Editorial
Bangkok brouhaha
A tale of democratic miscarriage?
THE chaos into which Thailand has descended in the last few days, with the Thai government going into hiding and operating from an undisclosed location in order to avoid protesters who have surrounded the prime minister's temporary offices as well as worked to disrupt other government meetings, demonstrates clearly the dangers of extreme political polarisation.
The lesson to be learned here is that a country suffers when democratic culture does not take root and that there can be no alternative to a healthy culture of democratic debate and respect for one another's point of view.
What we see in Thailand is the end result of a breakdown in the ability of the two opposing political streams to work together with even a semblance of compromise and co-operation. Where there is a lack of basic democratic political culture, democracy invariably descends into chaos.
We carry no brief in this editorial either for the Thai government or for the protesters. We proffer no opinion on the legitimacy of the current government, the accusations of corruption that have been leveled against it by the opposition, or the merits of the opposition movement. Suffice it to say, for the purposes of this editorial, that there are persuasive arguments and grievances on both sides of the political divide.
What we are arguing for here is that these differences should be settled in an open and co-operative manner and we regret that the communication and trust breakdown between the two sides is so absolute that there seems to be no ground for compromise. When politics descends into the kind of farce that we are seeing the true loser is the voter.
Indeed, things could get still worse. Thailand has long had a tradition of military rule and it is clear that one result of these bouts of military rule is the poorly developed democratic culture that we are seeing today.
The real danger is that if the opposing political streams continue to be unable to practice the politics of compromise, that this will end up undermining democracy and paving the way, yet again, for an authoritarian government to come to the helm. This, in turn, will set democracy back even further and further delay the day democracy fully takes root in Thailand. Ultimately it will be the people who lose.
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