THE BIG ISSUE: LIVE AND KICKING
>> They say Thailand is an ageing society. Thailand’s getting older, they say. At one end, old farts and fartettes live longer, they point out, and at the other these young couples today, you know, they say a lot of them don’t even want to have kids. All true, too.
And there’s a point that the general prime minister and those rotten, corrupt professional politicians agree on. Young people today are spoilt, privileged. They think they can actually run a company or, heck, a government. Think they know better than their elders.
Also true. Some of those well-educated young people want to try running things old people have upscrewed. And it takes the green shirts to disabuse them of that foolishness, corporally if necessary. Or so it seemed over the past six days.
On Monday, the dear leader travelled south for a couple of days of what he laughingly calls government business and a mobile cabinet meeting and what the country calls political posturing, with populist presents for all.
At the same time on Monday, the host of the 100% Facebook-based “101. world media/news company”, rated 4.9 out of 5 stars, was setting up for the first actual serious interview with Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit. He’s 39 years old, he’s a rich executive of Thai Summit auto parts, an avid outdoorsman, and he’s one of those cheeky young whippersnappers, thinks he can run things. (Actually, he can, as he proves at Thai Summit Group.)
The Facebook Live interview caught old people by surprise. But 100,000 viewers logged in for the full, 120-minute event — Mr Thanathorn talking future politics. If anyone had doubted either his seriousness or his visceral appeal — and millions of oldies had — they don’t now. Mr Thanathorn, they now know, is not some Saturday-afternoon protester of Democracy Restoration Group or We Walk.
In a shocking surprise development, it turned out the general prime minister didn’t watch this show. It turned out he’s heard of Facebook, but Facebook Live, not so much. He doesn’t post, follow, definitely doesn’t Like and believes “live” to be when his taped talk is shown Friday on every terrestrial TV station.
So on Tuesday, when he faced the media at Cha-am resort in Phetchaburi, the green-shirt leader was about as prepared to answer questions about the biggest political story of the day as he was to indict his first deputy prime minister for corruption. So of course he faked it.
Oh, those crazy youngsters, he laughed at the media. Bring it on, baby! “Sure, why not? Let them do it, see if anyone will vote for them. People will only vote for those of us able to provide good government.” Ha-ha, 555, and so on.
Then the reports started coming into his government about what had actually occurred — 100,000 viewers of the Facebook Live, 80,000 more watching in the following 24 hours. Mr Thanathorn was getting thumbs-up and Likes, literally by the thousands.
And everyone in the general’s entourage realises that getting “Liked” on Facebook is really bad for the country. BBC Thai gets Likes. Pai Dao Din gets Likes. The world’s only felonious female fugitive ex-prime minister got 6 million Likes. Likes are bad. The value of any given man and his personal military-run regime is measured in lack of Likes.
So by Wednesday, jeers turned to fears of this pipsqueak stripling, whipping up people with nonsensical incitement and seditious cries like, “Let’s join hands and open a new door” and, way worse, “The military should stop meddling in politics.”
Now there (said the whole, shocked junta and their front man, legal eagle Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Kreangam) is a boy what needs some humility, talking about both his elders and his betters like that. That’s a young man, maybe who should be invited for a cup of coffee for a couple of days, while his attitude gets adjusted properly. Plus his uncle worked under Lord Voldemort, and everyone knows that the sins of the uncle are always passed to the nephew.
So now the green shirts can show strength by sending around a car and black-helmeted escorts to ask Mr Thanathorn for a coffee. Or they can not invite him. Either way, they alienate everyone by abusing power or by selective enforcement of their silly “no talking politics” regulation.
One constant in politics is that chickens come home to roost. Not everyone under 50 is going to vote for Mr Thanathorn’s party, assuming there even will be one. But last week showed that it has been a mistake being paternal and ignoring, even demeaning those damned kids. Their hatred of corruption and instant nationwide revulsion in the leopard-shooting case should have been a signal.
Their impatience for elections, their protests against coal and for alt-energy and lately their unbridled and rude criticism of Gen Prawit and Mr Premchai are important catalysts for actual reform and real change. They imperil the whole regime, which still has to weather at least a year if it hopes to remain in power indefinitely.