PAD supporters should dump leaders

By Pravit Rojanaphruk

The Nation

Published on September 20, 2008

 

People who joined the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) should abandon their leaders, because the leadership's goal in promoting "New Politics" - wherein 70 per cent of the members of the House of Representatives would be appointed - is anti-democratic, Thammasat University anthropologist Yukti Mukdavijit said yesterday.

Yukti was speaking at a symposium organised at Thammasat by the Santi Prachadhamma group, which was formed recently by academics from several universities to seek a solution to the present political crisis. He said ordinary PAD demonstrators should instead organise themselves and push for genuine democracy and not "conservative" politics that propagated ultra-nationalist, ultra-royalist fervour and promoted the "old political order".

"The end is coming soon for the PAD, but the question is: how can it end without decimating the people's movement along with the PAD?"

The anthropologist said the PAD was actually not a new social movement, but rather an old one seeking to usurp state power and risked eventually becoming the oppressor itself.

He urged PAD followers to seek a long-term revolution and become "post-modern rebels" by paying attention to many disparities, such as ethnicity, gender, age, locale and class.

Thammasat economist Apichat Satitniramai said the PAD leadership and the academics who supported them could no longer claim to be representing democracy, because their ideology and goals were to establish rule by the privileged and philosopher kings.

Apichat said although he believed the Thaksin Shinawatra group bought votes, voters also made decisions based on the fact that the Thai Rak Thai Party and then the People Power Party offered a populist platform of affordable healthcare and cheap loans. Thus, PAD supporters must understand that poor rural voters are not stupid and in fact made "rational choices" when they supported the Thaksin clique.

Another speaker, Ubonrat Siriyuwasak, a former lecturer of mass communication at Chulalongkorn University, said "New Politics" reminded her of the New Order under Indonesia's President Suharto, where the military had a special, dual role.

"It reminds me of a guided democracy as opposed to mass democracy." PAD leader Sondhi Limthongkul recently said in an interview that he wanted the military to come under the monarch and not the government.

Ubonrat condemned "New Politics" as a political ideology in which the political rights of the elite are treated as more valuable than those of ordinary people.

Ubonrat also said the media should ask themselves whether they're currently playing the role of observer, referee or supporter of one of the conflicting parties.

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