Thaksin's image problem
Last week in Ayuthaya, one of Thailand's biggest tourist centres, a 21-year-old man was allegedly detained and tortured by police to make him confess to a theft he claims he did not commit. Although police have promised to investigate, it is unlikely that any officer will be found guilty, let alone punished. However, one senior officer has criticised the suspected offenders for 'tarnishing the police department's image'.
This is becoming a depressingly familiar pattern in Thailand. Official abuses go largely unpunished, while authorities seem too obsessed with protecting their own image to effectively address the nation's underlying problems. This was dramatically illustrated after an October 25 demonstration in Tak Bai, a town in the troubled Muslim south. Eighty-five men died - most suffocated or were crushed to death - when they were squashed into army trucks with their hands tied behind their backs. Others were killed when soldiers fired live ammunition into the crowd.
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra publicly denied that troops had used live ammunition, and praised his security forces for their 'soft' approach. The dead protesters had been fatally weakened by their Ramadan fast, he claimed, while others were 'drunken or drugged'. Mr Thaksin's belated promise to investigate the deaths seemed to be prompted mainly by global outrage, not by remorse or any sense of duty to grief-stricken relatives. Tak Bai gave Thailand a 'bad image', it was widely declared.
The pan-Asian spread of bird flu earlier this year first exposed Thailand's dangerous fixation with appearances. Mr Thaksin declared his nation free of the disease, even as infected chickens were slaughtered and the first suspected human cases were detected. His chief spokesman, Jakrapob Penkair, blamed the bird flu mess on a bureaucratic 'screw-up'. This habit of blame-shifting is now ingrained in senior officials, who seem intent on preserving their prime minister's aura of god-like infallibility.
Mr Thaksin is an image-conscious leader with an enviable flair for self-promotion. He once celebrated his dominance of Thai politics by taking a 45-minute flight in an air force F-16, a publicity stunt which eerily prefigured President George W. Bush's triumphant jet landing on a US aircraft carrier returning from Iraq.
He is also notoriously thin-skinned. These days, Mr Thaksin does not have to listen to much criticism. He has de-clawed watchdog institutions set up under the 1997 constitution. He also owns or controls most of the Thai media, which largely reflects his view that even unarmed Muslim men are potential troublemakers.
None of this has blinded Thailand's increasingly jittery business and diplomatic community to a central fact: Mr Thaksin has no real strategy to tackle the southern crisis. So far, his only solutions have been to send in more troops and promise to spend ever larger sums of public money.
With a re-election campaign to fight early next year, Mr Thaksin's pitiless response to the Tak Bai tragedy could conceivably be designed to serve a darker image-building purpose. Unsparing military assaults on electorally insignificant minorities can make otherwise beleaguered leaders look strong.
There is no war yet in southern Thailand, although people there look very much like they are preparing for one. Teachers carry guns. Judges wear bullet-proof jackets. Militiamen guard villages behind piles of sandbags. Skilled professionals, including much-needed doctors and nurses, flee the region. Meanwhile, the killings continue. Since the Tak Bai tragedy, more than a dozen people have been killed by unidentified militants in an escalating campaign of revenge attacks.
As the death toll mounts, Mr Thaksin must stop treating the south as primarily a problem for his spin doctors. This would be a vital first step in addressing a deepening crisis which his administration has so far done little to improve, and much to exacerbate.
Andrew Marshall is an author and journalist based in Bangkok
