THAILAND
The Nation–Mar 28
Allied with Thaksin even in the wake of the Tak Bai horror, these southern politicians will struggle to regain trust/
A long-standing clique of Muslim politicians commonly known as the Wadah faction, from the Malay-speaking far South, is poised to contest the general election currently scheduled for next February. They are hoping the junta’s revamped electoral system, in which “every vote counts”, will help them gain more seats in Parliament. They are in the process of compiling a list, as required by law, of at least 500 co-founders for a new party. It is to be registered as Pracha Chat, which means “nation of the people”.
Members of the Wadah group include former House of Representatives speaker and former transport minister Wan Muhammad Noor Matha, former deputy interior minister Den Tohmeena, and former deputy education minister Areepen Uttarasin. The group is expected to tap into the region’s ill feelings towards the junta-backed Constitution, which southerners overwhelmingly rejected in the 2016 referendum. But for them to truly represent the people of the conflict-afflicted region, they will have to do more than just ride the anti-junta sentiment among the local populace, nearly 90 per cent of which is Muslim of Malay ethnicity.
The Wadah might be correct in interpreting the people’s “no” vote on the Constitution as an expression of dislike for the military. But proceeding on the basis of voter disdain is hardly the same as setting out to promote constituents’ ideas and principles and meeting their needs. Furthermore, some people voted “no” as a way of rejecting the Thai state in its entirety. It was, in a way, a vote for independence, going hand in hand with support for the armed militants in the region.
In recent years the catchphrase among southern political activists has been “the right to self-determination”, a concept that falls far short of independence. It is, rather, a call to let the people of this region decide their own destiny. It would be interesting to know where the Wadah politicians stand on this. But, sooner or later, their moment will come, because the stakes are rising for all sides, and at the same time negotiations are underway with separatist rebels.
If the Wadah managed a comeback, it would mean that a mournful ghost from the past – the 2004 Tak Bai massacre – will have been banished. They fell from grace soon after that tragedy, in which 106 unarmed demonstrators died – 87 of them suffocating to death after they were stacked one atop another in the back of military trucks. Wadah was a faction of Thaksin Shinawatra’s government at the time, and remained silent amid the recriminations. Some, maddeningly, attempted to use the incident to justify their continued alliance with the government, arguing that being part of the ruling coalition was the best way to represent their constituents. No Wadah politician was ever elected again, even at the provincial level.
Now they believe they have a chance to regain the people’s trust but, from the look of it, they will have a great deal of explaining to do. They claim, as locals, to know the issues best. But the question is whether they have the political courage to press for essential changes. In 2004, the Wadah lacked the courage to stand up to Thaksin. And the massacre remains a stain in Thai history and an integral component of separatism. Whether southerners have forgiven Wadah remains to be seen.
(first published in The Nation – http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/opinion/30341902)
