Friday, April 23 at 12:00 pm in the Center for Korean Studies
Presented by Anusorn Unno, Ph.D Student – University of Washington; featuring Marcus Ferrara, Dr. Ehito Kimura and Dr. Ben Kerkvliet
The Red Shirts’ uprising which emerged right after the 2006 military coup and has intensified over the past four weeks represents significant changes in Thailand’s political landscapes. Streets in Bangkok which were used either by “the student movement” in the early and mid 1970s or by “the cell-phone mobs” in 1992 or by “the Yellow-Shirt Alliance” in 2004-2006, are now occupied by ordinary people from and of the upcountry in their attempt to express their political grievances and concerns. It is also the first time in Thai history that a Prime Minister has been brought to the negotiation table with protest leaders in a television live broadcast, and also the first time that such an uprising has forced the military back to the barracks. Several academic attempts have been made to make sense of these changes. The Red Shirts’ uprising, some argue, shows that the paradigm of an urban/rural divide (which implies that “rural” elects the government but “urban” overthrows it), is no longer tenable. Others maintain that the ruling elite conspiracy theory has also been discounted. In addition, the idea that there is a “class war” has also been debated and critiqued. The panel will discuss a crucial moment in Thailand’s political history and examine it through the perspectives of both Thai and international observers.
stream...
April 22nd, 2010 at 9:17 am
Whatever one believes about the future durability of the Chakri dynasty in Thailand in the current challenge, the following facts are interesting to note:
- The king of Thailand is the richest monarch on the planet.
-The Crown Property Bureau (CPB) that handles the royal assets is independent of the Thai government.; it is the largest real estate owner in Bangkok.
-CPB properties in Bangkok include areas where the Red Shirts are encamped such as the Four Seasons Hotel, Siam Paragon, and Central World Tower.
-The market value of the CPB is some US$35 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
April 24th, 2010 at 12:00 am
This is the best panel (yes, I have attended a lot) I have attended in two years!!! Kudos to the CSEAS for hosting this event. The four speakers were excellent, and they all successfully contributed a lot without overlapping each other… like most panels did. I walked out of the CKS feeling that I have just leaned a lot… Thank you!
April 24th, 2010 at 2:40 am
Great panel, many different perspectives on institutional, societal, cultural aspects… best seminar I have seen in UH Manoa.
April 24th, 2010 at 10:54 am
excellent panel. Let's try and keep up these timely, academic presentations that are informative for all of us!
May 21st, 2010 at 5:49 pm
In the editorial in todays' Nation newspapers from BKK (21 MAY) on the aftermath of the recent military crackdown, there is the following sentence: "Yes, Thaksin may have put money and consumer goods in their hands and made speeches that made them feel good about themselves. But he didn't create any sustainable wealth, nor did he enhance their capacity to produce."
There is a certain note of disdain here. With some mutations, it is the kind of thing that some GOP representative in our own country could have said about FDR and the New Deal. It simply does not go far enough to recognize that the current economic structure of Thailand is tilted so unfavorably against the poor, that it is not simply a matter of [as the US Republicans would say] individual responsibility and enterprise, but a matter of structure.
The advantages of the urban elite are built into the concrete and iron framing of the economy. If you are a poor, rural Thai, your only chances of climbing the ladder are as part of someone's patronage system, a patronage system totally dominated by the urban elite, Chinese business interests, the bureaucracy, the military, and the police or various interlocking coalitions of the former.
I fear that the elite and their zero-sum-game allies will not have gotten the message. That message is: there are fundamentals that need to change fundamentally. Access to the bounties of society has to be given to a much larger portion of society. An orderly and fair system for the possibility of redistribution of wealth has to be instituted.
The King, ill and dying, can no longer intervene effectively are his successor must be part of the solution, must give his/her blessings to this new fair system for the possibility of redistribution of wealth and an orderly reallocation of political power in which those at the bottom of Thai society have a realistic chance of making their voices count [and count in a very major way]. The current designated successor, the Crown Prince, is a dolt with thuggish tendencies. His sister is no Einstein, but she is well-liked and has a great deal of personal prestige. Unless the royal household manages to come to grips with reality, their days are numbered and a likely outcome will be a military coup "to protect the throne," in which Thailand falls under the sway of series of "Daimyo" style Lord Protectors, with supine royals still allied with the urban elite, Chinese business interests, the bureaucracy, and the police. It will be more of the same, but with a very hard edge.
And that won't do. The genie is out of the bottle.