From 'curfew' to 'peace offensive' in one week
It's a bizarre state of affairs. You have a deputy prime minister in charge of national security who has to be scolded by the prime minister for publicly showing his reluctance to visit the deep South.
Deputy Premier Chalerm Yoobamrung even appeared to be quite proud at having been given a sort of a dressing-down by his boss. He said, “The premier told me to go down South and not to show in public that I am not too ready to do my job down there. I will visit the South, but it will have to be after the Bangkok gubernatorial election.”
Of course there is no clear relationship between the governor’s election and the violence-plagued deep South. Chalerm is simply trying to wriggle out of his problem. He still doesn’t seem to care much about the South, where the insurgency gets worse with every passing day.
It doesn’t help that Defence Minister ACM Sukhampol Suwannathat has described the problem in the South as just a “thorn in the foot”. That reflects former premier Thaksin Shinawatra’s disastrous description of the insurgents as nothing but “sparrows” (meaning low-level thugs or something along that line).
Chalerm has made a series of self-contradictory statements about the South. He has probably mistaken motion for action. Instead of getting to the roots of the problem by talking directly with those in charge and the local people of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, the deputy premier has chosen only to make infrequent visits to Hat Yai, the bustling commercial centre close to the three southernmost provinces. And instead of visiting the deep South, he flew over to Malaysia to meet relevant leaders there, under the pretext of holding discussions to resolve the southern issues.
As far as anyone can gather, he wasn’t very well received there either.
And when a new series of attacks took place in the deep South, Chalerm came up with the controversial idea of imposing a curfew – without having consulted any other party involved. That sparked opposition from most quarters, including southerners, who saw it as another attempt to use “control” instead of “understanding” as the main tool of the Bangkok-based policy-makers. Even top security brass were against the proposal. They attributed the idea to Chalerm’s lack of real understanding of the people most affected by the misguided policies from the capital.
Premier Yingluck Shinawatra takes no position on any of these public-policy options. She inevitably brushes aside such sensitive questions by telling officials concerned to “thrash it out”, without offering any guidelines or idea of how or where she sees the roadmap leading.
Only a week later, a top-level powwow ended up with the suggestion that the government would extend an olive branch to the insurgents by employing Article 21 of the Internal Security Act, which will offer a chance of “rehabilitation” to those who give themselves up through peace negotiations.
That was a 360-degree turn from the curfew proposal, within a very brief period of time. Nobody cared to explain how that sudden change of heart came about and how Deputy Premier Chalerm took the snub. The official explanation is that, despite the increase in terrorist attacks in the southernmost provinces, the situation is still “very much under control”. The new “peace offensive” was in fact proposed by security officials based in the deep South.
Chalerm added further complication to the issue by appointing as his advisers on southern issues a group of nine southern MPs belonging to the so-called Wadah Group within the ruling Pheu Thai Party. Perhaps he needs to be seen to be “doing things” about the deep South. Perhaps he is trying to balance the military with politicians. Whatever the motive is, it is still far from convincing.
But the bottom line is that he is still the deputy premier “who hasn’t been there, and who hasn’t done that”. Thus, there is still a long way to go before he can convince the public that he’s serious about his responsibility for the problem.
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