To buy the Chinese machine, my man”

The ghost of Carlos haunts Freak Street
Fleeced tailors still wait for their cash
Krishna woos Radha on cinnamon
Calendar bitch has hidden the stash

Simone the Acid Italian
With his ketamine, blotters, and wife
Flies over the full moon at sunset
Takes the trip that lasts his whole life

Street kids sniff glue from old milk bags
Porter shouts ‘pachaas’ in his sleep
Three women gossip by prayer wheels
Rubbish piles high the street

Durga’s devotees are now doubled
They file down the festival street
The Taleju temple is now open
The menu is full of dead meat

They’re killing ducks and chickens
They’re killing buffalo and goats
For the insatiable thirst of the goddess
They’re severing necks and throats

Sadhus pose for ice cream photos
Guns are policing the crowd
The kukri blade is lowered
The buffalo’s neck is bowed

There’s blood on the roads and pavements
There’s blood on the temple’s floor
For the insatiable thirst of the goddess
They’re going to kill some more

Balachaturdashi Festival

For one night, on the Balachaturdashi festival, they come to honour the dead with fire. At the Pashupatinath temple near Kathmandu, Nepali's from across the country come to pay their respects to their deceased family members. From dusk to dawn they tend fires and butter lamps, keeping the flames alive in rememberance of the dead. As I approached the temple complex - dedicated to Shiva, the god of destructuion and reproduction - funeral pyres cast glowing orange reflections in the Bagmati river. Hundreds of yellow firelights flickered between the temples, as family groups huddled around the commemorative flames. The place seethed with people and I was caught up in a crowd entering the temple compound from the river. Inside, the place was full of people keeping their fire vigils through the night. Amidst the firelight, music was played, bhajans (religious songs) were sung, incense was burned, and the intermittant clang of the temple bells sounded across the crowd. At dawn, devotees take satbeej (seven different seeds of rice, barley, sesame, wheat, gram, maize and millet) and scatter it on the earth in the belief that departed souls attain salvation from the cycle of life and death.