The near future doesn’t look good. On the short term, both the government and the PAD are not going to give up their quest. The government is arrogant and seems to be pushing on constitutional amendment. Deep social division has produced violent clash in Udon Thani last week. The society seems to be relying on the judiciary to bring corrupt politicians to justice but the burden and pressure put on the court is enormous. And even if the court was able to bring those corrupt politicians to justice, it won’t solve the problem with our political system.
We urgently need to reconcile. Reconciliation does not mean we have to converge our thinking to the same ideas. We do not need to think the same, but we need to stop thinking in the “me vs you” way. We have to respect others and understand why they think differently than us.
Peacefulness and I have different views of the PAD and the government, but we both have good intention for Thailand and want to have a clean and capable government. The PAD should stop thinking that bringing this government down at all cost is a victory (because it won’t be a victory simply because it won’t change our political system). The pro-government group also needs to open up their eyes and ears, and understand that the government is far from perfect and needs scrutiny from all sides including from the PAD.
Bangkok middle-class people who are anti-Thaksin should also stop looking down on pro-Thaksin Isaan people as uneducated or succumbed to vote-buying. We all have brains and can think about what is best for ourselves. What is best for a rural villager can be very different from what is best for a Bangkok middle class. We Thais all want to live a good life in this country, and internal political fighting that goes too far without reasons is damaging all of our lives. After all, the principle of democracy is that everybody has an equal say in the governing of the country.
Only when we stop thinking about each other as “the other side” that we can together focus our energy on discussing about how to improve our political system. Instead of spending time quarrelling each other and arguing that “I am right/smart” and “you are wrong/stupid”, we need to spend time discussing about how to improve the working of the independent institutions, how to strengthen the judiciary’s check on the government without interfering too much on government’s work.
We need to work together on our differences for the benefits of Thai society. The elites have been doing this for us for a long time, and they have not done it successfully. We need to do our job.
This is, to me, the true meaning of “unity” or “reconciliation”. Constructive dialogue based on respect of each other’s differences and based on the good intention we all have for this country. This is the necessary condition for us to find the right conflict-solving mechanism to resolve the current crisis and achieve a long-term solution for a better political system that produces better governments. If we do not soon change our attitude, the social division will only become deeper and deeper, and violent clashes between opposite ends could be more frequent and bloody. The consequences can be bad, really bad for us all.