Ron McMillan's Blog
Reds plus yellows equals Bangkok blues
Friends surmised recently that I must have been glad to be anywhere but Bangkok. They were surely fooled by blanket news coverage from the Thai capital that ran the gamut from mildly sensationalised to sickeningly cynical.
One Scottish newspaper was so desperate for a local tie-in that it trod the hackneyed, parochial road and tracked down a family of Scots holidaymakers who, it transpired, were delighted to be the centre of a non-story.
And so a family foursome snapshot, soon to hold pride of place in a Glasgow scrapbook, graced a two-page spread amongst photographs of burning buses, massed ranks of cocked M-16 rifles held by tired soldiers - and bloodied Thais in red t-shirts.
The Scots Abroad family were frightened for their lives, so they were.
Conveniently unaddressed was the absolute absence of reported injuries to any non-Thais, let alone to ‘victims’ inside air-conditioned high-rise hotel rooms.
But while sectors of the overseas media were using events on the streets of Bangkok to sell newspapers and interviewees to realise a fleeting snatch at fame as they knew it, the latest stage in yet another Asian tragedy was unfolding, as Thais dressed in red did their best to tear their nation’s economic future apart.
How many of us are experiencing colour-confused déjà vue? Only a few months ago, Bangkok was again in chaos, though back then, the colour of righteous indignation was yellow. And here we are again. Same place, same riots, different people in different colours.
The opacity of the motives behind the clashing colours is complete, and in the end come down to huge piles of money poured in to fund gigantic, stage-managed protest events from the yellows and the reds, the two don’t-dare-mix colours on opposite sides of a political divide.
According to a recent BBC story, a massive seventy-five percent of the Thai economy depends on revenue from exports, and with factories all over Thailand closing or working vastly reduced hours, the pinch of the global recession is beginning to smother the prospects of millions of Thais.
Now the reds and the yellows pull huge stunts that threaten to commit mortal damage to tourism, the last mainstay of the national economy. The closure (by the yellows) of the international airport last December cost the nation billions. The cancellation of the ASEAN conference last week (by the reds), compounded by hysteria generated in the world’s media by the riots in Bangkok last week, will cost many billions of dollars more – and millions of Thais will go hungry.
Two sides of a self-interested, narrow-minded, intensely selfish political divide solely intent on causing the other side damage, never mind the cost to, nor the pressing needs of, the actual people.
As we watch red-faced men and women on one side of the House queue up to score meaningless, banal points against red-faced men and women on the other side of the House, while the national economy self-destructs and coddled bankers and former captains of industry retreat to tax exile with their spoils, aren’t we just glad that WE don’t have to put up with the sort of nonsense the poor Thais are suffering?
As a post script, this editorial in the New York Times does a very good job of unmuddying the Thai political waters.