Removing Thaksin Mindfully

[sabaijai]

Remove Thaksin Mindfully

Sulak Sivaraksa

We all must understand that this struggle against Thaksin Shinawatra is a confrontation with Mara: this is a ‘just’ war; that is, the Good will prevail over Mara through nonviolent and dhammic means, employing sincerity, compassion, transparency, humility, patience, wisdom, and solidarity.

We must not forget that the Lord Mara is wily, intelligent, and devious. Two days ago, he mobilized hundreds of thousands to come to his rally by fooling them, by bribing them. He believed that it was legitimate to do so. Put differently, he has consistently seen injustice as justice, has deliberately confused the distinction between lies and truths, the Wrong View and the Right View, the Devil’s Discus and the Lotus. He had bought votes. He had used all sorts of trickery in the general election. He had lied to the people to gain their votes. The sad part is that many Thais still hold him in awe: they are still mesmerized by Thaksinism.

Admittedly, he had once fooled me too. I had firmly believed that he would gradually diverge from his Wrong Livelihood, which has enabled him to accumulate massive wealth. Many of us felt that he had already done his share of getting rich, and therefore he would now work selflessly for the people by narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor and by cultivating Right Livelihood; that is, simplicity and humility (along the lines advocated by the King). I was wrong.

We believed that he had made an honest mistake in the concealment of his financial assets in 2001. So we helped mobilize the people to support and sympathize with him. We wanted him to have an opportunity to work for the people. We believed that the Constitutional Court would serve as a major pillar in upholding justice and accountability in society. In the end, Thaksin narrowly escaped a five-year ban on holding political office. We failed to see that the judges of the Court were filled with prejudices, and many were quite devious. Moreover, that the Court recently rejected a petition to impeach Thaksin is yet another proof that it lacks neutrality—that it is under the influence of the Lord Mara.

For long, people like me have closely followed the administration of Thaksin Shinawatra. It took awhile before we could call a spade a spade and see through Thaksin’s web of deceits and the devastation his policies has wreaked on society. We are not surprised that many people are unable to see this fact. The government has intervened in the workings of the mass media. Thaksin bought several media companies himself and destroyed many others. The mass media have engaged in self-censorship. Several independent reporters and journalists were fired. TV and radio programs critical of Thaksin were shut down. Lackeys were promoted to eulogize the wonders of Thaksin, demonize his opponents, and spread lies and half-truths. (One or two of them just fell from grace recently, however. And soon Thaksin will follow suit.) All in all, the mass media are no longer free and independent.

For many years, many have already pointed out Thaksin’s deviousness, and so I won’t repeat their points. I’d like to stress that he’s very corrupt and manipulative, and has broken all of the Five Precepts, which serve as the minimal basis for creating a just and peaceful society.

Violating the First Precept, Thaksin has used legal and extra-legal measures to kill thousands (many were probably innocent) in his ‘war on drugs.’ Several international human rights organizations have heavily condemned these measures. But many Thais chose to remain oblivious to this fact and to continue supporting Thaksin—seeing violence as a ‘necessary evil.’ Some monks have even publicly supported the killing of drug suspects. Countless also ‘disappeared’ in Narathiwat and Pattani provinces as a result of Thaksin’s policy on ‘quelling’ the Southern unrest—that is, state-sponsored violence. Thaksin has helped fanned parochial nationalism. Buddhists were pitted against Muslims, and Thais against Malayans. All these are quite unprecedented. And we must not forget the unleashing of violence on those demonstrating against the construction of the Thai-Malay gas pipelines—or of the Pak Moon Dam for that matter, or the fact that he risked the lives of Thai soldiers by sending them to Iraq in order to curry favor from the lords of the American empire. He also allowed the Americans to operate a secret detention center in the kingdom to torture ‘terrorist’ suspects.

Concerning the violation of the Second Precept, Thaksin has robbed tax payers’ money, siphoning it into private coffers—his own and his cronies’. They are all influential at the local and the international levels. The selling of the Shin Corp stocks is the latest evidence, and it serves as the last straw. All those who could no longer tolerate his corruption gradually came out to remove him from power. Thaksin treats the kingdom as his private fiefdom to enrich his and his cronies’ pockets. The FTA agreement with China is robbing or bankrupting poor Thai farmers; he had cracked down on Falungong followers in Siam and had refused H.H. the Dalai Lama’s entry into the kingdom to appease the Chinese leaders. Further showing his callous disregard for human rights, Thaksin has befriended the Burmese military junta—the worst of its kind in the region—and has used Thai tax payers’ money to support them in exchange for lucrative business deals. All things considered, Thaksin is more than willing to sell the kingdom and its citizens to TNCs and other countries like Singapore. If Thaksin and his pals (a handful of families) can get obscenely richer by eroding national sovereignty, so be it.

As for breaking the Third Precept, I don’t have hard evidence. But there are lots of rumors that Thaksin and his cabinet ministers have engaged in many illicit sexual reveries—that Thaksin has been unfaithful to his wife. There is even a toddler who looks astonishingly like Thaksin. All these still cannot be proven. So we may have to give him the benefit of the doubt. But truths about Thaksin’s notorious sexual life will surely surface after his fall from power—like those of the dictator Sarit Thanarat.

Now, on the violation of the Fourth Precept. Thaksin uses the mass media to deceive the people. The truth is undermined or asphyxiated. Lies and half-truths circulate endlessly. Thaksin likes to say that he was born poor, but now he’s a billionaire. His mission is to make everyone as rich as he is; that is, he’s the benchmark. Many are seduced by this promise. But with a modicum of commonsense we would realize how outrageous the promise is. We would know that his wealth was—is being—amassed through deceits and the Wrong Livelihood. It’s impossible for everyone to be a Thaksin. But it is possible for the rich to level down—to reduce their greed, for instance. It’s possible for the people to pursue a simple and humble way of life. Thaksin got rich through devious means, both legal and illegal. He makes a virtue out of thievery. Now he wants all of us to be rich by being thieves. Wouldn’t this destroy Buddhism in the kingdom?

As for breaching the Fifth Precept, Thaksin uses the mass media to intoxicate the people. The people are urged to entertain themselves to death and to worship capitalism and consumerism—at the expense of morality, social justice, environmental sustainability, local cultures, and so on.

If we don’t understand these facts, we’ll give a free hand to a bunch of immoralists to run the country and exploit the people. Governing the country is not simply a matter of political science and the law. But it is also about ethics and legitimacy. Since Thaksin has lost legitimacy, his time is up. The sovereignty of the people enables them to remove Thaksin. Thaksin is no longer able to represent them.

When King Rama IV ascended to the throne of the Chakkri Dynasty he declared, “I will rule the land with justice.” All his successors likewise made the same declaration. King Rama IV added that his subjects and officials had the right to remove him from the throne if he had failed to uphold justice in the land. It seems that a Siamese king had the moral courage to enable his subjects to remove him. Thaksin on the other hand sees himself as above the king—who’s he to think that we cannot remove him from power? We can vote with our feet to remove him from power.

Thaksin has shamelessly argued that he must stay in power to organize the 60 th anniversary celebration of the king’s accession to the throne. This auspicious occasion should be organized by a virtuous person, not a thug who plunders his own people and country.

All of us who uphold justice must find nonviolent ways to remove Thaksin from power—the sooner, the better. It won’t be easy. We have to rely on the dhamma. We must not allow hatred, love, anger, etc. to dominate us. Verbally assaulting Thaksin may bring fulfillment in the short run. But in the long run it lacks real value. Rather, we must nurture compassion (loving oneself and others selflessly); loving-kindness (willing to serve the poor and the exploited and to learn from them); good will towards others (we must not hate Thaksin and the TRT for the karma they have committed will eventually return to haunt them); and equanimity (we must examine and overcome the prejudices in our hearts in order to prevail over devious people nonviolently).

Like in the Buddha’s confrontation with Mara, we must rely on wisdom. Wisdom is not only about correct thinking, but also about harmonizing the mind and the heart. With wisdom, we’ll be able to forgive Thaksin. Forgivingness means the absence of fear or freedom from fear. And fear is really about the greed, hatred, and delusion brewing inside of us. If we are able to overcome fear, we’ll have sympathy for Thaksin, who’s now in a living hel_l. And, hopefully, one day after his resignation he’ll emerge from it to be enlightened by the dhamma. This will be a long and drawn out struggle. We need to maintain patience and mindfulness. And victory will be ours. It will be a victory for the Thai people as well as for the dhamma.

Remove Thaksin Mindfully Remove Thaksin Mindfully