The sycophants are yuppies

I’m not a Democrat, but as someone deeply troubled by the Pheu Thai attempt to establish a Shinawatra dynasty, I have to hope and pray for the opposition. And indeed, the Democrats are doing pretty well, I’d say, and Abhisit Vejjajiva in particular. He has emerged as fully deserving of the intense personal fear that Thaksin Shinawatra obviously holds him in. Thailand is lucky to have an opposition leader like this, even if he’s not yet the flavour of the day. And it’s not that his party isn’t good enough, either, or needs to be reformed – it’s that Thailand isn’t yet mature enough to elect a party of its calibre. But it’s coming!

Abhisit is dismissed by the Pheu Thai “sycophants” as an “elitist” just because he’s educated. He’s called “out of touch with the people” just because the people don’t yet understand what he stands for – which is not a mega-plan juggernaut but a steady ship of state, one that can keep Thailand on course to sustainable development. And that’s really something. That’s actually revolutionary in the context.

An interesting factor in all this is that government opponents include the small, free-thinking Thai professional and a business class that is just beginning to emerge, many members of which have university degrees and have studied abroad. For that reason, much of the new thinking gets expressed in English, not Thai, and I get to write for a Thai audience that is able and willing to read The Nation.

It would be interesting to do a study of the language of effective opposition to dictatorship in history, and see how many of the movements in the past were sustained in another, external language, almost like a secret code. Up until recently it was French in Thailand, not English, since a number of the leading communists in the 1960s and ’70s were educated in France, as were all the Khmer Rouge leaders. Some of the current Pheu Thai and even red-shirt intellectuals are French-speaking academics too – they were communists, or fellow travellers at least, in the ’70s, believe it or not, and have now bought into Thaksin’s capitalist “new deal”. Yes, they can read me in English in The Nation too – not that they want to hear what’s being said here, having turned their coats and become yuppies! 

Lung Kip

Chiang Mai