To stop the tug-of-war, cut the rope with a referendum

As a red shirt I feel left out of Jay Briel’s nutshell. Yes, there is most certainly “a tug-of-war between the old guard who champion the Army and the nouveau power-seekers who champion Thaksin”, but there are also lots of people like myself who have in mind something way beyond a mere power adjustment.

What makes me so angry is that both sides in the tug-of-war put spin on my own aspirations, and in so doing co-opt me, of all people, to be on their side. The fact is that true red shirts like myself, and that means the majority of the Thai people, I feel sure, don’t want this destructive tug-of-war at all, and would like to get rid of all the bullies on the block, period! 

No, it’s not just “Democracy”, “Justice” and “Freedom” as spelled out on those big banners at Ratchaprasong that I want. Indeed, that’s what everybody says they want, even the ugly team at the other end of the Thai rope, even the fugitive captain of one of the teams who says he’s for “Reconciliation” and “Democracy” at a meeting in Jakarta! No, as a true red shirt I want to see something much more game-changing than that. 

I want fundamental revisions that stop the straining and grunting in the mud altogether. I want laws passed that make it extremely difficult for any feudal tycoon to do business here in Thailand at all, at least in the old murky, money-laundering sort of way. I want judicial restraints that make military coups a thing of the past and parliamentary take-overs unthinkable. I want to get rid of 60 per cent of the generals as well, both in the Army and the police force. 

I want to make it illegal for any official on any side, military or bureaucratic, to wear two hats at once, and for members of anybody’s family to be proxies, or for anybody to rule the country from anywhere but right here in public. I want to educate children in a wholly new way of thinking too, and as a start I want to educate teachers longer and much better, and to pay them a whole lot more, and I mean double. In fact I want to earmark both the military budget and the taxes collected from the moneybags at home and abroad for that, and I mean the dinosaurs on both ends of the rope!

No, your nutshell is how the lobbyists spin it, I’m afraid, Jay Briel, and I suspect you, like most TV viewers all over the world, simply haven’t had the opportunity to know better. Because that’s how it gets reported on the BBC, CNN and Fox News, for example, and how it’s written up in the Economist and the Wall Street Journal.

You have to understand that the lobbyists are advertising Thailand as a kind of Super Bowl, a Thai game-of-games, and present it as if only two teams in the country were playing, and only one could win the Big Golden Cup. Whereas the people that really matter are sitting up here with me in the Thai stands, and, though we’re largely silent, we’re waking up fast!

And I say that’s what the fear of the referendum is about, that there are so many people like me, and that we just might be heard. And I say go for it!

Lung Kip,

Chiang Mai