This is a blog only/Updated 07/05/10
I do not always see eye to eye with British Ambassadors but one who has been putting the egg back into the pudding since he left is British Ambassador Derek Tonkin who this week wrote to ‘The Times’ pointing out that the ‘Thunderer’, as it used to be known back in the Crimean War, had got its reporting, and in particular its editorials, in a twist when it came to Thai politics.
The Times has called for immediate elections and in the latest rant against Thailand’s Prime Minister repeated the miscomprehension that Abhisit Vejjajiva was not legally in power etc. Previously The Times’s Asia Editor Richard Lloyd Parry had said of Abhisit Vejjajiva: “Rarely since the days of Dr Faustus has a gifted and promising man achieved power through such grubby and disreputable means”.
Yes. And Brutus was an honourable man.
Derek Tonkin
Derek Tonkin was Ambassador to Thailand when I first arrived here working for the Observer and its film company. His letter was written with Dominic Faulder, formerly Asiaweek, Asia Inc. They could just as well have addressed letters to the BBC, Sydney Morning Herald or Washington Post.
‘Set aside partisan grievances ‘
“Sir, When you say (leading article, April 26) that Abhisit Vejjajiva “has been undermined by a simple and devastating fact — that his party has lost every election under his leadership”, you overlook another much more important fact, which is that since its foundation in 1946 the Democrat Party in Thailand has been the leading coalition partner in several administrations, but has never won an overall majority. That good fortune has been enjoyed only once by a political party in Thailand — the Thai Rak Thai Party founded and led by Thaksin Shinawatra, which was itself an agglomeration of different parties and won 374 of 500 seats in the 2005 elections.
Coalition administrations in Thailand, for better or for worse, are the norm. In the last elections in December 2007 the Democrat Party came second and secured 30.3 per cent of the constituency vote for 400 seats and 36.6 per cent of the parallel party vote for the remaining 80 seats. This was the Democrats’ best performance to date, and it is quite conceivable that the party, which has performed creditably in by-elections, could do even better at the next general election. It was not, as you say, “the consequence of military force” that led to Mr. Abhisit’s selection by the House of Representatives as Prime Minister, but a realignment, Thai-style, of elected representatives after a court ruling went against the incumbent pro-Thaksin party.
Fresh elections may provide a useful breathing space in which tempers can cool, but it would be naive to suppose that the fundamental polarisation in Thai society of recent years will thereby be resolved. This can only be done peacefully at the ballot box if all concerned set aside immediate partisan grievances and come to a better agreement on the rules by which parliamentary democracy can be made to work for Thailand and all its people.
Derek Tonkin (British Ambassador to Thailand, 1986-89)
Guildford, Surrey
Dominic Faulder
Bangkok
Now if you read what ‘The Times’ has been publishing, quite often from the Asia Editor in Tokyo, Tonkin has rather demolished ‘The Times’ stance on Thailand. And indeed the newspaper, unusually, seems to have fallen for quite a few of the red herrings which have been thrown its way. Nor is ‘The Times’ alone. Media manipulation gets quite easy when newspapers today are now running minute by minute deadlines, which means they are taking what they are reading without question.
That of course means a ‘fact’ presented in say ‘The Times’ can be a fact in hundreds of papers worldwide in a matter of minutes as the re-write men, who give themselves bylines, regurgitate the net.
So it is no surprise that Thaksin Shinawatra has hired London based political lawyer Canadian Robert Amsterdam, an entertaining self publicist, to “assist in the current contentious struggle for the restoration of democracy and rule of law in the Southeast Asian nation”, even though Thaksin says he is a ‘minor cog’ in the red shirt movement.
Above - an obvious picture used by Times Online
The days of ‘print these facts or we sue’ are upon us. Not an option open of course to the innocent victims who were gunned down during Thaksin’s ‘War on Drugs’. So we can expect more of Thaksin ‘the Robin Hood’ or, now managed by a Canadian, perhaps ‘Anne of Green Gables’. When you sue governments, particularly Russian ones, as does Amsterdam, or take on the Singapore government as Amsterdam does, your clients tends to lose while you gather lots of democratic Brownie points.
Amsterdam has of course taken the case on, not for the publicity, but for the justice, which is why I guess there are more jokes about lawyers than even journalists. But I can see the irony in him also representing the Dr. Chee Soon Juan leader of the Democrats in Singapore.
In Singapore you laugh at the system at your peril - just the sort of government Thaksin Shinawatra aspires to lead.
Well then, what we have been getting from ‘The Times’ is only a slightly upmarket version of what ‘popular’ papers do, just written in words of more than two syllables. I prefer to call it writing for affect, er, which I guess is journalism, but the author does not necessarily have to believe it. Afficionados of the ‘Glenda Slag’ features in ‘Private Eye’ will understand. Its ’egging the pudding’ in its more commonly used form.
This story from ‘The SUN’ however is probably quite true despite the headline ‘Brits plan holiday in hell’
“Its not a people’s thingy is it?’
One of the problems with the red-shirt protest story may be of course the dearth of foreign correspondents. In the last two years the correspondents for the three main British ‘heavy newspapers’ have jacked it in here in Thailand in the main replaced by Aussies (also filing to Fairfax and News Ltd., in Sydney)…and, of course, the re-write men.
The ‘re-write men’ are usually thousands of miles away from the places they are writing about, which is fine by me because it lets me get down to what I like doing best. But of course sometimes it does have its small disadvantages.
I spoke to a friend in News International in London last week who asked: “Andrew, what exactly is going on in Thailand?” then she added: ‘Its not altogether a people’s thingy is it?’
So despite the BBC and Times reports etc some Brits at least are wondering what on earth is going on. Thailand’s red-shirt demos even became the butt of jokes in a ’dinner table’ Brititsh TV comedy sketch on ‘Bremner, Bird and Fortune’ when the merits of collecting blood or throwing poop were discussed.
The question ‘What exactly are they demonstrating about?’ was posed but never answered as the lady of the house declared she would probably use her maid’s poop to throw at Westminster.
Abhisit Vejjajiva
The people’s revolution element has not been totally sold.
People are rightly suspicious of ‘People’s’ movements in Asia. You only have to look to Manila.
So here’s the rub. There are two ways of foreign reporting. One is to report the situation from your own perspective, knowledge and culture, and the other is to get down and dirty, and in this case do lots of mingling among the red shirts, listen to the stories of the poor etc, read Giles Ji Ungpakorn in the Socialist Worker, and write it from the ‘people’s’ perspective.
But every so often getting down and dirty is often not the right way about it if you need to know what is happening. The expression ‘can’t tell the wood from the trees’ comes to mind.
No matter how heart-wrenching the copy is from people living in poverty in north east Thailand, all it does is add bricks and mortar to the great social divide story, which is Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, etc….and which may be missing the point.
Some are suggesting that the white Thais in Bangkok are out of touch and are horrified at the unscrubbed working classes on their doostep and unable to comprehend what they are complaining about. They have a touch of the the Marie Antoinettes it seems.
‘Telling it as it is’ - a boy from the Valleys
In Bangkok too we have an Australian claiming to have served seven years in the Aussie Army giving speeches to the red-shirts exhorting them on from their podium and. On the blogs we have a Welshman reporting from within the red demos ‘telling it as it is’ and inviting those who disagree to kiss his hairy Welsh arse.
If the Scots sound like they are always about to start a fight then the Welsh accent seems to seems to reflect a sort of desperation or depression in the valleys as in ‘Little Britain’s’ ’ I’m the only gay in the village!’ sketch. But I am assured they have made cultural and culinary contributions to Thai culture.
Cultural contributions. Welsh cuisine in Bangkok
Anyway anyone can do this sort of reporting from Toxteth or the Sir Francis Chichester Estate in South London in a country where the current P.M. Gordon Brown was also not elected by the people but by fellow M.Ps.
But what no newspaper or blogger has done yet is to paint a picture of what exactly may happen if this movement were to bring down the current government, and indeed who are the people waiting in the wings in the Phuea Thai party, which has aligned itself to Thaksin Shinawatra. And then of course it all becomes a bit deja-vue.
F-16s over Laos in the Green Curry war
The phrase ‘Pass the sick bag Alice’ comes to mind. What we have apparently is a lineup of politicians who have been screwing the working classes in Thailand ever since each discovered he was not one of them any more. Their Chairman General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh even managed to lose a war against Laos, despite sending in the F-16s, which was started over logging, one of his wife’s pet past-times.
(Pause for self promo par: I managed to tag this ‘The Green Curry War’ in the Observer just as my ‘Battle for Sleeping Dog Hill’ in the Telegraph recorded the loss of the Karen base at Manerplaw to the Burmese army. The actual Karen translation I was given I think was ‘Dog lying asleep in a semi-prone position hill’ but its too difficult to shout between foreign and picture/art desks)
Chavalit also led the country triumphantly…..into its worst economic crisis ever, except for some advantaged rich people who were fortuitously forwarned and changed their baht to dollars.
These are the guys who have screwing down the price of rice….to the farmer that is. The exporters still have their BMWs! And who signed the free trade agreement with China leading to Thai supermarkets being flooded with Chinese fruit and veg?
There is no doubt that the encampments in Bangkok have bred a new solidarity among the UDD and redshirts, but where is it going to lead Thailand?
‘My, wasn’t that a rather jolly coup’
People complain that Thaksin was unfairly ousted. They are absolutely right. He was ousted because those who did so thought that it was the only way to get a Prime Minister into the courts. Attempts to curtail his excesses had failed from many directions. Even at the height of the military coup there was a collective sigh of relief. But you cannot use the words ‘tanks’ with ‘good’ when sending this story back home, and in any case, as is their wont, the military then hashed things up.
Considering Thaksin Shinawatra’s friendly and lucrative relationship with the world’s worst military in the world in Burma I am not crying too much over Thailand’s kast coup.
Had the red-shirts come in to defend Thaksin before the tanks then we would be looking at a different scenario today. But these things cost time and money I guess and Thaksin was far to busy protecting his.
Traditionally in the past, corrupt Prime Ministers have been allowed to keep the stash they made in power. Thais can choose that system again when they go to the polls in November.
Then of course the yellow shirts think Thaksin is the dictator
‘Don’t mention ze war!’
The placards in the red shirt camps of Abhisit depicting him as the dictator Adolf Hitler are of course nonsensical. The irony of course is that, like Thaksin Shinawatra, Adolf Hitler, was elected to office by popular vote, a good reason to fear democracy.
National socialism, as we know it, is when you get one group of people, preferably all wearing the same colour uniform, claiming they represent the working man, who have a charismatic leader, who leads them to attack those whom they see as robbing them of their rights and destiny. Following their ‘democratic’ election they have a tendency to plunder and dispose of their enemies both externally and internally. purging their own and of course the press and woe betide those who disagree.
But the use of ‘Hitler’ by both sides, yellow and red, shows just how primitive their messages can be.
I will say this however, I have spoken with hundreds but will never argue with a ‘red shirt’, or the boss of a Bangkok motorcycle queue.
‘Eva’, as they say, was just a musical.
‘The Charmer Making a Mess of his country’ - The Times ”The Prime Minister of Thailand, best friends at Eton with Boris Johnson, is presiding over a chaotic and callous regime”.
Thailaind crisis is not a struggle against elitism
So did the press get it all wrong? How did the whole world miss some salient facts behind the recent red-shirt demonstrations in Bangkok?
A British couple told tonight (Sunday) how they were trapped in a Bangkok ‘live fire zone’ after the hotel they were staying at hid the news sections of morning papers and blocked the internet.
“But we slowly realized the cracks and bangs were shots and explosions, but we still had no idea exactly what was going on at all”.
