Countdown to coup
LONDON: There’s a familiar tension simmering in Thailand. Growing dissatisfaction among the middle and lower classes is close to ruining a bubbling political hotpot in the hands of Abhisit Vejjajiva, an unelected pretty-boy prime minister whose rise to power was only possible thanks to deals struck with the army and corrupt politicians.
But the people have had enough — in more ways than one. The rural electorate yearns for its exiled patron saviour, Thaksin Shinawatra, while yellow-shirt supporters, unhappy with how events have unravelled since they brought down an elected government in 2006 with a little help from the army and the palace, are getting stuck into yet another radical campaign.
The predominantly yellow-shirt middle classes, who have historically been happy to tout the virtues of democracy until they start to lose control, have once again reacted negatively to the lower-class upsurge that has gripped the nation for the past few years.
Yet there is another factor in play and one that is blossoming thanks in no small part to social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook: middle-class antagonism towards the upper class. Examples of this can be seen in the public outcry in the wake of a car smash that left nine people dead last December.
A 16-year-old girl, Orachorn “Praewa” Thephassadin Na Ayuttaya, was on January 5 charged with reckless driving causing death and injury to others and driving without a licence after her car slammed into a full passenger van on the Don Muang expressway in Bangkok.
But it wasn’t the accident that had people foaming at the mouth – it was Praewa’s family name. Coming from a privileged background in a country with a fundamentally flawed justice system, Praewa quickly became the target of a middle-class online lynch mob – a powerful analogy for social frustration if ever there was one.
More than 300,000 Thais showed their support for a Facebook group of people who “hate” Praewa while Twitter came alive with an onslaught of death wishes and vulgar insults. Could this be a sign of a growing displeasure with the status quo in Thailand?
The irrational nature of Thailand’s online fanatics has been seen before, most notably last year when a wave of nationalist sentiment gripped yellow-shirt supporters unhappy with what they perceived to be biassed reporting by foreign media during the Battle for Bangkok in April and May.
The yellow shirts have now put their nationalist cards on the table with protests against the government’s laissez faire approach to disputed territory on the border with Cambodia while the red shirts are back on the streets with monthly demonstrations seeking justice for the 90 people killed in last year’s street clashes with government troops.
With Thai society falling apart at the seams and an ailing monarch’s network frantically pulling strings, it’s only a matter of time before the military steps in and the whole palaver begins again.