POLITICS-THAILAND: Blame Game Begins Over Bombings

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jan 2 2007 (IPS) - It is the hour of the scapegoat in the Thai capital, as the military-appointed government points fingers at its political adversary for having a hand in a rare string of bomb explosions in Bangkok at the dawn of the new year.

But besides dropping broad hints that supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra, the twice-elected prime minister ousted in a September coup, were responsible for the explosions, which killed three people and injured nearly 40 others, the junta’s appointees have said little more.

The search for evidence to prove such charges is already taking an embarrassing turn as the country’s most respected forensic expert, Porntip Rojanasunan, has lashed out at the police for preventing her team of independent investigators gathering evidence at one of the bombing sites.

By mid-morning on Tuesday, less than 48 hours after the first round of bombs went off, the scene where the most powerful explosion took place, a row of bus stands near a city landmark, the Victory Monument, had been cleaned of all damage. The only evidence of the havoc caused were the white circles drawn on the pavement where the police had gathered evidence.

The strikes that rocked Bangkok just as the city was getting ready to celebrate the new year in its customary exuberant style and then soon after 2007 dawned. The eight explosions across the Thai capital shattered the image it had enjoyed as a city free of such violence for over a decade-and-a-half.

For the junta and its appointed government, the blasts could not have come at a worst time, since sniping had begun about its unimpressive record of administration just over three months after it drove Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai – TRT) governing party from power.

‘’This places their (junta’s) credibility on the line, because they are a military government and national security is their priority,” Laurent Malespine, an independent political analyst, told IPS. ‘’People expect more from them on this front. It is a big political hot potato.”

What the bomb investigations reveal will add to the tension expected as the country’s new constitutional assembly formally began work Tuesday to draft the country’s latest charter, the 18th since it became a constitutional monarchy in 1932. The military government and some leading coup sympathisers are being accused by pro-democracy activists of attempting to limit the public’s participation in the country’s political process.

”The constitution drafting process will be very tense. Many political divisions will appear,” says Malespine. ‘’The fall out from the bombs will add to this tension.”

In fact, some analysts believe that Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, a former army chief, may have painted his administration into a corner by narrowing its list of possible suspects to ‘’the people who lost political benefits” rather than being open to other possible perpetrators.

”It does not make sense for the Thai Rak Thai to plant these bombs, because it goes against their strategy of trying to win votes through populist strategies,” Giles Ungpakorn, political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, said in an interview. ‘’The bombs will only alienate the electorate and push the people into the hands of the military.”

The government should have not dismissed other possible links, such as the possibility of the bombings being linked to the escalating insurgency in the country’s Malay-Muslim provinces in the south, where over 1,700 people have been killed in three years, he added.

Other analysts have also hinted at a similar possibility – despite Bangkok saying otherwise – due to the nature of the chemicals and components used to make the bombs, including ammonium nitrate, nails and metal pieces and digital clocks to set them off.

At least one U.S. expert on terrorism in South-east Asia is not convinced that the Malay insurgents were the perpetrators, since the ‘’bombs were smaller and less sophisticated” to what is used in the south. ‘’While the insurgents do have the technical capability to strike in Bangkok, they lack the supporting infrastructure,” Zachary Abuza, an associate professor of international politics at Simmons College, in Massachusetts, told IPS. ‘’Why strike in Bangkok when they are winning in the south?”

And, as is typical in developing countries run by a junta, Thailand is having its run of rumours and conspiracy theories such as about splits in the military regime. Bangkok is rife with talk that the weekend’s explosions were linked to disgruntled elements in uniform, suggesting that the face of unity on display since the Sep.19 putsch is an illusion.

”A high-ranking political source said those behind the attacks could have been ‘in uniform’ but declined to be more specific until concrete evidence was available,” reported ‘The Nation’ newspaper on Tuesday.

The Thai police have not escaped suspicion, either, since they were closely associated with the administration of Thaksin, who is currently living in exile in Beijing.

Consequently, what worries human rights groups is the possibility of the prevailing insecure climate giving the junta a reason to strengthen national security measures at the expense of political and civil liberties, which Thais were hoping would be improved this year, including a possible general election.

The scenes in some parts of the city since the bombings point in that direction, with a greater number of armed soldiers returning to patrol key institutions, reminiscent of martial images in the days soon after the coup last year.