I thought the country hit a record low when four young children were killed in association with the political conflict last week. But like a bad company run by a dysfunctional group of people, Thailand seems infinitely capable of reaching a new low.
The conflict started with a protest that said it’s not okay to issue an unjustified political amnesty law. But look where we are now. We are now discussing whether it’s okay for the country to be partitioned off into different regions, states or republics, according to people’s political beliefs.
Whether the sedition talk is serious or not does not matter much to me. The state authorities will have to decide that.
What matters more I think is how this latest argument marks another low point in our long, continuous fall from an ability to engage constructively about political differences.
The longer the political conflict extends, the more exposed we, the people in this country, especially those in leadership positions, have become as a bunch of immature minions playing a difficult game of governance.
The secessionist discussion was fuelled by an interview given by a leader of the red-shirt Rak Chaing Mai 51 group, Petchawat Wattanapongsirikul, who said the idea of setting up a semi-autonomous People’s Democratic Republic of Lanna (PDRL) for the northern region has been in the making for several months.
The problem with the idea lies less in its divisive content than simplistic reasoning, in my opinion. According to this line of thought, if I don’t like your political thinking, I won’t allow you to come into my territory. Surely the world has become too complicated for such tribalism.
The separation talk is especially shocking because for the first time, the idea the country can be physically hacked up into several pieces along the political fault lines has been openly discussed.
But if we look past the alarm factor and more closely at the root of the argument, we will probably see that this narrow-minded rationale is not exactly new.
The separation approach has been deployed not only by the red shirts but virtually all political groups in the country, with different degrees of intensity.
If you are not with us, then you are against us, the line of reasoning goes. There is no room for disagreement. Each group’s political ideology, or mere belief, seems absolute. It’s either an election or a reform. No accommodation, or dilution of one’s political standpoint to forge a common ground, is allowed.
Statements like ''if you don’t like this, go live in other countries", or ''if you don’t support this, you are not Thai", have been prevalent for many years and show the divisions in the country.
In a sense, the red-shirt group in Chiang Mai only jacked the sentiment up one or several more notches when it suggested that the country split up along a North-South divide. Live and let live. One part of the country can go forward with an election while the other with reform and an appointed prime minister. It probably believes that it’s only fair that way. Is talk such as this a form of separatism movement? Probably not if we are thinking East Timor or South Sudan. It does take a lot more than hateful statements to physically divide a country.
There is no denying, however, that the fostering of divisive sentiments at whatever level and to whatever degree is extremely hurtful for a country already being pulled apart by political polarisation.
This is why the authorities including caretaker Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra have tried to clamp down on it and dismiss the Chiang Mai separation talk as only a display of frustration more than any real movement.
While I agree that the sedition sentiment should not be allowed to get out of hand, I think the authorities must look deeper into what has caused the acrimonious feeling to become a real idea about separating the country in the first place.
Do not forget that a community, and by extension a country, first exists in an imagination. Its disintegration thus begins once this is thought of as a possibility as well.
The Chiang Mai group has gone too far in its suggestion that the country be physically divided. But is it the only one at fault? Probably not. Every group that has been politically active and that has contributed to the divisions must share the responsibility as well.
Atiya Achakulwisut is Contributing Editor, Bangkok Post.