Riding a few blocks from Ban Phue’s station with an officer sent by the local police chief, I stop in at the home of Uraiwan and Teerapon Suwannasang. Teerapon is a retired school principal and Uraiwan is a housewife. Their house is spacious, airy and prosperous and is adorned with blown up posters of their adult children in academic dress (all three children now live in California).
Uraiwan says her family was too wealthy to have benefitted much from Thaksin’s rural populism, although increased wages for teachers helped. She says her radicalisation was caused by the 2006 royalist military coup that overthrew Thaksin. For her, the movement is about dignity.
‘Abhisit’s government has robbed us to be in power today. Before, I was at home taking care of the kids. Now I’ve learned, and I want to be part of this.’
In a newly renovated village house not far from the half-built radio station, Liam Moonguaklang says Thaksin was the catalyst for a new consciousness. Liam was born in the countryside here, but now runs a Thai restaurant in Florida and comes back for family visits. She says the real revolution is that the old patterns of deference and fatalism have fallen away. People in Bangkok may see the people of Isaan as yokels, but these are yokels who now know how the world works.
‘Before we weren’t that smart,’ she says. ‘Now we know what’s going on, how much they cheat us, how much they want us to be slaves for them.’
There is a yellow streak in Isaan. In Udon Thani, one of the main cities of the region, many members of the middle class are typically dismissive of the red shirt protesters.
Rungsri Suprachaisakorn, a local yellow shirt leader and car dealer, says the red shirts are simply misled and paid off.
‘The fact is that Isaan people are honest and gullible. They’re unaware of Thaksin’s tricks. For them Thaksin is like a god.’
In Udon Thani, however, the yellows are outgunned. Many local businesses and political leaders back the red shirts—or stay quiet—while red protest leader Kwanchai Priaphana has become one of the most powerful men in local politics. Yellow leader Rungsri, for his part, says he can’t rely on the police to ensure his safety.
At Kwanchai’s We Love Udon radio station, a red shirt propaganda outlet, there’s little security, despite multiple official attempts to force them off the air. At the governor’s office, by contrast, rolls of razor wire sit unfurled as a precaution.
The station is a temporary, ramshackle affair of trailers and stray dogs, but Kwanchai is building something far more permanent in the fields on the edge of town. One of the radio deejays, Jakapong Saengkum, says there have been multiple attempts to close the station.
‘Luckily the tomato police and the watermelon army have sent news to us before it happened,’ he says, referring to Thai slang for members of security forces that are ‘red on the inside.’
It’s this local strength that’s now causing concern. After the Bangkok barricades fell, and enraged red shirt protesters burned government buildings across Isaan, another Udon Thani yellow shirt leader, Danuch Tanterdtid, sent me an email.
A week earlier, he had made a point of telling me that he didn’t feel intimidated. Now, his tone was flippant but more uncertain.
‘I know what I’m doing,’ he says. ‘When I think about our King, I don’t worry about anything. I am OK. Nothing has happened to me (yet?).’
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GiantFan
Loans to farmers (who didn’t think they would need to pay them back) have ruined many. Lots of new trucks and mobile phones, but now no land. So Sad.
1 dollar health care has nearly bankrupted the hospitals. Bangkok never reimbursed.
So are these programs really helpful to the country?
Jaba
Thanks! much better work than the Bangkok Post and the Nation combined.
Ellen Harper
A really great article, nice to see some more insightful stuff about the reasons behind the unrest instead of just coverage of the clashes, well done diplomat.
Luke Whitington
This is the best article I’ve read on Thailand so far, well done.
I hope to see many more in the future, your research and local contacts give the story the context and explanation that has been missing in the body counts and sensationalism we get elsewhere.
I’m considering renewing my subscription to The Diplomat.
Thanks
Luke Whitington
Sydney
T_bone
I would like to say that Isaan are what the real “Thai” preffered to called them. It sounded better then callign them Laos, as they would be devistating, political-wise; thus the dialect you is basically Lao with alittle Thai mixed in.