Indifference Will Ensure that Thailand Continue to Wallow in Social and Political Morass
For the first time in Thai history, there is a widespread popular movement for change. Two groups, distinguished by the yellow and red shirts they wear, are the largest and most potent. Both claim to be fighting evils which they say are the root cause of social and political problems facing Thailand. The yellow shirts started first and their street protests contributed to the 2006 coup and subsequent changes in government. Starting later, the red shirts have employed similar tactics but without causing any change of government, yet.
Although no one can tell for sure the sizes of these two groups, the gatherings during their protests would seem to indicate that the front-line participants who are involved directly are likely to number in the hundreds of thousands. For each of the participants, there could be a few supporters who provide financial and material backing. Active participants in the two groups, therefore, would add up to a few million.
The question is: What does the vast majority of the over 45 million adult Thais do?
With the ease of communications and widespread dissemination of information via television and other means, one would have to assume that most of them are aware of the claims and activities of the two groups and have chosen not to participate in either. Granted that many may not have the wherewithal to do so even if they wish to, or may have joined smaller groups, but most have chosen to sit on the fence because fence-sitting makes up a major part of the foundation upon which most Thais lead their lives. Some old words of wisdom, therefore, are readily cited: don’t look for trouble; self preservation is best. This fence-sitting behavior will be the main obstacle preventing the two groups from removing what they see as “evils” and thus from achieving their goals.
Thais, however, are not unique in the art of fence-sitting despite serious consequences that this may entail. Take the uprising of the Filipinos, who were fed up with widespread corruption practiced by the Marcos regime. They were able to topple the government in 1986. That gargantuan achievement, however, did not lead the Philippines out of the vicious circle of corruption which prevents it from achieving development that its people deserve. Many factors could be cited as reasons for this outcome, but a major one has to be that a vast majority of Filipinos chose to fence-sit and, as a result, the “people power” movement could not be sustained. It was a lost opportunity of the first degree.
If one wishes to be more adventurous and go back further in time, it would not be too far-fetched perhaps to cite Hitler. Were the major powers that won World War I spending so much time doing nothing and by that act allowing Hitler to build up the armed forces of the Third Reich that led to World War II? Did the good-hearted Germans choose to be indifferent while Hitler carried out the extermination program that killed millions of people he considered undesirable? The specific points of these events could be debated endlessly but the fact remains that during crucial junctures of history, without widespread indifference, the outcomes could have been significantly different.
It was the popular movement that prevented a Marcos-cum-Hitler from rising in Thailand recently. Now comes a harder part: carrying that movement forward to achieve social and political changes that the country needs. The movement can only be sustained if millions more Thais abandon their fence-sitting posture and directly participate in or actively support whatever groups they consider the best to achieve the desirable outcome. Otherwise, Thailand will lose a golden opportunity to change for the better and continue to wallow in social and political morass seen over the last few years.
Leave a Reply