Reconciliation as Betrayal The Parallel War: Taksin and the Red Shirts1

Giles Ji Ungpakorn
Six years after the 19th September coup d'tat, it is possible to look back and assess the impact of the crisis on Thai politics and society. One way of understanding the dialectical relationship between Taksin and the Red Shirts is to borrow the concept of a parallel war from Donny Glucksteins book on the Second World War2. According to Gluckstein there were two parallel wars against the Axis Powers. One was an Imperialist War, waged by the ruling classes of Britain, the United States and Russia for their own interests, while the other war was a Peoples War against Fascism, waged by ordinary working people, many of them socialists. The two wars often overlapped in the minds of millions, but their aims were very different. We can see a kind of parallel war in the Red Shirt/UDD struggles against the military-royalist elites, where thousands of ordinary Red Shirts struggled for democracy, dignity and social justice, while Taksin and his political allies waged a very different campaign to regain the political influence that they had enjoyed before the 2006 coup d'tat. This explains the betrayal of the Red Shirt struggle by Yingluk, Taksin and the Pua Thai Party. For anyone doubting the scale of betrayal one only has to look at the issues of lse majest, the political prisoners and the non-punishment of state officials for killing protestors. The Government has increased the use of lse majest and refused to countenance any reforms of the law or even the justice system. Lse majest political prisoners like Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, Surachai Darnwatanatrakun and Da Torpedo languish in jail and their plight as prisoners of conscience is ignored by the National Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International. Even Red Shirt prisoners who were not charged with lse majest, but merely jailed for taking part in street protests, are still locked up in the political prison. As for the punishment of politicians and military commanders for the cold-blooded murder of unarmed demonstrators in 2010, no significant progress has or will ever be made. The reason for this disgraceful Pua Thai position is that Taksin and his allies see the struggle as one between them and their political opponents in the military and the Democrat Party. Taksins dispute with the military has been quietly buried, leaving the Democrat Party as the only official opponent. Taksin is equally keen to use the monarchy for his own legitimacy, just like the military, the top civil servants and other big business leaders. That is why he wishes to preserve the attack on the freedom of speech represented by lse majest. He has never been committed to Human Rights and under his government innocent civilians were murdered in the War On Drugs and in crushing protests in the South in 2004. The idea of holding any state officials and politicians to account for killing civilians is not on his agenda. Even on the issue of increasing living standards, the partial
1

Paper given in October 2012 at The Thailand Research Group, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. 2 Donny Gluckstein (2012) A People's History of the Second World War. Resistance Versus Empire . Pluto Press, London.

increase in the minimum wage to 300 Baht a day in some areas has now been coupled with a 2 year pay freeze. Despite the fact that thousands of Red Shirts supported Taksin, their struggle was shaped by their own different agenda, an agenda for the freedom and equality of ordinary citizens. Only in Taksins egotistical dreams were the Red Shirts fighting for him alone. Many Red Shirts are bitter about what has happened since the Pua Thai election victory. Many others are not ready to conclude that there has been a terrible betrayal. They continue to make up excuses for the Government. These excuses usually depend on a mistaken belief that King Pumipon is all powerful and that he controls the military and therefore nothing can be done until he dies. There is an irony that the ruling elites want to promote this line of thought about the powerful monarchy while the effect of this belief among Red Shirts causes hatred against the King and the Royal Family. Just like in Glucksteins parallel Second World War, the ability of the people or the Red Shirts to achieve their goals depends on the degree of political self-organisation, independent from the ruling class. There may be thousands of disappointed Red Shirts, but their inability to form a united progressive movement to fight for freedom and equality has allowed the UDD Red Shirt leaders to police the movement and make sure that it serves only the interests of the Pua Thai government. That is why Turn Left has suggested that progressive Red Shirts need to come together to build some kind of radical socialist organisation, with clear links to the working class, in order to keep the aspirations of the Red Shirts alive. This idea has been opposed by Niti Eawsiwong and Somsak Jiamteerasakul. Niti hopes that Red shirts can influence the Pau Thai Party from within. But Pau Thai is a typical Thai capitalist party with no internal democracy. It is controlled by people of influence. Somsak claims that it is unrealistic to build a socialist organisation. He proposes a small NGO-style pressure group made up of intellectuals like himself, independent of the Red Shirts, with the aim of pushing Pua Thai into having better policies. But small groups of intellectuals with no mass base among either the working class or the Red Shirts can have no real influence in society and no bargaining power with the elites.

The new, post-election , settlement means betrayal

Following the 2011 election we started to see a new settlement between Pua Thai and the conservative elites in order to resolve the Thai crisis in the interests of the elites. This may or may not have been a formal agreement, but by September 2011 we were already seeing the effects. Following the last major crisis during the Cold War conflict with the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), the elites crafted a settlement where parliamentary democracy was tolerated so long as elections could be dominated by money politics and there was no challenge to the ruling class from the Left. Todays settlement is designed to maintain the power of the military and also allow the Pua Thai Party to form a government and to eventually bring the Pua Thai leaders, including Taksin, back into the elites exclusive club. We must remember that previous to the 2006 crisis, Taksin and Thai Rak Thai were an accepted part of the ruling elite. This means that the so-called reconciliation will have nothing to do with expanding the democratic space or bringing state murderers to justice.

The anti-Taksin elites could not crudely and directly prevent the formation of the Pua Thai Government in August 2011 because the election result was so clear. Despite the 2006 military coup and various undemocratic actions that followed, Taksins party has continued to win elections. But at the same time Pua Thai was prepared to enter into a process of compromise, under the banner of reconciliation, by promising not to touch the military or any interests of the anti-Taksin elites. It was like we were seeing a silent coup, resulting from pressure being applied behind the scenes, in order to achieve the new settlement which betrays the aspirations of most Red Shirts. If we look at a number of important issues such as lse majest, the political prisoners and the influence of the military, we can see the results of this new settlement. The Minister for Information Technology and Communication and the Deputy Prime Minister both announced in 2011 that they would be more vigorous in using the draconian lse majest law to crack down on dissenters. Clicking like on a Facebook post, deemed to be anti-monarchy could result in jail. A special War Room was set up in order to increase internet repression. Lse majest prisoners such as Somyot Pruksakasemsuk are still awaiting trial and have been refused bail by royalist courts which favour the dictatorship and the military. The Pua Thai governments defence of lse majest shows that it is prepared to accept the continuing influence of the military in politics and hopes that the military will stop accusing Taksin and Pua Thai of being against the monarchy3. Army Chief General Prayut Junocha previously campaigned openly against Pua Thai in the run up to the election. By most democratic standards he ought to have been dismissed, but a year after the election he was still in post. The Government also gave the go-ahead for middle-ranking officers from the Burapa Payak group, who were directly involved with the sniper shootings of unarmed Red Shirts, to be rewarded with promotions. Prime Minister Yingluk also went out of her way to be seen touring flood-affected areas alongside General Prayut in 2011. Pua Thai Party promised before the elections to resolve the Southern conflict peacefully and by political means instead of using repression. At the time a limited degree of autonomy and selfgovernment was proposed. This could have been an important step forward, given the history of violent repression against Malay Muslims by the Thai Rak Thai Government in 2004 and by the Thai State since the 1870s. But the repression and injustice continued under the new government with victims of police torture being charged and jailed for speaking out. It is clear from pre-election statements made by the Army Chief General Prayut Junocha that the military do not favour any autonomy or political solution to the southern conflict. They want a military solution, which can never be successful4. The civil war in the South continues unchanged and the Pua Thai Government tries to deny that there is a genuine separatist movement, just like Taksin did when he was Prime Minister. The settlement with the elites means that it will be harder to bring to justice those who were responsible for ordering the killings of civilians. This is a very important issue for the Red Shirts. The settlement with the elites is more than anything a settlement with the military. The appointment of a military officer, with a dubious background in human rights, to the post of Defence Minister,
3

See Giles Ji Ungpakorn (2011) Lse Majest, the Monarchy, and the Military in Thailand. Paper given at the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies (Pax et Bellum), University of Uppsala, Sweden, 29th April 2011. Also Giles Ji Ungpakorn (2010) Thailands Crisis and the Struggle for Democracy . WD Press, U.K., Chapter 3. The Monarchy. Myth or Reality? All available from http://redthaisocialist.com/ 4 Giles Ji Ungpakorn (2010) Already quoted. Chapter 5.

also showed that the Government had no intention of creating a culture where elected civilians control the military. The position of even some of the more radical Red Shirt leaders on the relationship between the Red Shirt social movement and the Pua Thai Government did not make the prospect of opposing this settlement very bright. At a Red Shirt concert on 3rd September 2011 , Sombat Boon-Ngarmanong, Natawut Saikua and Jatuporn Prompan all called for Red Shirts to be patient and to support the peoples Government. Jatuporn himself was facing disqualification as an elected MP by the royalistdemominated Electoral Commission. The technicality used as an excuse for this disqualification is clearly motivated by political considerations. To achieve real democratic change Red Shirts must organise a thorough debate within the movement in order to determine their strategy to counter the settlement with the elites which betrays everything for which they have been fighting and all their dreams and aspirations. This government should be pressurised into making real democratic reforms, and if it will not listen, it should be vigorously opposed. The election was important in that it showed that most Thais opposed the military dictatorship and the Democrat Party. But the election only marked the next round of the struggle.

Lse Majest - the litmus test for Thai Democracy

In July 2011 millions of Red Shirts turned out to vote for the Pua Thai Party. But the signs were bad for the Red Shirts from the beginning. The new government did nothing about the Red Shirt political prisoners and the important issue of bringing ex-Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, his deputy Sutep Tuaksuban, and the military generals Prayut Junocha and Anupong Paojinda to justice for their key roles in gunning down nearly 90 pro-democracy civilians in 2010. Yingluk also went to pay her respects to Privy Council Chairman General Prem Tinsulanon. In late 2011, many nave Red Shirts said that we should be patient and wait because the flooding was a serious crisis which the new government had to deal with before addressing democracy, freedom of speech and justice, which had all been trampled underfoot by the military ever since the 2006 coup. After the waters receded, the excuses changed. It was argued that the Yingluk Government was biding its time and waiting for an opportune moment to reduce the power of the military. Later, as it became crystal clear that a deal had been struck with the military, those desperate or nave Red Shirts who were in denial, claimed that Pua Thai was conducting a clever and secret plan to get the better of the generals by lulling them into reconciliation. Some, however, claimed that nothing could be done because real power did not lie in the hands of the government. The Yingluk Government talked constantly about reconciliation with the conservatives, but the conservatives did not immediately reciprocate in public. They frustrated the governments flood rescue work and used the floods to accuse the government of incompetence. As far as the conservatives were concerned, it did not mean that there was no back-room agreement with Taksin Shinawat and Pua Thai. It just meant that they continued the bargaining and they continue to do so at the time of writing this chapter. 4

The extreme royalists in the Democrat Party, the military and other sections of elite society, also kept up a constant barrage about Pua Thai and Red Shirt Republicanism. The Republican mood which has swept through the Red Shirts, but not through the Pua Thai Party, was created by the royalists themselves, ever since the 2006 coup. Every repressive act was justified on the grounds that it was for the King. As a result, millions of Red Shirts even came to believe that the King had engineered the floods to punish Pua Thai and the Red Shirts. The enfeebled King, sitting in his hospital apartment for the last few years, was never strong-willed enough to organise any political action. Now he can hardly talk or stand up. But the military and the conservatives are happy to use him as a puppet and for the Thai people to think that he wields all the power5. There can never be democracy and social justice in Thailand so long as repressive laws such as lse majest and the Computer Crimes law remain on the statute books. There can never be democracy and social justice until state murders are brought to justice. The two odious politicians who are most responsible for pushing for more lse majest repression are ICT Minister Anudit Nakorntup and Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubamrung. Chalerm is a known gangster politician who made sure his gangster son avoided prosecution for shooting a policeman in a pub brawl. Meanwhile, the generals and Democrat Party politicians are braying for more blood. All those progressive Thai citizens who propose legal reforms are told to leave Thailand because they dont conform to Thai conservative culture. The irony is that all this verbal fascism was going on during the ridiculous funeral ceremony for North Koreas Kim Jong Il. Maybe the conservative Thais should have moved to North Korea! The Chairman of the previous governments Truth and Reconciliation Committee, the conservative lawyer Kanit Na Nakorn, suggested that lse majest should be reformed so that the maximum punishment would be 7 years in jail and lse majest could only be used on the say so of the Palace Secretary 6. But Kanit Na Nakorn deliberately missed the point. lse majest is an authoritarian law which tramples on the freedom of speech. It protects public figures like the King from any accountability or transparency and more importantly it protects the military because they always hide behind the King. The military, as an unelected body, are the main beneficiaries from lse majest, since the law helps them to justify all that they do, including killings and coup dtats, by claiming to protect the monarchy or even claiming to have received orders from the King. In general lse majest is an instrument to strengthen the entire modern Thai capitalist class. This is why Taksin, the military, the civilian bureaucracy and the big corporations all support and promote the monarchy. Taksins government did much to create the royalist yellow shirt mania around the Kings 60th anniversary. There are also some small details about lse majest sentencing of which people should be made aware. If individual sentences were capped at 7 years, some could still go to jail for 30 years. This is because people have been sentenced to more than one charge and the sentences are added together. There is also the question of the Palace Secretary who is bound to be an army appointee. Kanit justified this maintenance of lse majest with the usual rubbish about the need to conform to Thai Culture. Yet no society has a single culture. The Thai culture of the conservatives involves
5 6

Giles Ji Ungpakorn (2010) Already quoted. Chapter 3. http://www.prachatai.com/journal/2011/12/38535

grovelling on the floor to royalty and severe repression and exploitation of the population by the elites. It also involves the elites divine right to murder pro-democracy citizens. Opposed to this is the democratic culture of most Red Shirt citizens, which has been growing over the last few years and developed out of a long Thai tradition of resistance to the elites since the 1930s. The problem is that many weak-willed, well-meaning Thai reformers also miss the point about the fundamentally authoritarian nature of lse majest. They fall for the Thai Culture nonsense and are fearful of calling for the total abolition of the law. But without abolishing lse majest there can be no democracy. Thai citizens cannot even ask whether the Constitutional Monarchy should protect the Constitution and an elected government from a military coup!7 Even these weak reforms proposed by Kanit were vigorously opposed by Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm, who was eager to please his military masters.

Protecting the status quo through elections and reconciliation: Thailand and Burma
Elections are important political events which can be used to advertise policies, can often give encouragement and can be used to mobilise activists outside parliament. For these reasons the elections in Thailand in 2011 were important. The outcome was a clear rejection of the military and the Democrats.The elections in Burma in April 2012 were equally important for the democratic movement. They were an opportunity for thousands of Burmese, and other nationalities in the country, to show their dissatisfaction and opposition to the military dictatorship by voting for Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy and other opposition and ethnic parties. However, we must not fall into the trap of thinking that these elections are a first steps in some top-down designed road map towards democracy. In Burma they were a desperate attempt by the junta to find legitimacy for the continuation of the dictatorship. No doubt the generals were well aware of the uprisings in the Middle-East and needed to shore up their own authoritarian rule. They also hoped that Western powers would restart investment after the elections. Their hopes for Western investment were justified. The current Burmese Constitution, which was written by the military, in 2008, in order to protect its power in society, stipulates that 25% of the 664 seats in the Upper and Lower Houses of Parliament are reserved for appointed military officers. That is even before any elections took place. The military organised dirty elections in 2010 and ensured that its party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), occupied most seats. The elections in 2012 were only for 45 seats and it is these elections that Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy won most seats. Under the Burmese Constitution the government has no power to control the Burmese military (Tatmadaw). The top brass have the right to appoint the Interior, Defence and Border Ministers and to sack the government and take over, if there are any threats to stability. Many clauses in the Constitution are designed to exclude Aung San Suu Kyi and her allies from holding high office and the

I was charged with lse majest for posing such a question in my 2007 book A Coup for the Rich. I have been in exile ever since.

militarisation of ethnic border areas is guaranteed. There is no room for self-determination among by ethnic groups which make up a sizable proportion of the population. So these elections were designed by the Burmese junta as a pretend festival of democracy in order to strengthen permanent military rule. Unfortunately Aung San Suu Kyi went along with this charade by stressing the need for reconciliation with the military. In neighbouring Thailand, the Pua Thai government, elected by millions of pro-democracy Red Shirts in 2011, was also singing the song of reconciliation with the military. Right-wing analysts always state that democratic transition comes from the actions of the ruling elites and Western governments designing gradual steps towards democracy. We can see what this means in the case of Iraq or Afghanistan. Western rulers do not give a fig about democracy and human rights. What they, and authoritarian governments like China, want to stress is stability for making profits with a thin veneer of legitimacy thrown in for good measure. Socialists believe that democracy is won by mass movements from below, like the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings. Aung San Suu Kyis election victory was to be welcomed. But it could only translate into a genuine victory for democracy if Suu Kyi and the NLD used this golden opportunity to start to mobilise the pro-democracy activists outside parliament in order to overthrow the military dictatorship. Unfortunately Suu Kyi has a history, dating back to the great uprising of 8-8-88 of demobilising mass movements in order to channel political activity into parliament. The task of organising a real struggle against the military will have to be carried out by activists independently of the NLD. The situation has many similarities with Thailand. The use of elections in order to create the image of democratic change, while maintaining the old order, is also an Egyptian phenomenon. The Muslim Brotherhood leadership were expecting to police the democracy movement and prevent it from toppling the status quo. One significant difference between Thailand and Egypt, however, is that important sections of the Egyptian revolutionary movement are independent from the Muslim Brotherhood leadership and are also linked to the trade unions. The Red Shirts have yet to develop a leadership independent from Pua Thai. The reality of Pua Thais talk of reconciliation is that it means capitulation to the conditions laid down by the military. These include no change in the status of the monarchy, no reform of lse majest, no release of political prisoners, no reform of the judiciary and no prosecution of state murderers. In return, the military are happy to live with a Pua Thai Government. In fact, the military now realise that a Pua Thai Government and its supporters in the leadership of the Red Shirt UDD are much better placed to police and demobilise the Red Shirts than the previously militaryappointed Democrat Party Government. The Thai Government has no intention of bringing the state murderers of 2010 to justice. Red Shirt apologists for Pua Thai claim that to do so would be to invite a military coup. But the government could easily start prosecutions inside Thailand or at the very least pass a cabinet resolution asking the International Criminal Court to step in and take action. Such action would be very popular among millions of Red Shirts and the movement could be mobilised to defend the

government against any possible coup dtat. But Pua Thai, like the NLD in Burma do not intend to mobilise a mass movement in order to challenge the status quo.

Pua Thai and the military

On Friday 6th January 2012, representatives of 9 political parties, including Pua Thai, met under the chairmanship of ex-coup leader Gen Sonti Boonyarakalin to agree that the lse majest law should remain totally intact without any reforms. The idea that the military officer who staged the 2006 coup against an elected government should now be heading the parliamentary reconciliation committee instead of standing trial is an abomination. By 2012 it was clear that Pua Thai had stabbed the Red Shirts in the back and was attempting an elite agreement in order to protect the old order. What is more worrying is that the UDD leadership of the Red Shirt movement decided to do nothing and let the movement slowly die. All they talk about is protecting the government from a coup. But the military do not need to stage a coup dtat. The new government is a more efficient tool to stop real change in Thai society than the Democrat Party! Many try to excuse the Pua Thai government by saying that it faces intense pressure from the military. A military that shot down nearly 90 people to avoid democracy will not lie down easily. But Pua Thai won a landslide election victory and had the backing of the biggest social movement in Thai history. Instead of using these assets to their advantage in order to sack the military top brass, free all political prisoners, prosecute those who ordered the killings and re-write the Constitution, they have chosen to do a deal with their former enemies. Pua Thai is now the party of the military, just like the Democrats used to be. Another distasteful aspect of so-called reconciliation in Thailand has been to throw money at the relatives of those killed or to those who suffered in various ways during the political unrest. One is reminded of the arrogant rich buying off the families of the poor after they have killed people. The difference is that the money comes out of public funds, originating from taxes on the poor. No compensation is being paid out of the pockets of the butchering generals. In the South, money is also being thrown at relatives of civilians who were murdered in cold blood by the army during the period of the Taksin government. Thai Prime Minister Yingluks May 2012 trip to meet the Butcher of Bahrain, was also an insult to both the heroes of democracy in Thailand and in Bahrain. This trip came on the second anniversary of the deliberate shooting of pro-democracy Red Shirts by the military in Bangkok. It also came a few days after the death of political prisoner Aakong in a Thai jail. The official leadership of the Red Shirt Movement (UDD) has made meaningless noises about not forgetting the dead and the need to help prisoners. It is pushing for minor constitutional reforms, but is refusing to back the reform or abolition of lse majest and it has refused to criticise the Government.

Taksin, Pua Thai and the UDD write military atrocities out of history
Because Taksin and Pua Thai have done a deal with the military, they have stopped mentioning the role of the generals in murdering Red Shirts in 2010. They are air-brushing the military atrocities out of history. The Pua Thai government and the leadership of the UDD have been only talking about former Prime Minister Abhisit, and his deputy Sutep Tuaksuban, as being the ones responsible for the Red Shirt deaths. Taksin has also been trying to re-write history to say that the Thai crisis and 2006 coup were just about a parliamentary dispute between him along with his followers and the Democrat Party and their followers. The military have slipped from history and the Red shirts, according to Taksin, were merely his underlings8. The latter view about the Red Shirts also corresponds to the views held by conservatives who have only contempt for movements of ordinary people. In fact Taksin played no role in creating the Red Shirt movement and never actively led resistance to the military junta before that. He provided some funds for the movement after it was established, but in the main it was a democracy movement built at grass-roots level. He is now denying the strong pro-democracy current among most Red Shirts and even the republican mood which resulted from prolonged struggle. The Red Shirt movement was the biggest social movement to ever arise in Thailand. Its members have a dialectical relationship with Taksin, Thai Rak Thai and Pua Thai. While they supported Taksin and his parties, rank and file Red Shirts were also fighting for their own dignity, freedom and democracy and they made huge sacrifices for their goals. Abhisit is a weak but vicious politician who only became Prime Minister because the army put him there. He has now become Taksin and Pua Thais play thing to be kicked around and blamed for the 2010 blood bath. He certainly should be brought to trial, as he planned and supported the killings when he was Prime Minister. But the attacks on Abhisit are just for show. The elites all know that no one will be prosecuted. The so-called inquests and investigations of the military shootings by the Department of Special Investigation are also a huge staged-managed farce. No significant official results have been published in the two and a half years since the killings. The slow-moving investigations are designed to act as a smoke-screen to hide the governments betrayal and they will gradually grind to a halt when the public become tired of the issue. Taksin himself has much to lose if the killers of 2010 are brought to court. He might find himself facing charges for his own role in murdering scores of Muslim Malays in the south at Takbai in 2004. Taksin also said that the relatives and friends of those killed should be prepared to make sacrifices. It is a forgone conclusion that the lse majest political prisoners, like Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, Surachai Darnwatanatrakoon and Da Torpedo will be left to rot in jail as human sacrifices to the generals. Part of the elaborate play about reconciliation is the hiring of the lawyer Robert Amsterdam to investigate the Red Shirt deaths. Amsterdam has done a good job and uncovered much evidence about how the military and the Democrat Party murdered pro-democracy demonstrators. But his hands are tied like all lawyers. Amsterdam can do nothing about prosecuting the generals or Sutep
8

See interview with Jom Petpradab in Cambodia on 17th April 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwu0tuhRo9o&feature=plcp&context=C4c54377VDvjVQa1PpcFM3hZ3UJU4UBnc_Lmy8tzbVKe9n5DQ pUoE%3D

Tuaksuban because the government has refused to pass a cabinet resolution inviting the International Criminal Court to investigate them inside Thailand. So all he can do is to try to prosecute Abhisit outside Thailand because Abhisit also holds British citizenship. This is very convenient for the ignoring of military.

The Constitutional Court carries on the horse-trading

The existence of an agreement between Taksin/Pua Thai and the military does not mean that there is an end to all arguments and disputes among the elites. As Karl Marx once wrote, the ruling class are a bunch of warring brothers. If there is an opportunity to gain an advantage or jockey for power, this will be done. Taksins old foes do not want him to think that his return will be easy. In June 2012 the Constitutional Court ordered the suspension of a reconciliation bill going through parliament which would have granted an amnesty to all state killers and Taksin. Despite the fact that this disgusting bill was designed to only support the elites and sweep state crimes under the carpet, the actions of the Constitutional Court raise fundamental issues about democracy and whether an appointed court should have the power to block laws passed by an elected parliament. In order to over-turn the courts ruling, the elected parliament had to sit with the Senate in order to vote. Half the Senate was appointed by the military. In July 2012 the Constitutional Court also decided to consider a complaint that Pua Thais attempts to amend the Constitution were tantamount to overthrowing the monarchy. That the court should even take such accusations seriously is an indication of its lack of commitment to justice. Despite the court rejecting the accusation, it went on to abuse its power by telling the elected Government that it should only amend the Constitution after a referendum and any amendments should be done section by section. This would take up to 15 or 20 years! The courts views had no legal basis and were merely the personal opinions of the judges. There was a serious question about the legitimacy of the present 2007 Constitution, which was written by a military junta and passed using a flawed referendum while many parts of the country were still under martial law. There was also a serious conflict of interest in the Constitutional Court because many of the judges, who were appointed by the military through various channels, were responsible for drawing up the military Constitution in the first place.

The bankruptcy of Thai activists who rejected building alternative political parties
If the terrible betrayal of the Red Shirts by Taksin and the Yingluk Government proves anything, it proves the importance of organising a political party of the working class and peasantry independent of ruling class parties and not relying merely on loose collections of progressive activists within a social movement such as the Red Shirts. It also proves that the refusal by some activists to fight alongside mainstream Red Shirts, merely because the Red Shirts had illusions in Taksin, resulted in missed opportunities to influence the movement.

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Before 2006, anti-party and anti-politics ideology of autonomists within the NGO movement led NGO activists into siding with extreme right-wing royalists who supported the military coup. Instead of protecting the independence of activists in the struggle for democracy and social justice, such anti-party autonomist views have ensured that NGO activists have been pulled along behind the royalist generals and Red Shirts have been pulled along behind Pua Thai and Taksin. It is in times of crisis that activists face difficult tests and choices. Political positions that previously seemed to be roughly in line with democracy and social justice can, in times like this, be put to the test and be found wanting. No social activist operates in a vacuum of theory, even if they declare that they are only practical people, uninterested in theory, as many NGO activists are prone to do. The importance of political theory in determining practice has been proved by events in Thailand since the 2006 military coup. This is clearly highlighted by the dreadful behaviour of most Thai NGOs in the political struggles between the royalist conservatives (the Yellow Shirts) and the Red Shirts. The yellow-shirted PAD began as an alliance between disgruntled royalist media tycoon Sonti Limtongkul and a handful of NGO and social movement leaders. They attacked Taksins government for corruption. But they were never interested in criticising his human rights abuses or attacking the rampant corruption of other elites. Rather than accepting that the electorate support for Taksin was because of the governments first ever Universal Health Care scheme and many other pro-poor measures, Taksins opponents, including the NGOs, claimed that the poor did not understand Democracy and should not have the full right to vote. The NGO and social movement leaders of the PAD moved sharply to the right during the enfolding crisis, calling on the King to sack Taksins elected government in 2006 and eventually supporting the coup dtat. PAD leaders and military junta leaders were later seen celebrating their victory at a New Year party in 2007. After the 2006 coup, the P.A.D. descended into a fascist type of organisation. It took on ultra-Royalist and ultra-Nationalist politics. Like most countries throughout the World, Thailand went through a process of mass radicalisation in the late 1960s, early 1970s. The high point was when a mass movement of students and urban workers overthrew the military dictatorship in October 1973. The Maoist Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) was the organisation which gained most from this radicalisation, especially after the ruling elites fought back with a blood bath in October 1976. However, the Maoist strategy eventually failed. Into this vacuum on the Left, stepped the NGOs. After the collapse of Communism the NGO movement turned its back on politics and the primacy of mass movements and political parties in the 1980s. Instead they embraced lobby politics and/or Community Anarchism. Despite the apparent contradiction between lobby politics, which leads NGOs to cooperate with the state, and state-rejecting Community Anarchism, the two go together. This is because they reject any confrontation or competition with the state. Lobbyists cooperate with the state, while Community Anarchists hope to ignore it. They both reject building a big picture political analysis. Instead of building mass movements or political parties, the NGOs concentrated on single-issue campaigns as part of their attempt to avoid confrontation with the state. This method of working also dove-tailed with grant applications to international funding bodies. It led to a de-politicisation of the movement. Thus, NGOs cooperated with both military and elected Governments in Thailand since the early 1980s. Initially, in 2001, the NGOs loved-up to 11

Taksins TRT Government too. They believed that it was open to NGO lobbying, which it was. TRT took on board the idea of a Universal Health Care System from progressive doctors and healthrelated NGOs. But then, the NGOs were wrong-footed by the Governments raft of other pro-poor policies that seemed to prove to villagers that the NGOs had only been playing at development. After the 2006 coup dtat, some Thai NGO leaders, such as Rawadee Parsertjaroensuk (NGOCoordinating Committee), Nimit Tienudom (AIDS network), Banjong Nasa (Southern Fisher Folk network), Witoon Permpongsajaroen (Ecology movement) and Sayamon Kaiyurawong (Thai Volunteer Service) etc. put themselves forward in the hope that the military would select them as appointed Senators. Earlier, these NGO activists attended PAD rallies. Some NGO activists became government appointees under the military junta. Most had illusions that the military would clean up Thai politics with their new constitution. Many NGOs oppose Representative Democracy, along Anarchist lines, because they believe it only leads to dirty Money Politics. But the Direct Democracy in village communities, which they advocate, is powerless in the face of the all-powerful state. It also glorifies traditional and conservative village leaders which are not subject to any democratic mandate. Eventually, the idea goes together with a failure to defend Parliamentary Democracy. Their anarchistic rejection of representative politics, allowed them to see no difference between an elected parliament controlled by Thai Rak Thai (TRT) and a military coup. Instead of bothering to carefully analyse the political situation, the distrust of elections, votes and Representative Democracy allowed NGOs to align themselves with reactionaries like the PAD and the military, who advocate more appointed public positions and a decrease in the democratic space. The excuse was always that ordinary people were too poorly educated to understand democracy. The NGOs became viciously patronising towards villagers, claiming that they lacked the right information to make political decisions. In fact, there was always a patronising element to their practical work. Many Thai NGO leaders are self-appointed middle class activists who shun elections and believe that NGOs should nanny peasants and workers. They have become bureaucratised. They are now fearful and contemptuous of the Red Shirt movement. On the opposite side, the progressive Red Shirts who oppose Pua Thai and lse majest are weakened by a lack of centralised coordination and unclear alternative political agendas. Both sides have failed to build an alternative political party to the parties of the elites.

Conclusion
The main obstacles to the development of democracy and a mainstream citizen culture in Thailand are the military-monarchy alliance and the domination of electoral politics by parties representing big business. The dismal role of middle class so-called civil society groups such as academics and NGOs has also helped to support the destruction of democracy. It is clear that Thai society can only be democratised from below by mass movements like the Red Shirts. But such mass movements are no automatically progressive, either, and if they do not have close links with the labour movement they will lack the power to take on the military and break its domination of politics.

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Given the betrayal of the democracy movement by the elite agreement between Pau Thai and the military, it is not surprising that many Red Shirts are disillusioned and angry with the government and the UDD leadership. The government suffered a number of local election and by-election defeats in 2012, although it is not clear that this was due to betrayals in the name of reconciliation. It is impossible to make an assessment of the numbers of progressive Red Shirts who are angry with Pau Thai and the UDD leadership without conducting a systematic poll or without these progressive activists organising themselves into a new activist political party. Such an activist party would have to place its emphasis on extra-parliamentary mobilisations, especially among trade unionists and disillusioned Red Shirts. This would also act as a pole of attraction for those Red Shirts who are unhappy with the Pua Thai Government but are lacking in confidence to believe that there is a practical alternative to Pua Thai policies. At the very least, progressive Red Shirts should coordinate their activities together and coalesce around key demands such as support for the Nitirat Proposals, scrapping of lse majest, release of all political prisoners, reform of the judiciary and bringing the state killers to justice. Demands for a welfare state would also strengthen the struggle for social justice which is part of the struggle for democracy. Without coordinating this alternative political leadership of the Red Shirts, the UDD will continue to police the movement and turn it into a passive supporters club for Pua Thai and Taksin.

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