Fiasco

Thailand has really been in "political crisis"---the term Bangkok headline writers keep using these days---since 1932, when a group of Thai students in Paris came home and overthrew the king. Since then, there have been 18 military coups and innumerable short-lived elected or more-or-less-elected governments, several of them, it often seems, in the last ten minutes. Following yesterday's debacle---the collapse of the ASEAN summit after protesters took over the Asian leaders' hotel in Pattaya---it's hard to imagine the government of the hapless Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjaajiva surviving for long. What's even harder to imagine is who in God's name among the current cast of dubious characters could bring the peace and quiet and stability that the vast majority of Thais want so badly.

The least likely savior is the man who has been relentless in his strivings to return to power, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. A charasmatic crook, Thaksin fueled the Thai economic boom and won over labor and farmers with low-interest loans, cheap medical care and---his critics say---out and out "vote-buying." He also curtailed civil liberties and dealt with a drug epidemic by unleashing the police to murder as many as 2,000 dealers in a period of a few months. Fatally for him, Thaksin seemed to have designs of some sort on King Bhumibole, the beloved 82-year-old constitutional monarch who has little legal power but still seems to have the final word on Thailand's larger matters.

So Thaksin got tossed out in a military coup in 2006. When parliamentary democracy was restored a year later, he was barred from office and then convicted of corruption. He has been out of the country and on the lam for over a year. In an apparent plot to recapture power, Thaksin (pronounced like "toxin") has been exhorting mobs of his red-shirted supporters to "restore democracy" with disruptive mass protests meant to make it impossible for Abhisit to govern. Rampaging mobs tied up traffic in Bangkok on Thursday, and yesterday's ASEAN fiasco---with Chinese and other heads of state being rescued by helicopter from a hotel rooftop---left Thailand humiliated and Abhisit's government, the "yellow shirts," disheveled to the point of irrelevance.

What next? Who knows. Meanwhile, the Songkran holiday period has begun---the Buddhist New Year and water festival is as important in Thailand as Christmas is in the United States---and many thousands of Thais have gone to the seashore or back to their villages for family reunions. For three days many of them will also throw water on one another and on tourists. This custom is a lot of fun for the first forty-five minutes.

The Bangkok Post reported today on polls showing that many Thais are sad and depressed over the latest political turmoil. It's similar to what they put up with in December when the yellow shirts shut down the airport for a week, stranding tourists and badly hurting the economy. I can report, however, that I checked in yesterday at one of the city's gay venues, and sadness and depression were not in evidence there. The lads (of all ages) were partying on, as they will do. These purposeful people might do well, in fact, at running the country---certainly better than the current crowd is doing---if anybody could get their attention.

Joe returns to Thailand from India on Wednesday. He says he has gotten great pictures in Varanasi, the strange and beautiful city on the Ganges where Hindus are cremated and their ashes merged with the holy river to break the otherwise endless cycle of death and rebirth. He told me that at one funeral pyre he saw a drunken family member forcibly restrained by others when the drunk began whacking the head of the flaming deceased with a long stick. Joe figured he was seeing signs of some "unresolved issues."