Yellow, Pale Yellow, Red Or Orange?

[Xangsamhua]

In a bookshop yesterday, leafing through Pasuk and Baker's revised edition of their book on Thaksin, I was struck by the comment on p. 362 that people looking for reconciliation or a third way had been put off by, among other things, by PAD's "batant violence".

Now, I'm familiar with this kind of assertion from people hostile to PAD, but was surprised to see it stated as bluntly by reputable authors, so I thought I'd better check through the pages referring to the PAD and, in fact, found precious little to support such an assertion.

P&B cite (I'm working from memory, as I was too mean to buy the book) as instances of PAD violence that (1) they had guards with weapons - in one search pingpong bombs and grenades were found; (2) they had acted menacingly and treated property roughly in raids on government buildings; (3) they had got into fights with the Love Udon people up there, resulting in head abrasions to the Love Udon leader; (4) they had shouted loudly at government officials visiting the South; (5) they'd got into fights with people in Sisaket, and (5) one of the PAD guards close to the time of the airport seizure was seen firing a pistol at opponents.

These incidents (apart from no. 5) don't really sound to me like "blatant violence", unless the term includes powder-puff violence. If someone asks me which organisations are blatantly violent, I'd probably think of Nazi stormtroopers, neo-Nazis, Islamic extremists and the like. I would not really associate the term with an organisation whose leaders profess "ahimsa" (non-violence).

Acts contrary to ahimsa committed by members or supporters of that organisation would be deviations from its principles. One would also need to ask whether and under what circumstances weapons are used and acts of real violence occur. Those considerations don't appear to have occurred to Pasuk and Baker, who have lapsed instead into repetition of the mantra of "moral equivalence" to the effect that each side is just as violent as the other - a shallow view that contributes nothing without evidence, and the evidence doesn't seem to be there in P&B's book.

I'm sympathetic to the PAD's demand for accountability among the nation's leaders, and sympathetic to the UDD's demand for popular democracy, though I'm skeptical that Thai political processes and structures are at the stage where either of these demands are practicable. As I'm questioning Pasuk and Baker's comments regarding PAD, I should declare that I'm more yellow than red. Not that it matters, as I don't vote and am therefore disenfranchised from any substantial part in the political and civic processes here. Hence, I'm putting forward these thoughts as an observation on how debate on the issues has degenerated. (There is a sub-text, I suppose, defending the PAD's general avoidance of violence except where provoked, but if there is substantial evidence in support of P&B's assertion I'm happy to take it on board. Why not? I'm a foreigner - a mere observer of Thai politics, not a partisan.)

Edited November 29, 2009 by Xangsamhua