Relay from Kelly in Thailand, about the coup
Hi all,
Here’s my quick mass mailing to say if you were worried abt things in
Thailand, they’re all okay. At least from my point of view.
The prime minister may have a different answer.
This note also serves to say I finally got around to starting a blog:
http://freelancefirstlady.blogspot.com
Below is today’s post on the coup; I’ll try to update it as life unfolds here. XXKelly
It’s true, there’s a coup in Thailand.
About
ten-thirty last night, just as I was getting in bed, a friend called
and told me to turn on CNN. Sure enough, there were pictures of tanks
outside the parliamentary buildings, a part of town not close to where
I am but not exactly far, either. The distance between City Hall and
Columbia University in Manhattan.
Because it was already
nighttime in Bangkok, nothing seemed particularly different or strange.
It was only when CNN and the BBC suddenly cut out that things began to
feel a little weird. At some point in the middle of the night, the
electricity went off.
This morning I got up as usual and went to
yoga. The streets were quiet, which is not so strange since it was
6:45am, but the studio was locked. A few of the other students and I
loitered in the lobby. Schools, banks, and most offices are closed
today. One of the other students had seen tanks on her way to class.
Eventually
the teacher showed up and, even though none of the other staff was
there, smuggled us in the back way, which I guess means we launched our
own coup of the yoga studio.
By the time we finished practicing
this morning, the streets were still empty — the intersection at
Chitlom, which I usually have to take my life in my hands to cross, was
so deserted I stood in the middle of the road for a few seconds just to
savor the experience. At 9am the rush hour Sky Train was virtually
empty, and people were quiet and looked glum.
Mostly it feels
like a snow day: I’m home again in my pajamas, drinking tea and keeping
an eye on the news online. Even the weather is unusual — cool and
raining. I live in a very ex-patty neighborhood, flanked by shopping
malls, so I can’t imagine that I would feel threatened unless the army
tried to take over the Emporium Department Store. As far as I know, the
shoe sale is still on, and good news — the dollar is strong against
the baht!
As for the political situation, it’s still hard to
know what’s going on. Thaksin has been politically under siege for
months, but there hasn’t been a sense of violence or abject power
grabbing. Well, maybe a little — there was a staged attempt on
Thaksin’s life a few weeks ago, but even that seemed more like
political theater than an actual threat.
I know that “coup
d’etat” sounds dramatic and makes Thailand appear a banana republic
(or, as my political scientist friend calls Thailand, a banana
monarchy), but in fact Bangkok is a very firt-world city, and this coup
seemingly a very white-collar maneuver. Sure, it’s no surprise that a
lot of the politicians are corrupt, and that there’s dissent in the
ranks, but the issues have been playing out more on the stock exchange
and Op-Ed page than the streets — that the military has taken control
seems a bizarre response to the situation. It would be as if Enron
middle-management had staged a coup.
The wild card, of course,
is the king. The general who’s taken over doesn’t really want to retain
power for himself and has declared his allegience to the king; even the
tanks circling Government House are wearing yellow ribbons, the symbol
of the monarchy.
But, the king isn’t a substitute for a prime
minister, and he isn’t a replacement for Thaksin. A few months ago,
when the dubiously-called elections were found to be
dubiously-monitored and Thaksin the dubious winner, some of the
opposition asked the king to intervene and appoint a prime minister.
The king went on national television and scolded them: this is a
democracy, he said, and a democracy holds elections. (To that point,
Thaksin has been legitimately elected twice by an overwhelming
majority.)
It seems to me with this coup that the general is now
forcing the king’s hand, making him intervene and perhaps appoint
someone else. Or, declare his support for Thaksin, which may be in the
best interest of democracy but does not seem to be in keeping with the
king’s personal taste.
It’s a curious kind of coup that a)
declares allegience to someone else; b) puts that someone else in an
impossible position; c) justifies itself by saying the country is too
divided under the current leader, and a coup is therefore required to
restore harmony; d) apologizes to the citizens for the inconvenience.
Even in their coups the Thai are Thai.