Debunking the myths of Thailand's political divide

It's sad but true that the bad guys usually get away too easily by doing a few good things, while the good get pummelled and tainted by a few mistakes against a lifetime of doing good?

In politics, of course, things don't fit into that easy pattern. Thailand was painted black, almost as a civil war-torn country, in the wake of the political unrest in 2010. Since then, Thailand has been portrayed in the Western media as a colour-divided country along the fault line of urban rich versus rural poor.

Such a simplistic description is easily popularised. It fits nicely with the Western archetype of socio-political analysis. Images of red-clad farmers and street vendors camping out on the streets, calling for democracy, are so powerful they stir in most of us compassion for the suffering and injustices they have endured. However, the desire to see these people have a better life often make us gloss over other things - the methods and strategies of protests, the violent elements, the actual composition of the red shirts, and the deeper machinations behind their protests.

Upon closer examination, the red-shirt movement was organised rather than organic, well funded and heavily armed. The main messages were highly questionable and rhetorical, under a veneer revealing imperfect logic and reasoning. Chief among these myths is that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva came into the premiership unelected. Another is that the Democrat-led government ordered a brutal crackdown on unarmed protesters.

In a parliamentary democracy modelled on the Westminster system, a prime minister can be elected not only through direct election but also by the majority of MPs if the incumbent is removed before a term ends. Abhisit, a seven-time elected MP, came into office that way - not uncommon in a parliamentary democracy and by no means unprecedented in Thai political history. To say that the judiciary was biased and there was a "judicial coup" to remove a then-incumbent proxy prime minister of the ousted Thaksin Shinawatra does not carry weight. The judiciary is one of the most respectable and neutral institutions in Thailand. Indeed, if the Thai courts had suffered serious credibility doubts, it was during the Thaksin administration that their credibility was most widely questioned.

Looking back at the April-May 2010 unrest, one should use more logic and reasoning. The Abhisit government did not break up the protesters as soon as they gathered. The demonstrations were allowed to increase in number for weeks - to the point that officials were rebuked by the majority of Thais who were neither red nor yellow, because the protest was disrupting normal life and peace. The government repeatedly requested that the protesters, after weeks of blocking Bangkok's busiest intersection, leave the area.

When the protest became too large for the police to manage, unarmed soldiers had to be called in. Finally, when more protests cropped up elsewhere in Bangkok and when it was clear that some protesters were armed with heavy weapons and bombs, and when security officers became the first death casualties, officials were compelled to limit the spreading violence. Governments elsewhere would have done the same, if not more, in preventing the protest from growing so large. It would be unimaginable to see thousands of protesters at London's Piccadilly Circus or New York's Times Square disrupting traffic for more than one afternoon.

The government also made several serious efforts to find political solutions. It was the first time in Thai history, and probably unheard of in any other democracy, that a sitting prime minister agreed to talk face-to-face in a televised debate with protest leaders who were bent on using extra-parliamentary pressure to force out a legitimate government. The protest leaders soon withdrew from the talks when their empty rhetoric and hollow logic gave off too much.

Before the protest, Abhisit offered a national referendum which, if taken up by the protest leaders, could have led to a fresh election. Later, during that televised debate, an election offer could have been made again had the protest leaders not left the table. Abhisit again offered to cut short his term by more than a year to hold an election on November 14, 2010, but again the red shirts rejected the offer - a miscalculation that revealed the ulterior motives and self-interests of powerful individuals behind the movement which used poor farmers and low income earners as pawns.

Post-May 2010, opinion pieces poured out from Western journalists perpetuating the convenient categorisation of the red-shirt protest as a struggle for justice and democracy. The Abhisit government took flak for being elitist, accused of being pro-establishment, pro-military and pro-rich. The Democrats were depicted as the guilty epitome of the upperclass, even though Abhisit has very modest financial assets compared to the fat cats who supplied the war chest to Thaksin's followers and his Pheu Thai Party.

It is strange that the Abhisit government had to take the blame for problems emanating from Thaksin's rule from 2001 to 2006. These problems are mostly structural and would take legislative and political effort to solve. The Abhisit government deserves credit for initiating a genuine transition into a more equity-based, welfare society with programmes that are not mere cosmetic cash handouts, but structurally tailored to redistribute national wealth in unprecedented ways.

When bad things happen, they tend to be blown out of proportion. This is what happened with the mainstream perception of the colour-coded divide in Thai society. A recent survey by the Asia Foundation survey revealed that, contrary to popular views, more than 76 per cent of respondents said they were neither red nor yellow. Most did not even know what ideologies, if any, differentiated the two camps. A large majority agreed to the same values and policy choices, such as the need to address economic problems and further decentralise powers.

As the election draws near, it is time to take another look at how Thailand has been depicted in the past two years. Too often things were put into boxes or glossed over for convenience. Sometimes we are so moved by the cinematography that we forget to understand the storyline.

Walaya Jariyadham was a fellow at the American Political Science Association and a former legislative aide to the US Congress.