From Paris to Bangkok, elected governments are tottering in the face of sometimes violent public demonstrations, egged on by the international digital revolution.
On one side are governments which have not performed. The unemployment rate among young people in France nears one in four. Or they are regimes which have over performed – to line their leaders’ pockets. Thailand’s outgoing prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, just sold his family company for nearly $2 billion.
As always, of course, the devil is in the details. Thaksin leaves considerable political debris. He goes as the result of popular discontent – and nudging from the country’s highly respected King. Yet the original impetus was financing from one of Thaksin’s former business partners with whom he fell out.
Behind France’s struggle is rivalry between the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, a self-nominated renaissance man. But while graduating France’s “supreme schools” for bureaucrats, de Villepin was never elected to any office. Instead he was annointed successor to a flagging President Jacques Chirac. But he could be overtaken by Nicholas Sarkozy, plebian, son of Hungarian emigrants who bulldozed his way up through the conservative political machine to the ministry of interior [police]. The crisis therefore is dicey for both.
Even in the U.S., Mexican American demagogues and their wannabees on Spanish-language radio have turned out record-breaking numbers of youngsters. Like their French and Thai look-alikes, the temptation to abandon the books and carouse on the streets is overwhelming. The L.A. protesters won’t overturn a government, may even have damaged their muddled cause with too many Mexican flags. But they do add to the international TV video avalanche of young bodies, flags, posters, and clashes with riot police in real time which feeds the phenomenon. After all Americans lead the youth culture, however bizarre.
In Georgia and Ukraine, world opinion supported the winning protestors – at least in the democracies. They were overthrowing dregs of the former Moscow regime hanging on by camouflaging themselves in regional nationalists after the Soviet Union’s implosion. The reforming replacements have not had an easy time, plagued with the same problems and exaggerated expectations.Already the voters have expressed their dissatisfaction with successors in both countries – in Ukraine by voting the new boys out.
The big problem with government by demonstration is it can become habit-forming. It is no accident, as the Communists would have said, the French students think they are imitating earlier revolts, especially the Europe-wide events of 1968. Those demonstrations ushered in a new political generation and, theoretically, different governance.
But this week a quintessential “1968ard”, former Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, was in deep dodo. He used his outgoing government to saddle Germany with more dependence on Russian gas while feathering his own retirement nest. It comes at a time all concede Germany needs diversification of its energy, the highest costs in Europe. The scandal is fitting climax to the career of one of the 68 generation who have largely ended up playing the same old politics. It’s a road too often taken in France.
Thailand, too, with its strong German and French abstract political heritage, could be falling into government by demonstration. [The Philippines is already close to it.] Thaksin, after all, was elected by landslide only a year and a half ago. In the snap election he just called, he won – even if clouded by the other political parties’ abstention. A billionaire who began life as a policeman, Thaksin first became prime minister after his Thais Love Thais party won the general election of January 2001 with a populist agenda.
But he had been under intense pressure to quit since his family sold its stake in Shin Corp. on January 23. Shin operates Thailand's largest mobile phone service, the national satellite network, a TV station, an Internet service and is a major shareholder in a no-frills airline that bucks the national carrier.
Thaksin, despite his Chinese ancestry [his grandafher was an immigrant], was the darling of rural Thais. They are traditionally disaffected from Bangkok’s more sophisticated Sino-Thai elite. But when he tried to purge accusations of government favoritism with the $1.9-billion sale, the criticism grew. Bangkok’s chattering classes were outraged he had finessed the sale tax-free through stock. [The deal isn’t going to do Singapore’s reputation for corruption avoidance much good, especially since purchaser, the government fund Teamsek is run by wife of the island republic’s prime minister.]
Revolutionary demonstrations have an allure. The Americans’ beloved Thomas Jefferson in one of his more radical moments did say, of course, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.” But the stench often is too much to bear. And too often, as Jefferson was to learn to his dismay after his early endorsement of 1789, revolutions not only often devour their young, but those who survive as often as not take the same old route of corruption and malfeasance.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net),
is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent
for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com and East-Asia-Intel.com.
