Below this is an email from a cousin of mine and his friend who is currently studying and working with an NGO in Thailand. He leans to the left, as you may notice, but provides a great description of what it’s like on the ground level after the military coup. Plus, he knows his stuff. Take a look.

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by David Ferris & Terri Bennett

For those of you who don’t know, I found out last at 11PM that there was a military coup here yesterday. The military’s top general (Songthii) lead tanks into Bangkok, declared a coup, and took power from Thaksin, the now former PM, with the support of the Thai military. They also took over all of the television stations, preventing Thaksin from comminicating with the people, and issued their own referendum.

When I first heard this news, it was exciting, since there is a huge amount of opposition to Thaksin here, especially among the leaders of the NGO’s we’ve been dealing with and the Thai staff here at our program. There has been quite a bit of corruption and false promises and pushes to liberalize the economy here that have resulted in popular opposition. Thaksin is often compared to Bush, and his role as a puppet of international capital neoliberalism is never underestimated.

One of the parties that has played large role in the resistance, which I am sympathetic to, is the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD). When I was reading the news last night, it sounded like they were part of the coup, which to an extent, sounded promising. However, from what I understand right now, and will likely become clearer throughout the day, is that a small faction of this party broke from the decision to NOT aggressively take over the government, although i think they still did it under the PAD name. Now there is something called the Democratic Council Under Monarchy, which I’m not sure was even an entity before yesterday, which has taken power.

They abolished the senate (the last vestige of an elected power here) and revoked the 1997 constitution. This effectively means that no one here has any clear rights. The king is in support of the coup, which has, so far, been bloodless. The king gives the green light for any coup. He is never behind it, but still gives the green light. 15 years of NGO work on behalf of the Thai poor in opposition to government and capital bullies has just lost all of it’s legitimacy. No constitution, no government in this case means a green light for some kind of capital abuse, which I may well likely be a direct spectator of.

There are some people who believe that Thaksin was behind the coup, and that it is part of a grand plan to solidify the support of a divided population. A huge protest had been planned for today in Bangkok. There are others who believe that the king, who was not a huge Thaksin fan, is trying to leave a progressive legacy, and ousted Thaksin in order for a more “liberal” or “progressive” party to take office. Either way, temporarily, the army general is the new PM. He also happens to be muslim. Everything is wrapped in the royal yellow, everything appears to be endorsed by the monarchy. The people go about their lives almost as normal.

Thaksin was at the UN when this happened, and was not allowed to speak, becuase he was no longer recognized as the leader of thailand. Apparently he is going to the Phillipines to figure out what to do next, i.e. establish an exiled government, work to guarantee whatever replacement PM is chosen is as capital friendly as he. Several of Thaksin’s cabinet members have already been arrested. The perpetrators of the coup undoubtedly will not confess to any crime, even in the name of legitimizing a constitution written by and for the people of Thailand.

I am in Khon Kaen, 5 hours away from Bangkok, and I am completely safe. If fact, one of the most alarming things is how much everything seems like normal. This is also disturbing because is pretty illustrative of the kind of apathy things like this are met with when a nation has been subject to as many coups and forceful changes of power as Thailand has. This is the 12th coup, I think, since 1932, when the absolute monarchy was transformed into a constitutional one. Some newspaper articles describe the mood in Bangkok to be festive, with tourists taking pictures of themselves with tanks and soldiers. It happened like clockwork, Thailand’s fifteen years of relative stable democracy was up.