Thailand under the influence of social media

More and more Thais are turning to social media to express their political views. Pic: AP.

By Saksith Saiyasombut & Siam Voices Dec 08, 2014 

By James Austin-

A decade ago in Thailand people in the street spilling out their political views in public was quite literally unheard of. Thai friends of mine would shush me if ever I mentioned politics in public; and if I should ever bring up the unspeakable, in any context at all it was, most of the time, met with a thorough stonewalling. At a Thanksgiving party the other week during a quiz put on by the host an image of Rama V popped-up onto a monitor, with the question, “Who is this King?”, only for one or the two Thai guests to utter, “not polite” and walk away. What wasn’t polite about this historical question? I can only assume because it was brought up in a jovial atmosphere while people were drinking cans of Singha beer. Perhaps something as serious as a monarch is not applicable to a party. Perhaps history of this sort is something that should be caged, left alone, not discussed openly, as Thai academic Sulak Sivaraksa didin October when he talked about, and allegedly insulted, King Naresuan the Great, who died in 1605. Sulak was later cited by two retired senior army officers on charges of lèse majesté, which could potentially land him in jail for 15 years.

To insult the monarchy, thereby becoming a threat to national security, is against the law in Thailand. To even discuss the monarchy any place outside of the seemingly protective cloisters of social media, within the confines of nationalistic fervor or in a history class is unusual and arguably impolitic.

One of the popular topics in Thai politics lately is the clean-up by the military junta andarrests of inordinately rich Thai policemen (including a very dubious suicide) – led by another inordinately rich Thai policeman, Somyot Pumpunmuang, whose net worth, along with his wife, is reported to be around US$11 million (฿364 million). But the money, or the apparent suicide and summary cremation of one of the alleged bad cops, has not been the unspoken cause célèbre during the case; the mostly muted controversy following the arrests has been about the family ties of the indicted. The matter of succession to the throne is not something talked about willy-nilly, or even broached by mainstream Thai media, but speculation via social media has been rampant.

Kong Rithdee lyrically stated in the Bangkok Post recently, “But what do you talk about when you talk about something people don’t want to talk about, or not in public: you burrow into the deep stream, into the silo of speculations and rumor mills. You do it, and we contribute to our descent into an anti-knowledge society.”

Realism, it seems, has been tragically mislaid in the soap opera of Thai politics. The image of democracy has always been just that, an image: surreal. For a long time the image was preserved without many hiccups. The aforementioned silence in the streets, with its substructure of fear and community paranoia, was enough to expunge the utterance before it was uttered. If political arguments were ever leveled in the mainstream media, they were leveled under a foundation of fiction, which made them trite, unwholesome. This has been the reality for many years. As Deputy Prime Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan put it quite succinctly, “you can think differently, but do not express it.” This is democracy hanging by a noose, with a whole host of characters ready to kick the chair.

In an effort to look conceivably democratic, Thailand’s National Anti-Corruption Committee (NACC), seems to have got to grips with realism. For possibly the first time within the milieu of Thailand’s so often prejudicial, sexist, racist, illiberal, conformist, wholly illicit soap opera circuit, the NACC has decided to inject the ethically floundering but ever-popular soaps with some meaningful socio-political fodder, including things like why the rice scheme was such a disaster. “We want citizens to understand exactly what corruption is, and for them to ask themselves what ways there are to solve the problem and, importantly, how they can contribute to this fight,” said NACC spokesman Vicha Mahakul. How successful will this officially sanctioned kind of realism be, with an elephant still looming in the room, and a raging monkey still in the cage? Will the people just see one kind of corruption, and not another, in these soaps? And will they then retreat to social media where the truth is not told, but it is at least virtually attainable?

When freedom of speech is piecemeal, ad hoc and unreliable, is it not like diluting orange juice to 30% and selling it off as fresh? Can you be realistic about reaching clear pictures as to why the kingdom is in crisis when half the pieces are missing? And the missing pieces, as bulky as they might feel at times, are all available at the click of a button. The junta, in its efforts to administer shackles on freedom of speech, has a Sisyphean task on its hands. Every time they cauterize a leak in the fabric that is the unraveling of historical and present data, they only cause the fabric more grief in another part of its structure until we are left with the naked body, the truth, or something like it. The paltry scanners are doing their worst to inhibit freedom, but at the same time playing into the hands of those they rally against. Social media is an unlevel playing field; it’s the recreation ground for all the mouths that a decade ago would have stayed in and watched TV.

Kong Rithdee finished his op-ed by saying, “This game of talking by not-talking is kind of fun, but to keep playing it is worse than confirming our anti-knowledge stance. It confirms our ignorance and probably doom.” But anti-knowledge has never been further from the truth, with some bumps and blunders Thailand is immutably sailing into a new reality and not the one dictated by millionaire storytellers.

About the author:
James Austin is a journalist and fiction writer living in Thailand.