Five Step Plan
A great editorial in the New York Times yesterday that gives an adroit review of the three year long conflict as well as a 5 step plan for solving the impasse.The author’s five steps are:
1. Drop charges against Thaksin and begin a discussion of reconciliation.
My response: There’s only one person who can clear Thaksin at this point, and we haven’t heard from him in awhile.
2. Stopping letting the courts ban political parties just to diffuse a crisis.
My response: I completely agree, the Phoenix from the Ashes nature of red-shirts and yellow-shirts means the party dissolutions mean nothing anyway, just short term halts in parliament. Would a new judiciary help this? I don’t know enough about the Thai courts, but I think there may need to be new blood on the benches before you get much of a change.
3. Install a caretaker government for 2 or 3 years, then call a general election
My response: I don’t think Abhisit will hand his power over to a caretaker government after his victory this week. Instead he will work to consolidate his power and delay a vote for as long as possible, leaving the red-shirts to grumble and complain. He may hope to hold on long enough to pick away at red-shirt seats, in the same way he got Newin to switch over.
4. Once an election is held, all sides must abide by the results
My response: This won’t happen, as the author admits, political leaders now see the efficacy of protests. But even deeper than that, most yellow-shirts don’t believe in democracy to start with. In their minds, the red-shirts are a bunch of ignorant farmers who get tricked into voting for corrupt sleazebags who will stop at nothing to enrich themselves and destroy the country’s heirarchy. They will never accept the almost inevitable red-shirts victory at the polls.
5. The military must be strictly neutral
My response: For the first four points the author wrote nearly a paragraph each. For this final point he wrote the six words above. Nothing else. So apparently he thinks this is an easy mission? Unfortunately, developing mature civil-military relations in a country with weak democratic institutions and a cultural inclination for heirarchy and order could take soooooome time. Certain leaders in the country today are very astute at politically manipulating the military. And the military is simultaneously pretty good at looking out for itself.
So, all in all, these are some great proposals, but the author was unable to provide any insight into how to accomplish even the first of these five tasks. If these are the things Thailand needs to do before it can resolve the red-yellow divide, then take a seat, because its going to be awhile.
