Deep South can expect nothing from the govt
After failing to win a single seat in the Malay-speaking South, Pheu Thai is unlikely to grant any favours to the long-suffering people there
Talk of compensation for people killed last May during clashes between the military and red-shirt protesters overlooks a glaring double standard. Victims of the Tak Bai massacre - who died from gunshot wounds and suffocation after the military authorities stacked them on top of one another - don't seem to fit the bill for any compensation scheme.
Perhaps if their family names were like most Thais, this society might look at their losses in a different light.
In its election campaign promises, the ruling Pheu Thai Party didn't waste much time in showing the public that the deep South is taken for granted. Some may argue that Pheu Thai did not get a single seat in the Muslim-majority region and therefore it should not be a big deal if the party doesn't live up to its campaign promise of granting the region some sort of special administrative status to quell the ongoing insurgency.
Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Yongyuth Wichaidit recently said, with a straight face, that it was some other people's idea, not a policy of the party.
If it wants to shift the blame to the Army - which was set against the autonomy idea from the beginning - then Pheu Thai should get out of politics and not give in to the country's top brass like a bunch of wimps. After all, wasn't it the Pheu Thai people who gave us the impression they were going to put the military back in its place and out of politics?
Perhaps the biggest insult to the people of the region, and the men and women who serve their country there, is Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's promise to end this conflict in a year's time.
Does she have an implementation plan?
Does she even know the nature of this conflict?
If it was as easy as an issue of law and order, then she could do like her brother did - unleash massive firepower with virtually no rules of engagement and a licence to kill.
Nevertheless, a promise was made, and at the least, there should have been a debate about the pros and cons of the idea of a special region. At least other ideas could have been generated from it.
If anything, when it comes to the Malay-speaking deep South, history has shown us that the state policy of assimilation has failed. It worked with everybody else but not the Malays of Pattani.
This doesn't mean that the Muslims there want a separate state; but inclusion in the Thai state should have been negotiated, not dictated to them by Bangkok.
The choices are few: either we negotiate these terms with the Malays or we continue to kill the separatists in the hope that the unique cultural and historical narrative of the southern Malays dies with the militants. It hasn't and it won't. And this same narrative continues to breed separatist militants, generation after generation.
But Thai leaders can't seem to get out of their simple and shallow mindset. Army chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha recently suggested that a curfew should be imposed and that paramilitary rangers would be used on a more contingent and flexible basis.
But from the look of it, particularly this past Thursday during the three-hour shootout in Tambon Patae in Yala's Yaha district, pinning our hopes on a military solution, as opposed to a political one, doesn't seem very promising.
The target in this incident was an influential former village chief with a reputation for being shady and close to the police and military. Within a two-kilometre radius of his compound are three Ranger outposts, not counting the Army base camp just further down the road. They were pinned down by the insurgents' gunfire, and the state-friendly village chief and his family members were left to hold their ground. And we wonder why so few people in this restive region are on the side of the state.
