2 replies to this topic

[NYCGuy]

The influential Washington Post has sharply criticized the Abhisit government in its latest editorial:

"On July 6, Mr. Abhisit renewed a state of emergency in Bangkok and 18 other provinces, allowing his regime to arrest and hold people without charge, censor the media and prevent public gatherings. Meanwhile, he has announced that the parliamentary elections he had offered to hold in November will be postponed until next year.

If this is what he calls "national reconciliation," Mr. Abhisit, a graduate of Eton and Oxford, must have taken a lesson in Orwellian language.

In fact Thailand's government is carrying out something close to the opposite of a policy that might heal the country's deep polarization. It is trying to crush the "red shirt" movement that still supports Mr. Thaksin, a former prime minister whose ouster in a 2006 military coup has plunged a once-promising democracy into endless turmoil.

In the process, Mr. Abhisit is raising the chances that the opposition will go underground and turn violent. That would ensure that Thailand loses the foreign tourists and investors on which it depends -- not to mention the support of Western democracies.

Mr. Thaksin and the red shirts have contributed to Thailand's impasse by blockading the center of Bangkok for two months last spring and for refusing the compromise Mr. Abhisit offered before the violence began and the army moved in. But the root cause of the troubles is the refusal of the traditional political class, the military and the royal court, which Mr. Abhisit's government represents, to accept the results of democratic elections.

Repression will not solve this problem. If Mr. Abhisit really wants reconciliation, the steps he must take are clear: End the state of emergency, release the red shirt leaders and negotiate leading to elections, with a commitment by all sides to allow the winners to rule within the boundaries of a reformed constitution."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0071405048.html

[Gene]

Have you noticed that none of the Thai newspapers have mentioned any of these very critical editorial comments from the Economist, Wall Street Journal or Washington Post. No doubt, if and when they do report them, it will be a claim by some jerk that Thaksin paid for the editorial.

[Hedda]

These critical editorials in widely read and influential western publications have got to have PM Abhisit very worried about how his government is being perceived in the international community. No matter what he says publicly, Abhisit cares how he is seen outside Thailand and right now he looks like a world-class hypocrite, preaching reconciliation and practicing repression.

The people running the show in Bangkok could decide that Abhisit is more of a liability than an asset for the government and the elite's control of the government apparatus.There are a number of legal cases pending that they could use at a moment's notice to dump him as PM.

One of the scary scenarios being debated among political observers of the scene is the dumping of Abhisit, the banning of the Democrat Party and the emergence of an extreme ultra-royalist party along the lines of Sondhi's New Politics Party, with strong backing from the army and bureaucracy.In many respects, it would be a throwback to the dictatorial regimes that ruled Thailand during most of the 20th Century and who used alleged threats to the monarchy to justify authoritarian rule.The big question is whether such a regime could ever hope to survive the death of its raison d'etre.