Asia-Pacific, Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights

THAILAND: Anti-gov’t Movement Opens Rural Minds through ‘Schools’

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BAAN MUANG, Thailand, Feb 10 2010 (IPS) - Adult education of a novel kind is making its way through this remote town of rice farmers, who are drawn to it by a desire to learn about this kingdom’s deep political and social divisions.

Wisa Khanthap, a member of the UDD's 'political school', talks about  the marginalisation of the poor in Thailand with his 'Red Shirt' pupils. Credit: Marwaan Macan-Markar/IPS

Wisa Khanthap, a member of the UDD's 'political school', talks about the marginalisation of the poor in Thailand with his 'Red Shirt' pupils. Credit: Marwaan Macan-Markar/IPS

On a recent Sunday, over 700 men and women filled the main hall of a private technical college in Baan Muang, in Thailand’s north-eastern province of Sakon Nakhon, to get their introductory lesson. Some of the students, whose ages ranged from the early 30s to the mid-70s, came from here; some from neighbouring villages.

The uniform they wore for this whole day of lectures and discussions revealed where their political loyalties lay in this South-east Asian nation’s colour-coded political schism. All sported the red shirts of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), a protest movement with strong links to the ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Songkan Chumpunsa was among them. The 39-year-old paddy farmer’s return to the halls of learning comes 25 years after she, like many others in this rural community, finished formal education in elementary school. She was 12 years old at that time.

Songkan’s quest for knowledge that drew her to the Sunday school is rooted in the events of April 2009, when mayhem broke out in Bangkok after UDD supporters clashed with the Thai military and were vanquished by a superior armed force.

“This is the first time I am joining this school,” says Songkan, a mother of two children. “I want to learn about injustice and what is wrong in our country after I became an active supporter of the Red Shirts after the April crackdown last year.”


Her views are echoed by Pathamawan Sriwongudonslip, who gave up her normal Sunday routine tending to the orchids in her garden to don a red shirt and to listen to lectures on political, social and economic injustice that voters in rural Thailand have been subjected to by Bangkok’s royalist-dominated political machine.

The 67-page manual distributed to students like Songkan and Pathamwan leave little doubt that these “political schools,” as the UDD leaders describe them, have aims that are far from bridging this country’s deep and widening political and social fault lines. With its deceptive soft-pink cover, the manual hammers away at the pro-royalist political establishment, or the ‘Amart’, as it is known in Thai.

“(In the Amart’s point of view), the majority of Thai people are ignorant and easily bought and have low moral consciousness. It is inappropriate if we let the low-class people, including the low-class rich, use the power of the majority,” declares one chapter of ‘Political Guidelines’, describing how the country’s majority voters, the rural poor, are perceived by the ‘Amart’.

“Thailand has to destroy this kind of fighting based on majority power no matter how (undemocratic) it is, no matter how many people are killed,” the text continues, trying to drive home the point to the rural poor about the power of their vote and who seeks to emasculate that.

“I want to expose the contradictions in our society, the double standards, the political and economic injustice,” reveals Dr Weng Tojirakarn, one of the UDD leaders spearheading this education programme for the anti-government protest movement’s increasingly politically awakened supporters. “We are trying to educate the people about the need to understand who the real enemies of Thai democracy are.”

And it is his role as a political educator that brought the 58-year-old family physician to this province on a Sunday. On weekends, he launches into this career as a lecturer, criss-crossing the provincial hinterland. Weekdays find him in his Bangkok clinic, caring for his patients.

Dr Weng and his team of four lecturers expect busy times ahead, given the growing demand for these “political schools” in the north and north-east provinces. The Sunday school in Baan Muang became the 10th that has opened since the UDD embarked on this line of activity late last year. Similar sessions have been held in the provinces of Chiang Mai, Khon Kaen and the neighbouring province of Udon Thani.

“We’ll open four schools the next weekend (Feb. 13-14),” reveals Jaran Ditapichai, a former member of the national human rights commission and a UDD leader. “The concept behind these schools is to allow people who are Red Shirt supporters to learn more about the movement and the direction it is taking.”

The day-long sessions usually end with discussions about how to organise at the community level so that “we can have better coordination,” Jaran confirmed after delivering his lecture at the Baan Muang technical college. “Part of that includes the communities electing their own leader.”

But these “political schools” are not the only feature of the UDD’s evolving strategy to cater to its rural support base.

In this province, for instance, UDD membership brings with it a telephone card with three mobile phone numbers to connect a central call centre. The latter serves as a clearinghouse of information, clarifying queries and supplying details about planned Red Shirt rallies.

In the coming weeks too, fortunate UDD supporters in this province who cannot afford a state-of-the-art satellite dish will have access to cheaper ways to view programmes on a pro-UDD television station. An estimated first set of 1,000 satellite dishes will be offered to them at a cheaper price of 1,200 baht (35 U.S. dollars) each.

These would give farmers like Songkan access to all the pro-UDD information outlets that, in addition to the “political schools” and television station, already include a stable of community radio stations, newspapers, magazines and websites.

A key beneficiary of this UDD information network is Thaksin, the political godfather of the Red Shirts. He is tapping into this expanding support base in rural Thailand to have the numbers on his side ahead of a Feb. 26 verdict by the Supreme Court. The pivotal ruling will determine the fate of Thaksin’s 2.2 billion U.S. dollars worth of assets, which were frozen by the junta that came to power in September 2006 by turfing out the elected Thaksin administration in this country’s 18th coup.

Rural support for Thaksin, who has been living in exile to avoid a two-year jail term for corruption, is strong. It stems from the wide support the billionaire telecommunications tycoon received from the country’s rural voters in the north and north-east as a result of many pro-poor policies he implemented while in power. But such election majorities – where his former party and one allied to him won four successive elections – did not translate into political stability for him.

In addition to the September 2006 putsch, UDD supporters have been seething at the role that the courts have taken to disenfranchise them. This happened in December 2008, when a pro-Thaksin party elected the year before was dissolved following a controversial court verdict. That paved the way for the current coalition government to fill the void after backroom deals were shaped by the country’s powerful military.

Such anger is also prompting some Red Shirts in provinces like Khon Kaen to look beyond Thaksin in their struggle to take on the ‘Amart’ and to fight for their right to choose their own government. “Even if Thaksin gives up if he loses his case, it is okay,” says Sunan Ankaew, who runs a second-hand car business. “We will continue to learn more of what is wrong with Thai politics and we will still fight.”

 
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