The residence of Thai ambassador to the Philippines, His Excellency Kulkumut Singhara Na Ayudhaya, was festively adorned for Songkran, the Thai New Year. This is the occasion when elders are shown respect by pouring perfumed water on their palms and sprinkling water at everyone else to wish them well. A large group of accomplished and very senior Filipinos were seated onstage and honored with the water-pouring ritual. Booths serving different Thai dishes or displaying some Thai folk art surrounded the huge lawn during the April 15 celebration. Dancers from Chiangmai were flown in to perform traditional dances.

It was almost as if Thailand’s Abhisit government was not tethering towards collapse after violent and widespread demonstration of the so-called Red Shirts again hit the streets this month.

The rowdy demonstrations wreaking havoc on Thailand’s polity and economy in the past five years belong to an unresolved series of convoluted events that defies easy categorization. Are these “people power” mobilizations justified in their aim to oust what they claim is an illegitimate government? Is the government that has been trying hard to suppress them the bearer of democratic credentials? If one were a concerned citizen, which side should one be on – the Red or the Yellow?

Both camps claim to be fighting for democracy. The main street-based protagonists both have democracy on their names: the National United Front of Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) or the Red Shirts, on the one hand; and the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) or the Yellow Shirts, on the other hand. The party currently associated with Thaksin is called the People Power Party, and the party that took power from the PPP in 2008 through judicial maneuvers and military-backed elbowing is the Democrat Party.

But it is very difficult to tell which side democracy is on. As far as the Red Shirts are concerned, the ousted Thaksin had the people’s mandate. A rich businessman, Thaksin was able to get popular support from the lower classes with his populist rhetoric, money politics, and a universal health care program. He is somewhat of a cross between Erap Estrada whose popular campaign slogan was “Erap para sa mahirap” and the moneyed businessman Manny Villar, who is avidly courting the votes of the rural and urban poor masses.

The PAD protesters, on the other hand, opposed Thaksin’s corrupt business practices. Their people power-styled protest eventually gave way to a military-led and royalty-approved coup against Thaksin in 2006, which the PAD fully supported and courted again in 2008 when election results were not to their liking.

While it is committed to restore order, the current Abhisit government’s democratic credential is shot by the fact that it is the inheritor of the transition led by the military and the Privy Council (an advisory council to the King), and its many undemocratic compromises. To begin with, the coup that ousted Thaksin in 2006 brought back the military to power after its slumber from politics since the last coup in 1991.

The junta, through its appointed members in the National Assembly subsequently passed laws that further entrenched the power of the bureaucracy and security forces, limited the power of the prime minister to intervene in the annual military reshuffle, and secured the military and the bureaucracy’ monopoly over radio broadcast frequency.

Moreover, the military virtually handpicked all the members of the Constitution Drafting Assembly and censored open debate that otherwise should have accompanied the ratification of the country’s latest constitution in 2007. Then it muscled its way in the parliament to force the resignation of the Thaksin-allied prime minister in 2008 and install Abhisit as prime minister.

***

It is tempting to say that Thailand’s exploding political divide is based on class and degree of urbanity. But this frame is as misleading as defining the difference as one between those for or against democracy. Hard core Red Shirts come from the rural and poorest regions of Thailand, which was also Thaksin’s major electoral base. But the Red Shirt’s dislike for the civilian and military bureaucracy and the aristocratic class, the traditional power holders in Thailand, also have the sympathy of segments of the urban population, the middle class and the business community.

It is also tempting to compare the roguish Red Shirts with those of the May 2001 Malacanang siege or EDSA 3 that sought to restore the deposed head of government. Both shared the same lower-class background. Their protest actions were accompanied by violence that came from the state and from their ranks. Their mobilizations were similarly oiled by funds from the ousted leader.

But the Red Shirts have had more staying power than the short-lived EDSA 3 “revolt of the masses.” While the EDSA 3 mobilization was limited to Metro Manila, those in Thailand drew a wider base of participants and moved the action from one strategic site to another. While most Filipinos signed off from the protests and then waited patiently for the 2010 election to resolve the presidential legitimacy issue, the Red Shirts have not given up on forcing a power turnover favorable to Thaksin.

The other side, the yellow-shirted PAD, are not exactly of the same disposition as the mostly nonviolent rallyists in EDSA 1 and 2 either. The PAD was widely criticized for occupying the Government House, a media outfit, the Parliament, several domestic airports, and the international airport in 2008. Violent clashes between them and the Red Shirts in different protest sites have led to several deaths and injury to hundreds.

On the whole, the series of convoluted events is symptomatic of an unresolved power struggle, or, to put it mildly, the search for “equitable” sharing of power among the institutional claimants of political power in Thailand: the military, the civilian bureaucracy, the parliament, and the monarchy.

As Thailand instituted more democratic reforms – often precipitated by violent upheavals such as the October 1976 Thammasat University massacre and the May 1992 Democracy Movement – the Parliament became the main locus of central power. It was opened up to new entrants. The traditional power wielders from the military and the aristocracy had to step back as powers were increasingly transferred to elected officials and new checks installed through the judiciary and various commissions.

By the 1990s, an increasing number of MPs were businessmen. But it was Thaksin, the telecommunications mogul, who managed to build a resource-rich, widely based party that could dominate Thai politics for decades to come. Consequently, the other segments mobilized to pull down the rising star of an emerging strongman and his powerful party.

Given Thailand’s increasingly complex politics and society, bringing down Thaksin has proven to be a tricky and difficult feat after all.

E-mail: mcf178@yahoo.com