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G21 ASIA: SPECIAL REPORT - THE YELLOW FLOWER COUP: Alumnus KIM CARTER reports from on the ground about the joyful and bloodless coup that changed the face of Thailand..
LOCATION: Koh Samui, South Thailand
DATE: September 20 and 21, 2006
THE FOLLOWING WRITINGS ARE TAKEN FROM MULTIPLE SOURCES: Street and office conversations in Thailand. Articles posted on forums about Thailand. Extracts from English language news articles. My wife who is Thai. My Thai neighbours. Quotes are in quotation marks. Unmarked stuff is from myself. The photos were sourced from the web, unsure of actual origins. But mai pen lai ;-)
The thing that struck me that evening was the speed at which the whole situation unrolled. One moment Taksin Shinawat, although overseas, ruled the country via his party Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais). The next moment he was, for all intents and purposes, out of the picture.
It was 6 PM when I left my office to return home that day. Back home it was the usual evening ritual of drinking a beer on my balcony overlooking a coconut plantation, having a smoke and later eating dinner in the kitchen. Normal, routine stuff.
Around 10 PM while my wife and I were watching the Thai news on one of the local Thai language television stations, the show suddenly cut off and was replaced with some photos of the King of Thailand and some very patriotic semi-military music. We were not surprised as this often happens when a satellite signal goes weak or when there are technical problems at the station. However, this time my telephone rang at about 10:20 PM.
It was another expatriate working in Thailand, a friend of mine named Steve. 'Hey man, are you watching the BBC just now?' Steve asked.
'No, we just switched over to a movie, the Thai news station is down' I answered.
'Tune in now, tune in to the BBC now, check it out and I'll see you at the office tomorrow'.
I wondered what the big deal was, to be calling me after 10 at night, it had better be pretty good. Good or bad, it was certainly interesting. We tuned into the BBC and immediately were confronted with video of tanks and other military vehicles rolling down what was, to us, quite obviously one of the main Bangkok roadways. This was, indeed, a full scale military take over of the government of Thailand where I have lived for the last 12 years.
On the next day, the Wednesday, upon returning to my office for work, I heard or read the following snippets of conversation or writing from both Thais and Westerners living (and working) here:
"Strangest coup I have ever seen or heard of, and I have seen a few first hand."
"I saw bar girls throwing flowers at the solidiers."
"You know, there were families lining up to have their photos taken with their children with the soldiers and the tanks, the soliders were all smiles and lightness."
"I was over in Jakes Bar and there were a buch of Thai people there toasting the coup."
"We passed by Khao Sarn road in Bangkok, where the backpackers hang out, and there were a bunch of tourists posing with a group of smiling soliders for photos."
"We both noticed on the news that all soliders, tanks and vehicles were decorated with yellow ribbons, showing their support for the King and, I guess, the support of the King for them."
"Just now my wife called to tell me that tonight we are having a Coup BBQ party, apparantly to celebrate the ouster of Taksin Shinawat and his Thai Rak Thai party, you should come along."
"Muslim leaders in the south say that this could create a new beginning for peace talks between the government and the Muslim movement in the south of Thailand where there have been several recent, fatal bombings in public areas. The leader of the coup, General Sondhi, is a Thai Muslim and this has made the southern Muslim population feel quite comfortable with the coup. There is no love lost between them and the Taksin / Thai Rak Thai regime."
"The whole coup thing went down so cool and laid back, very Thai style in fact. The fatally violent events surrounding the coup of 1992 will not be repeated here this time. The country has established itself as a stable and properous south east Asian location. The Thais are not about to give up this in the name of any military government or dictatorship. Power will return to civilian hands very, very quickly. The King will ensure that."
"The thing is that none of the commentators in the West really seem to have any first hand experience of living in Southeast Asia. They appear to be trying to apply their Western values to a system which is so alien to their system that it may just as well have orginated on Mars."
"Shit man, even the name of Taksin's political party sucks, 'Thai Rak Thai' translates as 'Thais Love Thais'. Imagine calling a party in the UK 'White Brits love White Brits'. Sounds damned close to race based nationalism, if not racism."
"This is way overdue, the Thais tried everything to get rid of what they saw as a corrupt leader. Taksin just stuck around. An election is declared redundant, the government effectively cancelled and Taksin steps in as 'caretaker prime minister' and just carries on with his big business buddies, stipping the country bare of Thai Baht."
"Now he is hanging out in England, he owns a lot of property and has shares in businesses there. I wonder if the UK government is going to make him leave the country every 90 days, the way his government makes UK citizens working in Thailand do?"
"Hey, did you hear what the EU said? They reckon that, and I quote, 'the military forces must stand back and give way to the democratically elected political government.'. Yeah, right, sure. But what if the elected government is a bunch of theiving little shits? What then? Just let them run another 4 bloody years or what? I think that the EU maybe are in Europe and have no idea whatsoever as to what does or does not go on here or how it all works - or does not work. They ought to just leave it to the Thais."
"Right now the world is being hammered with sensationalistic crap about the coup d'etat in Thailand. We, with our feet on the ground here in Thailand, see many positives from this thing, and the negatives represent a very short list. The International community believes that the recipe for goodness and democracy is inherent everywhere, we in Thailand know that this is not true here at all. The coup, and the way that it happened, was a must do, it HAD to be done. Thaksin was never going to step down and the TRT was going to win any and every election, any time, and anywhere. Because of the depth of corruption, it could never lose."
Yellow flowers symbolizing the Thai Royal Family
The bottom line is simple. Taksin Shinawat and his whole party of Thai Rak Thai were corrupt to the extreme. His order to extrajudicially execute thousands of alleged drug dealers should have wound him up onto the chair next to Sadaam, on trial for the killing of a few hundred Kurds.
Taksin's transfer of state ow ned enterprises to the private sector was suspicious simply because it seemed that his family had shareholdings in almost all the companies that got to take over state-owned businesses.
His persistant persecution of anybody who dared to criticize him was a constant cause of headaches and problems for both the King of Thailand (who reprimanded him on more than one occasion over this issue) and the Thai people themselves. Buddha help the news reporter, civilian, bar customer or anybody who made even the most innocent of criticisms.
I remember a couple years back being asked to leave a bar in Bangkok because the owner feared retribution against HIM because I was openly criticizing Taksin Shinawat. People moved away from me at the bar, I got very strange looks, then was asked to leave. "The police will come and take you away and shut my bar if you don't shut up or leave, please" said the obviously fearful bar owner.
His blatant vote-buying in the northern provinces was legendary. Truck loads of buffalos, cash, furniture, appliances and other gifts were shipped north and distributed to "needy" families up there. No wonder he won the election based on the votes of farmers with little education but plenty of Shinawat Buffalos in the back yard.
Perhaps western style democracy is not even the right way to go in Asia. Maybe Thailand needs some modified version of democracy (with options for military coups to toss out bent premiers). Democracy is, in my opinion, a facade at the best of times in any country in any case. It sure ain't what good old Democrates put down on paper all those years ago. Well, it sure ain't that here in Thailand in any case.
Your writer signing off now to go have some beer and celebrate with the locals.
Kim Carter
Koh Samui
Thailand
September 21, 2006
[A follow-up on this look at the atmosphere, post-coup, in Thailand will appear in our next edition. For additonal information and commentary on the Thai coup, KIM CARTER recommends this site. - Ed.]