The Economist
September 5th 2020
Asia
45
2
Banyan
Three-finger salute
T
he last
time Thailand saw protests
of the size now roiling the country
was nearly seven years ago. Then, pro-
establishment types declaring love for
the king, the late Bhumibol Adulyadej,
and for the armed forces that protected
him, came out in Bangkok, the capital.
They opposed the elected government of
Yingluck Shinawatra, which seemed to
threaten their interests. Among the
children parents pulled out of classes to
attend these “yellow shirt” demonstra-
tions were friends of a prominent protest
leader today, Yanisa Varaksapong, an
18-year-old undergraduate.
The turmoil the yellow shirts created
enabled an army-led coup in 2014 that
shoved all politics back into a box and
slammed shut the lid. Today, Ms Yanisa
says, those same friends are protesting
alongside her—against the very estab-
lishment for which they once marched.
The dissatisfaction is understand-
able. The coup leaders promised a tech-
nocratic government to end corruption
and spread prosperity, and a swift return
to civilian rule. Instead, the constitution
they wrote, the country’s 20th, en-
trenches the political power of the armed
forces and their allies. The current prime
minister is the general who led the coup,
Prayuth Chan-ocha. As for the economy,
there is neither cleanliness nor compe-
tence. Thailand has managed the pan-
demic well in terms of stemming in-
fections, but the economy will shrink by
over 8% this year, according to the cen-
tral bank.
The government has immense pow-
ers to suppress dissent, including laws
against sedition and
lèse-majesté
. So the
protests by school pupils and university
students took many by surprise, espe-
cially as young Thais rarely pay much
attention to politics. Thitinan Pongsu-
dhirak, a political scientist at Chulalong-
korn University in Bangkok, saw a change
on campus last year: “In classes, nobody
was on their phone, nobody was sleeping.”
Students poured into the open after the
ban in February of the Future Forward
Party, which advocated real democracy and
won 81 seats in last year’s general election.
Flash-mob protests spread until the pan-
demic brought an end to them. Ms Yanisa
describes the lockdown as a time of social-
media ferment. In July demonstrations
burst out again. Protesters waved three
fingers in the air, mimicking a salute used
by young rebels in “The Hunger Games”, a
dystopian series of novels and films. The
demands were clear: a new constitution,
the dissolution of parliament and an end
to the persecution of government critics.
By August the demands began to take
aim at the late king’s successor, Maha
Vajiralongkorn. Challenging the cult of the
monarchy breaks a taboo. But the 68-year-
old king is widely (if quietly) reviled as
extravagant, capricious and cruel. He has
seized control of vast royal assets and
meddled in political and military appoint-
ments. He usually isn’t even in Thailand
but in Germany, where he has a floor at
an upscale hotel near Munich. He shut-
tles to his queen in Switzerland in one of
the Boeing 737s at his disposal. Though
he once threw a consort, a nurse turned
military pilot, into prison, he has recent-
ly rehabilited her, Europe’s tabloid press
reports, to serve in his harem of “sex
soldiers”. No word of sympathy has
crossed the king’s lips over his subjects’
hardship during the pandemic.
The next big student protest is
planned for September 19th, the anniver-
sary of an earlier coup, against Ms Yin-
gluck’s brother, Thaksin Shinawatra. The
establishment has tried to paint the
students as puppets of the exiled Mr
Thaksin and his “red shirts”. Ms Yanisa
laughs dismissively: the earlier strife was
“ages ago for us...Right now it’s some-
thing else.”
A large number of the protesters
would like to see the king act like the
constitutional monarch he is supposed
to be. They benefit from growing support
from ordinary Thais, from a surreal
chasm between royalist propaganda and
the king’s comportment, and from a
certain vacillation on the part of the
authorities. On the one hand they arrest
protesters to intimidate the movement:
this week the head of the Student Union
of Thailand was charged. On the other,
Mr Prayuth seems reluctant to order a
bloody crackdown. His government even
claims a willingness to talk.
In this atmosphere, Mr Thitinan says,
the parameters for open expression have
been stretched wider than in a long time.
The stakes are high, because the param-
eters could snap cruelly tight again. For
the young protesters who, like Ms Yanisa,
see the chance to craft a country in which
they have a place, there is no going back.
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