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Yellow Shirt Royalist Froth at the Mouth and Fume at Taksin
Giles Ji Ungpakorn

Quite frankly, my feelings after reading Taksin’s interview with The Times ......
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6909258.ece
was that he was prostrating himself unnecessarily in front of the Thai royal family and especially the nasty Crown Prince, whom Taksin sees as a shining light for the future. But Taksin is and always has been a royalist, so that was in keeping with his position. As one who wishes to see a republic in Thailand and an end to the corrupt and undemocratic practices of the royalists, I think that Taksin is trying to lead the Red Shirts into a nasty compromise.

Yet the total disregard for truth embodied in the Abhisit government and their semi-fascist PAD allies, means that an interview where Taksin grovels to the Royals can be distorted into “insulting the Monarchy”. The government have tried to block The Times interview transcript and have threatened the Thai media with lese majeste charges if they publish anything about the interview. No doubt this is so that Abhisit and his mates can tell lies without anyone being able to access the original transcript. A bunch of idiots have even made a complaint to the police, demanding that they charge Taksin and me with lese majeste. I am now starting to collect lese majeste accusations like people collect stamps. The only difference is that stamps are sometimes worth something. In the unlikely event that either of us were ever brought to trial in Thailand, the trial would be held in secret to complete the stitch-up. That is how Da Torpedo and Suwicha Takor got long jail sentences.

The Royalists are also frothing at the mouth like mad dogs over Taksin’s friendship with the rather unsavoury Cambodian PM, Hun Sen. What do they expect? The PAD and the Democrats started their anti-Cambodian campaign a few years back when they wanted to whip up ultra nationalist sentiment over an ancient Khmer temple, which clearly belongs to Cambodia. They didn’t give a damn about Cambodia. They just wanted another excuse to attack the Taksin government. No doubt they would love a war with Thailand’s neighbour, so long as none of them or their relatives had to go and die for a bunch of lies.

The present Thai government run by Oxford educated Abhisit and his cronies, and the Thai elite establishment, are instinctive liars and incompetent fools. They would be a joke if they weren’t so vicious and dangerous. That comes as no surprise. But what about the Thai intellectual establishment, the NGOs and the mainstream media? They will remain quite again or froth at the mouth along with their PAD friends. For them, they must believe that the King will live for ever. Therefore we can’t discuss the succession or perhaps a change to a democratic republic. For them we can’t live in peace with Cambodians either. Suriyasai and other PAD extremists think that Thailand is in danger of becoming a colony of Cambodia. What planet do they live on? But there is silence from the supposed educated sectors of Civil Society on this. Perhaps they are all brain-dead?

Don’t judge Thailand by the bunch of crooks that run the country. Don’t judge Thailand by the pseudo intellectuals who inhabit the universities and NGOs. There are millions of decent and principled citizens in the Red Shirt movement. Thailand will only become democratic and civilised if these ordinary folk take political power.

Chris Harman will be greatly missed.
His Marxist writings and his activism were an inspiration for me.

Vicious and paranoid: Thai elites in terminal decline?
Giles Ji Ungpakorn

Two people were recently arrested and charged under the computer crimes act for supposedly “spreading rumours which caused the Bangkok stock market to crash”. Democrat Party politicians and rabid PAD supporters see an international web of Red conspiracy under every bed in the land! The PAD’s Manager news agency has even called for my arrest as one of the “master minds”. I would like to see them make a case for my arrest in a British court! It would be a joke only if people weren’t really being arrested and charged inside Thailand under these preposterous charges.

In fact, as we all know, the stock market fall was prompted by real fears about the health of the King, who has been in hospital for a prolonged period. This is a fact, not a rumour. If our parents or grand parents, in their eighties, were admitted to hospital for over a month, we would all wonder whether they would survive. But, as I said to an international news agency recently, the King has every medical resource available to him and is quite capable of surviving for another decade. But we know for a fact that he is frail and in a wheel chair. He failed to make his annual speech last December. Will he miss the event again this year?

Because of the lack of transparency about the Palace and continuous obtuse announcements made about the King’s “improving health”, there were rumours that he was dying. The royalist government have only themselves to blame for these rumours.

No evidence has been found of any such conspiracy or any profit-taking as a result of the crash in the stock market. The people who were arrested were merely posting explanations on various websites about why the stock market had crashed. Yet Panitan Wattanayagorn, ex-Chulalongkorn University academic and government poodle, claimed that the use of the computer crime law in this case was “necessary in order to protect national security”. Korn Chatikavanij, 2006 coup supporter, Oxford PPE graduate and Finance Minister, also justified the arrests “because the accused had posted comments on anti-government websites”. Perish the thought that there should be such things as anti-government websites in the New Order authoritarian climate created under the Premiership of fellow Oxford PPE graduate, Abhisit.

Let us get down to the facts. What the royalist government and the army were really frightened of is not any so-called rumours. They are dead scared about the King dying. This is because for the last half a century these elites have used the King to legitimise every undemocratic act they have ever carried out. The King was also used to justify acts of barbarism like the 6th October 1976 blood bath and executions of government critics under the military dictatorships. The King probably never “ordered” any of these events. But he also never criticised them. He happily accepted his ideological role of propping up the interests of the elites in the face of those who wanted to expand democracy and social justice or modernise society. What will they do after he dies? How will the elites justify their privileges and authoritarian rule? His son or the Queen are hardly likely to be capable of continuing the process of legitimisation. They know that millions of Thais are tired of the Monarchy system because of the 2006 coup. Many say to themselves that they will quietly wait for the old man to die peacefully. But after that they will not want another king. So this deep fear felt by the elites, as they look over the edge of the cliff into the abyss, is what is fuelling their vicious and paranoid attitude.