Thailand is in big trouble right now and it’s not the global credit crunch
When I fly between Australia and Laos, I transit Bangkok. The new airport which opened about two years ago continues to irritate me the way the building has not been finished properly and things simply don’t function as they should. (Why for example does my plane docks at a gate and when the passengers disembark and are about to head into the terminal, they are detoured down the stairs onto a bus which travels for miles to deliver us to another point in the airport terminal. This happens regularly.)
My transit of Bangkok last week had a particularly eerie feeling about it. Thailand seems to be increasingly losing direction. At the airport, even the touts who usually pester me to take a taxi or whatever seem to have lost some of their passion; they were certainly not as annoying as they usually are. On the national stage, the political standoff has been continuing between the government, which is seen as a proxy for the former PM Thaksin Shinawatra deposed in a coup in 2006, and the anti-government People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), which is really hard to characterise other than anti-government. Recent protests have turned violent, increasing the likelihood of another coup by the military. In a dramatic move last Friday, the army chief General Anupong Paojinda called on the PM to resign. The PM happens to be the brother-in-law of Thaksin Shinawatra. Conspiracy theories abound and the newspapers are speculating about exactly what role Thaksin is playing in all this whilst he is in exile in England having jumped bail whilst awaiting trial on corruption charges.
In the meantime, the country continues to suffer the consequences of the uncertainty this political stalemate has engendered, uncertainty that has been ongoing now for more than two years. Tourism, a very important part of the Thai economy, has been severely hit. The Thai Airways planes are certainly not as full as they usually are, although that can be seasonal. Foreign investment has been drying up and very few infrastructure projects are being started. Meanwhile in the south of the country there is an ongoing and increasingly violent separatist movement. Then to cap things off Thailand just sent more troops to a disputed stretch of its border with Cambodia.
Back in Vientiane, I read a report that Thai Airways suspended a pilot who refused to carry parliamentarians from the ruling party on his plane. The airline has also reportedly cut some international flights. Nothing much seems to have changed on my flights. Am I imagining it or is the service better than usual? Shades of the Asian Economic Crisis of the late 1990s, I think.
As I said, transiting Bangkok had an eerie feeling about it. All this is happening in Thailand while the world heads into a big recession. Bad timing. Thailand is in big trouble right now.
Peter Evans is one of our researchers for Asia; he spends quite a bit of time in the region, being based in Vientiane the capital of Laos.
