Thai Protests (from a local foreigner)

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Regarding the specific goal of tonight’s protest: actually getting the 4 leaders out on bail would be a major feat, because it seems that the king really wants them to rot. Last time we got them out, it was while they were being transferred between prisons (see live posting on that above). After that, I don’t know if they’ll move them again, and I don’t think they legally have to (the previous case was them using a dubiously legal loophole which required police to move the leaders from precinct to precinct).

This time, I think getting these guys released is almost at the level of getting the constitution rewritten. It will require the full brunt of people power and media attention.

So, I think overall, the movement’s goals remain 1) Coup government steps down 2) New election 3) New constitution. 4) End the law against disrespecting the king 5) Reform of the monarchy (there are ten specific requests for this).

And now we can add to this: 0) Release on bail the protest leaders you’ve arrested for disrespecting the monarchy.

I’ll also add that the longer the government holds out, the more the “reform the monarchy” demand morphs into “end the monarchy”. The King is incredibly unpopular. Think how popular Trump would be if Fox News didn’t exist. Like, even royalists are just kind of going through the motions.

So…yeah: these are big asks, but the opportunity is still open. I think we need to break through the 300,000k march barrier and after that a general strike would probably be necessary. Barring violence, I think a general strike is the only real pain you can inflict on a government serious enough to force them to actually step down.

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At a glance, Biden’s response to the Myanmar coup seems good. Freezing the US wealth of the Burmese military is a way to inflict pain without hurting the common people (as sanctions on Russia and Venezuela have).

You know who else has a lot of US Wealth? The military coup government of Thailand. Ahem. Just sayin’.

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Doubt the US will do anything to upset Thailand due to them being a key economic/military ally in the region. For kicks and giggles contrast and compare the State department’s opening paragraphs on their web pages on US relations with Burma and Thailand.

Thailand is a key U.S. security ally in Asia. Since World War II, the United States and Thailand have significantly expanded diplomatic, security, and commercial relations. The first documented contact between the United States and Thailand was recorded in 1818. The first agreement signed with Thailand was the 1833 Treaty of Amity and Commerce, ratified by King Rama III, the U.S. Congress, and President Van Buren.

The United States and Thailand are signatories of the 1954 Manila Pact of the former Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), which, together with the Thanat-Rusk communiqué of 1962 and the 2012 Joint Vision Statement for the Thai-U.S. Defense Alliance, constitutes the basis of U.S. security commitments to Thailand. In 2003, the United States designated Thailand a Major Non-NATO Ally.

The United States supports a peaceful, prosperous, and democratic Burma that respects the human rights of all its people. Burma remains a country in transition to democracy and faces significant ongoing challenges and deeply troubling human rights issues centered on a powerful military that acts with impunity.

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So–uh–I’m probably too late for this, but…

I was up at 3AM scrolling through International Women’s Day tagged stuff on Twitter, thinking there might be some stuff about Myanmar or something (what with the deposed pres being a woman), and I genuinely got very depressed and conflicted.

I was just seeing so much…y’know…bullshit? Like, it was all pictures of superheroes and memes about sitcoms and brands talking about inclusivity. And I went into this thought spiral, wanted to rage about how grotesque it felt to me and also thinking, “Well, maybe the algorithm is just showing me English stuff, and maybe it’s my fault for knowing nerds and being American middle class, who am I to tell women how to celebrate, and maybe I shouldn’t yuck other’s yums” etc.

And then I realized that what was really bothering me is the stories NOT being told about ACTUAL female heroes in substitution of–y’know–Wonder Woman.

So I wrote this tweet thread about Rung, the main leader of Thammasat University branch of the Thai Democracy movement. There was so much I didn’t feel l could fit into the Tweet format–mostly just about the level of sexism in Thailand. I think it would take thousands of words to make people get the level of bravery and security of self it takes a woman in Thailand to literally try to dethrone someone she was taught was a god. This is someone who was literally taught in her school text books that her job was to take care of the men in her life.

Anyway, it’s probably too late, because I posted this late–and I don’t usually do this–but I would really like this thread to spread around. I don’t think Thai people (who are most of my followers) will pick it up, because there was no Thai tag to pin it to today. It’s just for English speakers. And–fuck it–I really mean it: I actually want people to think about REAL LIVE FEMALE HEROES today. So, uh–yeah: please retweet please.

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Uh…Also there have been several major protests and violence broke out at one of them, and I’ve been procrastinating posting about it.

Police attacked protesters, but I wasn’t there, and I saw some stuff from pro-democracy sources that protesters were also violent (though to a lesser degree), and I just haven’t sifted through it.

Long story short: I fear that the movement is fracturing somewhat, but at the same time more communication than ever is happening through the app Clubhouse. The movement seems to be rebuilding after the break, but many small protests are not capturing the power of the massive protests we had last year.

Oh, but on the bright side, I passed a major royalist protest on the weekend, and it was literally, like, 100 people.

Oh, also that same night police rounded up student protesters into trucks, but other protesters stopped the trucks, bashed the windows, and freed their friends. It was filmed. Man, I’m getting behind and missing too many protests. I have an amazing knack for showing up late or picking the ones where not much happens. I worry this reads as calculated, but I assure you: it is purely incompetence and laziness.

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Hey guys.

Last Sunday, the country overwhelmingly voted for the most progress parliamentary party, followed by the second most progressive.

It’s looking like we’re going to get democracy.

The parties still have to join with others to form a government (similar to British or Israeli parliaments). And it’s always possible that the military will try to disqualify the parties or dissolve the election in some way. However, the outcry for democracy has been so massive, nobody thinks they can do that without paying a price. In the capital of Bangkok, all-but-one MP seat went to the most progressive party. Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z all went overwhelmingly progressive. I don’t think the oligarchs are even backing the military at this point.

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I knew this was the case when I started seeing twitter tankies complain about color revolution and how the elected parties are cia-funded western shills

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Wait, seriously?

Wtf.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but even for tankies, like… they’re just gonna align themselves with royalists? I hope Stalin enslaves them in the afterlife.

They probably literally confused Thailand with Laos, Cambodia, or Vietnam, which are nominally Communist.

Wait. The students who were massacred by the crown/military in '76 were Communists and the survivors became an insurgent group that operated from the jungles for 30 years!

The MP who won in my district was the leader of the militant defense wing of student protesters in 2021! One of these student groups proposed Communism as a replacement for the monarchy!

Jesus Christ.

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Btw, there actually is a weird George Soros connection with Thai politics.

In 1997, Thailand had a major currency crisis that tanked half the economies in Europe, and I think Soros was involved in that somehow, because to this day royalists in Thailand will randomly bring up Soros and claim that he is working behind the scene to sabotage Thailand.

As far as I can tell, they don’t know anything about color revolutions. And I don’t even think they’re really antisemitic. Like, European antisemitic texts aren’t really available here, and there is almost no Jewish population.

I’ve never really untangled what the actual connection is, because there’s too much conspiracy around Soros and too little English language info about Thai economics.

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Ah okay. This article seems fine. Basically Soros’ hedge fund was one of the first to bet big that the Thai baht would tank in 1997. Hedge funds making that bet helped to chum the waters to the point that it happened, though it was probably going to happen anyway.

Still not sure who spread the Soros conspiracy stuff to the Thai right wing. I mean, other hedge funds made the same bet at the same time (apparently).

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Soros conspiracies are globally popular among the far right and the fake left, the thai soros conspiracies are probably sourced from like RIA Novosti or something because they’re the most active disseminators of antisemitic conspiracies nowadays.

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Yesterday Parliament gathered for the nomination of the Prime Minister. As a reminder, of the 500 House seats that people can vote for, 151 went to the most progressive party (the one that was outlawed after the last election and contains multiple protest leaders), 141 went to the anti-royalist, pro-farmer, neo-liberal populist party (yes, that’s a thing [this is Taksin and Yingluck @u_u]), and another 30 or so seats went to smaller liberal parties, making the anti-dictatorship coalition about 320 strong. This is a landslide in a parliamentary system. Turnout was about 75%. In Bangkok, all but one seat went to the most progressive party, and Gen X, Y, and Z all went progressive.

Buuuut none of that matters because according to the constitution the military wrote, they get to appoint 200 Senators who also get to vote on everything!

So, in the end, you have 320 progressive votes vs. 380 dictatorship votes, even though only 180 dictatorship votes were actually elected. It’s almost like we live in a dictatorship!

Here’s the rub though: none of the military-aligned parties got enough seats to nominate a candidate. Basically only the Progressives and the Populists did. Both of those parties have had leaders jailed or exiled by the military; there’s not really any way to buy them off at this point.

So! Yesterday only one candidate for MP COULD be nominated: Pita Lamjarorenrat, the fresh-faced Harvard graduate who looks 30, is 40, and has been in politics since he was 20. He’s kind of Obama-esque: has the looks and charm and pushes a message that promises to be transformative without changing anything. But it’s hard to be too cynical, because simply having democracy is a massive transformation.

Party positions are to deregulate alcohol, re-regulate marijuana, cut down on corruption, and weaken the Les Majeste laws, which allow people to accuse you of speaking ill of the royal family, with a punishment of up to 15 years in jail for each count. As you might imagine this law has been used generously to quash protesters, even when it comes to social media posts, with one woman getting 50 years, one guy going to jail for insulting a dog, and the entire leadership of the pro-democracy protests currently on bail for these charges.

It’s this promise to “do something” about the Les Majeste (often called “112”) law that is the main excuse from the royalist/dictatorship congressman for why they can’t nominate Pita.

And so…they didn’t! Yesterday’s vote was along party lines, with 199 military senators and about 180 elected MP’s abstaining. They had to abstain, because they had no one to vote FOR. But according to the constitution, you need a majority of the total seats, not of those who vote.

So what happens next? Well, they’re scheduled to do another vote next week, though that will change nothing. The new news now is that Future Forward (the Progressives) might submit an amendment that strips the 200 senators of the ability to vote for PM. Though it’s not clear that this can be done. In September the 200 senators need to be reappointed anyway, though…I don’t actually know who who would reappoint them.

Prayut, the military dictator is currently “acting prime minister”, so while all this is going on he can basically continue business as usual. He announced recently that he would be retiring, but I don’t really know what that means. It’s not like he or anyone around him actually wants a non-military PM, and there is no figure in the wings to take his place as dictator. And, to be clear, there is no conventional legal way for him to be nominated as Prime Minister.

So…what’s going to happen? Well…I dunno. I’ve tried to game it out. Path of least resistance is that Prayut stays as acting PM. Parliamentary votes continue to fail. Maybe he just let’s that go on forever while continuing as dictator. Maybe at some point he steps in and says, “You see what happens with democracy? This is is crazy! I’ve spoken with the King and the Supreme Court, and we’ve agreed to amend the constitution to fix this mistake.” Or maybe they must make up some existing loophole for why the vote has been “inconclusive”. And hey: maybe the whole “retirement” thing means they have some young colonel in mind to add a fresh face to the junta. If this happens, it will be down to another protest movement to spring up. However, the leadership of the last one are pretty scattered by arrests, and no one new seems to be emerging.

Alternatively, the elected progressives can try to find some legal way to nullify the 200 appointed senators, either through this law or possibly by waiting until September. But any legal attempt would probably go to the royalist Supreme Court at some point.

So–y’know–it’s all an uphill battle for democracy, but everyone knew it would be. It’s good to see just how unified the nation is on ousting the military. I don’t think the dictatorship really enjoys explicit support from the oligarchs at this point, and I don’t think the King cares much about any of this. Maybe his courtiers do. Hilariously, I think It’s the Economy Stupid has played a big part in this. Thailand basically handled Covid about as well as you could, but we’re still feeling the economic effects, coupled with bad inflation. So even though Prayut’s leadership during Covid was fine (Thai people pretty much self-regulated; we never needed to pass any hard laws about lockdowns, etc.), when everyone gets poor they blame the leader. A fact of life, I guess. The people who pay attention already hated the dictatorship, and the economy has turned people who weren’t paying attention against it.

Anyway, this should be interesting.

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This is a good short-and-sweet article on the options for democracy. Looks like the Senate doesn’t actually end until May 2024, so that would be quite the strategic delay.

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Alright, so the second vote for Prime Minister was conducted yesterday, and–predictably–the 200 military-appointed Senate votes voted against progressive people’s choice Pita, meaning no PM was selected.

Also, the Constitutional Court (Supreme Court) decided that since they were still investigating Pita*, he couldn’t serve as a senator until they finished. So he was forced to leave the parliament. Also, the military is now saying that they cannot vote on Pita again, because there is a law that a law can only be proposed once, and they consider Pita’s bid for PM to be “a law”. So, a new PM must be nominated–someone nobody voted for.

A decently-sized protest started at the Parliament building during this, and last night a massive protest rallied at the Democracy Monument.

However, I’m more pessimistic than I thought I’d be.

Move Forward, the progressives, are the Orange Shirts. The neo-liberal populist farmers are the Red Shirts. The Orange got 151 votes (38% of the electorate), and the Red got 141 (28%). Only these two parties have enough seats to nominate a PM. And they’ve been in a coalition thus far. However, the attitude now is that this coalition is tenuous. Orange got the most seats, so Red backed their PM. But now that he’s out of the picture, they can front their PM.

Orange shirts can protest (and have), but Red will not join them, because now they get more power. In my opinion, both Orange and Red shirts are needed to form a large enough protest bloc. Protest movements that are just students and white collar workers don’t have endurance, but once you add disgruntled farmers, you have an undeniable force. At that point, basically it’s the people vs. the blue blood rich, and that can be won.

So the Red shirts will front a candidate, and either the Orange shirts can vote with them or not. If the Orange shirts don’t, the Red shirts can make a coalition with the military aligned parties (Yellow shirts). At that point, who knows what deals they’re making. The main reason the military-appointed Senators say they wouldn’t vote for Pita, is because he said they would reform the 112 law, which makes it illegal to criticize the crown.

So, if the Red shirts drop that, maybe they will get in a military coalition. This seems like a very possible outcome since the Red shirts are basically just liberal politicians seeking power, arranged into a personality cult around the exiled PM Taksin. In the last 20 years they have only ever run PM candidates that are members of Taksin’s family, including now. Their main goal is to end Taksin’s exile.

So, we’ll have to wait and see. The next move is with the Red shirts. I suppose the Orange shirts can bow to them. That’s probably a better move than abstaining and letting them align with the military.

You might think, “Hey, either way, at least you’re starting to approach democracy, right?” Maybe? I mean, a Red/Yellow coalition government would probably just be a lot of corrupt horse trading. Who knows if we’d really have free elections after that. I mean, if we had free elections, the candidate with the most votes would be the PM right now.

The next big milestone is in May, nest year when the 200 military-appointed senators step down and the people will vote for the senate for the first time. Since the Orange shirts got 38% of the vote for congress, you’d think they’d do at least as well in the Senate, at which point, progressives would have a majority or even super majority, between both houses. But a lot can happen in a year.

Most likely, the Move Forward party will be made illegal, just like the Future Forward party before them. Just like them, they’ll reform under a new name and the same colors with mostly the same people. But maybe Red/Yellow coalition will pass a law saying that only parties that have existed for more than 1 year can be voted in for Senate.

They can’t do that without Red votes. And if they get them, well then that’s not really a democracy.

In my mind, I go back to when Prayut, the military dictator, announced he would retire (after the election results). I didn’t really get it. He had no one in the wings. Why announce that? Now, I think if he announced that so early, he must have the next few moves fairly well planned. The military may ALREADY have formed an alliance with the Red shirts. That would explain why they rushed the elections for Pita, rather than dragging them out.

So let’s see. Orange vs. Red would be really bad. The young and middle class against the farmers. It would be the military managing to divide and conquer, basically.

*It’s illegal in Thailand to be a politician if you own a large share of a media company. Pita inherited a bunch of shares in iTV, a marketing company that started as a TV channel but transitioned over, like, 20 years ago. So the military opened a case agains him. They did the same thing with the founder of the Move Forward Party, whose family used to run a now-defunct newspaper and barred him from politics for life.

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Bad news. The red shirts (the party I’ve been calling neoliberal populists) announced today that they’ve formed a coalition with the military dictatorship parties. This, with the military-appointed senate will give them enough votes to name a Prime Minister.

It’s a stab in the back for more than the Future Forward (orange shirt/progressive) party. It’s a betrayal of a big portion of their constituency, who are staunchly anti-dictatorship, anti-royalist. It’s unclear how the numbers shake out now, but it seems like half the Red Shirt voters are happy that their side gets to be in charge, even though they came in second, and the other half feel completely betrayed. Hard to say if the split is 50/50, 60/40, or 80/20.

A celebrity architect tweeted a few weeks ago that he was so sure his beloved Red Shirt part wouldn’t form a coalition with the dictatorship that you could throw shit at his head if he’s wrong.

In terms of the actual will of the Thai people, this likely means the red shirts will lose a chunk of their base to the Future Forward (orange shirts/progressive). Even if they only lose 20%, Future Forward already got 30% of a vote where 70% of the country turned out. If Thailand were a democracy, this would only be increasing Future Forward’s power down the line.

But it’s not a democracy.

Future Forward will likely be made illegal in the coming months. The party will then reform. The vote to replace the military-appointed Senate is next year, and Future forward wold probably get to pick about 40%-50% of the seats (way more than any other party. So, the Red/Yellow coalition will probably pass a law saying that only parties that have existed for longer than a year can be considered for senate.

In terms of protest, it’s good that the Red Shirt base is feeling betrayed. There may be less of a split among populists than I feared, which means a real protest movement can form. Problem is, it doesn’t feel very concentrated right now. A military-backed PM probably means that most of the old leadership will be gong to jail for 15 years or more.

The recent protests against this soft coup were actually pretty big though. They would probably look massive by American standards. Thousands of people, though I don’t think over 10,000. Though they were also during work/school hours and fairly spontaneous, so that’s a good sign.

The most troubling thing is that the military is doing such a good job of dragging things out and not creating specific flash points that can make people spontaneously lose their cool. There’s so much tinder, but the dictatorship is trying to keep it damp and make sure there are no sparks.

Let’s see though. There was a big upswing in protests when they made Future Forward’s previous incarnation illegal. Doing it for a second time may have the same effect. You just have to worry about people giving up hope.

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Oh, also, the princess has been braindead for, like, five months. She had some kind of anuerism while jogging. The official heir has long been an “official” son who seems to have downs syndrome. The official line is that he’s “autistic”, which…I mean…he sure seems to have downs syndrome. So it seems the plan was probably for his sister to actually rule. But now she’s dead. There’s another sister, but she’s not taken seriously. Recently one of the king’s unofficial sons was seen flying into Thailand. He’s supposed to be officially banished since childhood. So…maybe he’ll be the new king. It would be a guy raised in America as a banished prince. Don’t know what that means. There can be no such thing as a “good” king, particularly in Thailand. If he were a good person, he’d establish democracy and then step down. Who knows what you internalize when you spend your life as a banished prince in Florida.

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Seeing you post in the other thread made me wonder what’s going on here, what’s the news?

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