We'd rather you just kept him home

Few people say it, but isn’t it just like Aung San Suu Kyi, and Nelson Mandela before her? Both Myanmar and South Africa tried their best to prevent other nations from legitimising the political causes of their most famous prisoners, but neither country got very far. Indeed, the more that Myanmar and South Africa complained, the more just the opposite happened. The governments’ heavy-handed tactics in fact legitimised the causes for which both Suu Kyi and Mandela stood, and even hastened the day when the two would not only be released but would come to govern instead!

And it’s just like that in Thailand too, in some ways at least. The more the Thai government complains about the attention that their most famous convict gets in the international press, the more he is legitimised in the eyes of the world. The difference is that the present government doesn’t complain at all, that in fact the convict is the government’s leader!

There’s another big difference too, of course. Thaksin Shinawatra is not in jail but on the run, and far from complaining about this, his government gives him a fresh new passport on which to travel, and sends the chief of police and the deputy prime minister for justice to wish him a happy birthday, wherever! Thaksin also doesn’t represent a cause, of course, just his own interests – a fact that makes it extremely unlikely he’s going to win any humanitarian prizes anytime soon. And another big difference is that Thaksin has been convicted by the highest court in his own country in a very simple and transparent case for an act of corruption that would land any other legitimate leader of a functional government in the world in prison. 

There are, of course, many real political convicts all over the world – Ai Wei Wei being just the most recent – but none of them hires Washington lobbyists to represent them when they don’t need it. Their causes speak much louder than the highest paid lawyer ever could. The ones I’m talking about also don’t own their governments, the single most important element in maintaining any dissident’s dignity, as well as his or her self-respect and clout.

So why is it that Thaksin can travel about so easily? Is it because other governments are not convinced that he’s guilty?

Because other countries are caught in a bind, that’s why. Thaksin has been convicted by the highest Thai court, yet has been exonerated by the present Thai government. And that, says the rest of the world, has to be sorted out at home. “We have to assume he’s innocent if the government says so,” says the rest of the world, “but it would be much more convenient for us if you just kept him home.”

Lung Kip

Chiang Mai