The tragedy in Thailand proceeds apace

More than almost any political crisis on the face of the earth today - more than in Russia, Ukraine and Crimea, even more, in a way, than in dreadfully miserable Syria - it is the crisis in Thailand that seems so sad.

Because this tragedy need not have happened - not at all.

In this world (and quite possibly even in the next), rarely does one get everything he or she politically wants, certainly not all the time, and maybe not even often. But in Thailand some people - too many people - do want it all, and to achieve that aim they are prepared to deny everyone else almost everything.

And so one feels terribly sorry for all those many people in Thailand that voted for Yingluck Shinawatra (who became the 28th prime minister and the first woman prime minister of Thailand) in the 2011 general election and who now find this nice and hard-working woman out of the job.

Why? Essentially because a smaller number of people don't like the political taste of a larger number of people.

What is so loathsome is the selection of this woman as the punching bag of the Bangkok elite, which has just pulled off what many are terming a "judicial coup". Unable to beat Shinawatra's coalition in an honest us-against-them election, the elite's allies in the Constitutional Court (packed with anti-government elitists) found cause the other day to disqualify the prime minister and much of her cabinet.

The ruling - that a series of sudden appointment maneuvers by the government was legally invalid and required dismissal - required of the court a reasoning style from the legal school of Alice in Wonderland.

The ruling creates a bad precedence for governance; worse, it may pave the way for a civil war of un-Thai-like violence. It is, after all, the view of no less than Ramkhamhaeng University Political Scientist Pandit Chanrojanakij that the judges exercised unwarranted political power in order to undermine political parties allied to Shinawatra.

Behind the anti-Shinawatra coalition, of course, is the deep hatred of her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, also expelled from the prime minister's office in 2006 - not by court coup but by even less subtle military coup.

The hatred that gushes at Thaksin, in self-exile, seems unquenchable and, because it is so limitless, unreasonable. Perhaps the closest hate analogue I can think of in our own politics here was the American Left's inconsolable loathing of former US president Richard Nixon, whom now, in fact, history seems to be treating with a little more respect (reflecting his brilliant opening to China and surprisingly expansive domestic programs).

The anti-Thaksin crowd's dubious bile was then piled on his younger sister Yingluck, a lady of substantial charm and I-try-hard work habits. The Thai Constitutional Court that invalidated her as prime minister thus jumped in with a movement that took a country suddenly doing so well and managed to begin to bring it down.

Thailand seems to be on a course of self-destruction that seems totally unreal. Little in today's political world makes me sadder. Almost nothing terrible going on now is less necessary than this nightmare in Thailand. This is a remarkable tragedy: the utter self-destructiveness of it all. We can only hope that someone or something inside Thailand can bring it back from the brink.

The author is a distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University.

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