It Takes Time To End Conflict: Theerayuth

It takes time to end conflict: Theerayuth

Pravit Rojanaphruk

The Nation

BANGKOK:-- There is no short-term solution to ending Thailand's on-going political conflict but long-term measures can be taken up in order to arrive at a solution in a more distant future, said well-known Thammasat University sociologist Theerayuth Boonmee.

Theerayuth said the problem is deep-rooted and stem from a century of political centralization and socio-economic and political disparity between urban and rural areas. It is also an ideological conflict between well-to-do political conservatives who values centralized controls, morality, law and order and the poor who wants to see respect for the majority of the electorate, better livelihood and tangible progress.

One key pre-conditions, said Theerayuth is for people from both sides of the political divides to acknowledge the existence of one another. Theerayuth said yellowe shirts are often characterized as being "ultra-nationalists" by red shirts while yellow shirts regarded red shirts as "fools who are being deceived" by ousted and fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra. He urges both sides of the divides to "adjust" themselves without fear of loosing face and be fair to one another.

The sociologist and was always critical of Thaksin warned that poor people, most of whom are red shirts will no longer accept the hegemonic discourse about being a good person and sacrifice for a common good when they are poor and those who tell them to sacrifice are well-off. "[They] always call for ordinary folks to be patience, to sacrifice...When the hegemonic discourse doesn’t work they resort to staging military coup," he said, adding that he does not support military coup, despite Theerayuth’s own lack of opposition back in 2006.

Theerayuth, who held a one-man press conference at Thammasat University Sunday said he fears that if the conflicts further develop into regional and cultural divides, things will become even more difficult.

The role of the monarchy institution in a modern and globalized society must also be debated, Theerayuth suggested.

What Thailand need is not just a strong democracy but "strong right, strong freedom and strong responsibility" and it calls for people willing to questions the powers that be, including the populist policies initiated by Thaksin and now continued by Yingluck which he insisted, is not sustainable but will eventually bankrupted the treasury.

What is needed is a re-imagining of what Thailand should look like in the future, including what kind of democracy.

While praising Prime Minister Yingluck for her "smart" fashion sense and being photogenic and predicting that by the year’s end Yingluck will be named as one of the best dressed female leaders in the world, Theerayuth remains sceptic of Thaksin, calling the influential former premier "more of a marketing man than a man of democracy".

He said Thaksin and the ruling Pheu Thai Party will like hold on to three strategies: widen its grassroots base of support, co-opting the check and balance system of the courts and then so-called independent organizations as well as the military.

"For the established conservatives they won’t succeed in expanding the grass root base of support because they tell [the grass roots] to endure and live self-sufficiently and that won’t cut, especially when those words come from rich people... This is the problem," he said, adding that he only think the support base amongst grassroots for the established conservatives will only shrink.

Theerayuth touched upon other issues of concerns that ought to be addressed including history.

On history, Theerayuth said Thai history is too royal-centric and commoner are not being adequately honoured like those in foreign countries and statues, streets and public buildings are named after them. "The stress in a royal historiography. There exist no history of society as a whole. It’s as if people who various professions played no role in building the nation," said Theerayuth.

-- The Nation 2012-03-18