Left Wing Pro-Muslim Democrats Responsible for Thailand Coup, Lose

Democracy was upheld in Thailand when the Democrats, a left wing party backing a coup by a Muslim General, were defeated at the polls.

The Thailand Democrat party is a left wing royalist party which staged the overthrew of Prime Minister Thaskin by Muslim General Sonthi Boonyaratglin. Where Prime Minister Thaskin had followed a policy of stamping out the Muslim insurgency, however General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, a Muslim with two wives, was in retrospect a terrible choice for fighting a Muslim insurgency. General Sonthi Boonyaratglin engaged in all sorts of delaying tactics to obstruct the fight, claiming that the Muslim terrorists who were engaging in a bloody campaign of atrocities, including beheading Buddhist teachers, were actually Communists.

As the Muslim terrorists stepped up their bombing campaign, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin called for negotiating with the terrorists over the protests of the elected government. The following sums up his collaboration with his co-religionists well enough.

On August 2006 after 22 commercial banks were simultaneously bombed in Yala province, Sonthi announced that he would break with government policy and negotiate with the leaders of the insurgency. In a press conference the next day, he attacked the government for criticizing him for trying to negotiate with the anonymous insurgents, and demanded that the government "Free the military and let it do the job." Afterwards, insurgents bombed 6 department stores in Hat Yai city, which up until then had been free of insurgent activities. As always, the identity of the insurgents was not revealed.

Three days later, Sonthi led a coup against the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Sonthi's former superiors, Deputy Prime Minister for national security Chidchai Vanasatidya and Defense Minister Thammarak Isaragura na Ayuthaya were immediately arrested and have been detained ever since.

Despite escalating violence, in May 2007 Sonthi started withdrawing troops from the South, replacing them with territorial defence volunteers. He did not say why the regular army was to be reduced in the South

Following the coup the ruling party was dissolved and made illegal. As the Muslim violence increased, the Thai army did nothing. Now the votes have been cast and Thaskin's party has won 228 seats out of 480 seats in the Thai parliament, their support coming from the rural areas that have suffered the most from the Muslim terrorism and benefited the most from Thaskin's programs. While support for the Democrat party has come mainly from Bangkok and its political elites.

The same media that has spent so much outrage over coups against left wing governments has had little to say about the coup in Thailand and printed stories actually justifying it and legitimizing it. Now the attempt to seize power has failed and Thaskin is likely to return. Where Thaskin's programs benefited Thailand's rural areas, the Bangkok elite attempted to sell out their country much as the political elite in America, Israel, England and the Philippines has done. In all these countries it is often the rural areas that hold the true heart of the nation.

The struggles between the urban cultures and the rural, whether one calls them Blue State vs Red State or Tel Aviv vs the Settlers or Londonistan vs England breaks down the heart of the problem as the sophisticated elites promote the dissolution of the country's values while the rural populations struggle to preserve them.