Growing democracy movement in Thailand
Workers and the poor in Thailand took to the streets last year to reject the brutal attacks on their jobs and living standards brought about by the austerity imposed by the International Monetary Fund following the July economic crisis and bailout.
More and more people are prepared to take collective action to defend their lives and democracy, says SUTHY PRASARTSET, adviser to Thailand's Assembly for the Poor and vice-chairperson of the Campaign for Popular Democracy. Prasartset attended the Asia Pacific Solidarity Conference in Sydney at Easter. He spoke to 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly's EVA CHENG.
Prasartset explained that even before the Asian economic crisis, workers and the poor in Thailand — especially the rural poor — learned the hard way that the benefits of rapid economic growth were not for them and that they were to bear the brunt of any hardship.
Their environment — from which many derived their livelihood — was devastated, their land rights were ignored, and a large number of households were evicted from their traditional settlements (to poorly equipped and harsh situations) to make way for business "development" projects.
According to Prasartset, the situation became so bad in the early 1990s that dispossessed peasants mobilised to oppose the "acts of state terrorism". Those worst affected, most significantly in the north-east, started to organise with victims from other provinces and in 1991 formed, among other organisations, the Small Farmers Assembly (SFA), which staged big marches and rallies along the North-east Highway.
Represented in the SFA were networks which dealt with problems related to local handicrafts, cattle raising, resettlement, alternative agriculture, rice farming, land salinity and the environment. Regional congresses of non-government organisations were also formed to campaign for development for the people.
These campaigns brought together groups from around the country, contributing to the formation in late 1995 of the Assembly (Forum) of the Poor. The AOP became a fighting alliance which included some urban forces. Prasartset said the main people represented in the AOP were those affected by dam construction and other mega-development projects, land eviction and industrial hazards/occupational diseases, as well as slum dwellers.
To press for its demands, said Prasartset, the AOP mobilised 12,000 participants from more than 20 provinces for 28 days in Bangkok in April 1996. It won cabinet promises to meet all its demands, but the actions stopped after a dissolution of parliament in September 1996. This led AOP to call another rally for 24 days that November to reassert its demands. The next mobilisation, lasting 99 days from January 25, was 10,000 to 30,000-strong. The cabinet again agreed to all demands.
Anti-military struggle
The military coup in February 1991 and the military's subsequent plan to redraft the constitution opened new fronts of struggle.
Prasartset said that, a month after the coup, the Campaign for Popular Democracy (CPD) — a coalition of NGOs, student leaders, academics, social activists working in mass media and labour and professional bodies — was formed to lead the struggle against the military regime and for a people-oriented constitution. It collaborated closely with the Students' Federation of Thailand (SFT).
"In the latter half of 1991, the CPD and SFT were constantly at the forefront of the struggle to promote the people's version of the constitution", he said. As soon as a general election was called for March 1992, the CPD quickly formed the Forum for Democracy to campaign for a clean and democratic election, geared to expressing and solving the people's problems.
Prasartset said, "The re-establishing of democracy after the bloody May anti-military confrontations of 1992 owed much to the CPD's fearless and active campaigns, and its nationwide coordinating capacity". He stressed the importance of the formation of a strong and tested networking infrastructure within the democracy movement as a result of these struggles.
On May 14, 1992, on the eve of the military repression, a new fighting body — the Confederation for Democracy — was formed. The various forces the CFD brought together led, in early May, a series of anti-military rallies in Bangkok, the biggest in two decades. While the CPD also led mass protests in the wake of the May crackdown, it did not join the CFD.
Prasartset described the shift of leadership from the CPD to the CFD as a switch in organisational form and tactics, adding that the CFD was born at a time of heightened preparedness "to take the struggle to its logical conclusion". He highlighted the gains of these mobilisations, partly reflected in the inclusion of some pro-people provisions in the new constitution.
Urban labour organisations have joined forces with the AOP in the struggle to counter the austerity imposed by the IMF. The Coordinating Committee for Labour Movements (CCLM), originally set up in 1996 to counter massive lay-offs, came to lead the struggle against IMF austerity. Prasartset said that under the IMF package, value-added tax was increased from 7% to 10% and prices went up across the board — including for public utilities, energy and consumer goods — while wages, welfare payments and working conditions were cut and many workers lost their jobs.
Prasartset said that the CCLM led a huge rally last August 29 to demand that the burden of the crisis be shifted back to the rich. This was followed by a rally and march in Bangkok with the AOP on September 14. The AOP held another march on September 17 targeting the IMF conditions, followed by a mass rally called by the CCLM in late October to re-raise its earlier demands.
In addition, said Prasartset, eight councils of labour organisations and the State Enterprise Workers' Relations Confederation also held seminars in November defending workers' conditions, opposing lay-offs and calling for a halt to the government's practice of selling the best public assets, depriving workers and the poor of relatively cheap public services.
Asked whether such mobilisations are being transformed into more structured political organisations geared to changing the social order, Prasartset stressed the Thai people's strong rejection of the concept of political parties, which they equate with dirty politics and the pro-rich agenda of bourgeois parties. "Anybody who is identified as a member of a party will have his or her views less respected", said Prasartset.
The rejection of any socialist identification was even stronger, said Prasartset, probably because of people's negative experiences of the Maoist Communist Party of Thailand, which collapsed in the late 1970s.