For people that wish to quickly understand Thailand’s political problems, using metaphors is the fastest way to get up to speed. Once a person can grasp the concept of the key issues with metaphors, the rest becomes much easier to understand.
To create a metaphor the first step is to see Thailand as a person and not as a country. That person is sick and there is nobody who will disagree with that. Thailand suffers from a variety of symptoms that sap it’s energy leaving it at best confused and in a semi state of dementia. There is great indecision about what to do and what is right. This is similar to the thinking of a smoker addicted to nicotine.
Smokers know that smoking is bad for them and that they should stop, but the addiction keeps making them make the wrong decision and continue to smoke more. This addiction can be defined as populist policies that are appealing to the eye in short term, but come with a high cost at a later date with various diseases that must be dealt with. So there is a battle in a smokers head as to who has control of actions and decisions. The battle rages between the person and the nicotine.
Unfortunately for Thailand, disease has already set in and it is busy consuming the entire body from the inside out. That disease is Thaksin Shinawatra and all the people who are subservient to him otherwise known as the Thaksin regime. That disease is busy draining the nutrients consumed by Thailand otherwise known as money, leaving little if any for Thailand to survive on.
Enter the Doctor otherwise known as Suthep Thaugsuban and his team the People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC). Together they have undertaken the task of ridding the body of this disease, and the medicine selected is peaceful protests that are making it difficult for the disease to exist. As with all medicines there are side effects and in this case the side effects are restriction of movement.
However at the moment the disease has taken over much of the motor functions and is working at neutralizing the medicine without doing harm to itself. At the moment it has chosen to invoke a State of Emergency in an attempt to dilute the medicine so it becomes ineffective. The disease must not be too aggressive or a more radical type of armored medicine will be administered by uniformed Doctors (Otherwise known as a Coup by the military) that could result in long lasting convulsions.
However the disease has already triggered an autoimmune response and the body is working at eliminating large sections of the infection. The autoimmune system is known as the National Counter Corruption Commission (NCCC). However the time it takes for the autoimmune response to work can be some time. In the past it has only been able to suppress the disease as the disease is somewhat resilient and has a seemingly endless supply of methods to reinfect the body with.
So Doctor Suthep Thaugsuban is looking to strengthen the autoimmune system so that it has the power on it’s own to keep the infection from ever getting a foothold again. What blend of medicines that will entail has yet to be established, and the body must be at an improved level of health before that medicine can be administered.
So in summary, as the disease is never fully eradicated and a more robust combination of medications is needed to strengthen the body’s autoimmune system and response. The standard approach is not strong enough due to the resilience of the disease. Once you can understand this, it will become much easier to understand the present day politics of Thailand.
