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Unfortunately, Taksin is a royalist
Red Thai Socialist - February 11, 2015
The suspect has been identified as Hasadin Uraipraiwan. Earlier, an extremist media channel tried to falsely claim that "Banpot" was the Chiang-Mai academic Professor Tanet Charoenmuang.
The military junta is desperate to link Banpot to Taksin and they are making remarks about a "big capitalist" who is funding these activities. This is not the first time that the anti-democrats and the military have tried to accuse Taksin of wanting to overthrow the monarchy. They believe that it would help legitimise their destruction of democracy.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Unfortunately, Taksin is a royalist.
Taksin has often been accused of wanting to usurp the monarchy and become president. There is absolutely no evidence for this. In fact, throughout the period when Taksin was Prime Minister, he promoted and was seen to be servile to the King, just like the conservative generals who are his rivals.
His government paved the way for and participated in the lavish royal celebrations on the 60th anniversary of the King's accession to the throne in 2006. His government also introduced the "Yellow Shirt Mania", where we were all told to wear yellow royal shirts every Monday. Both Taksin and his conservative opponents are royalists because they seek to use the institution of the monarchy in order to stabilise the status quo and class rule in a capitalist society.
Following the July 2011 election we saw Prime Minister Yingluk's Pua Thai Government making it clear that they were royalists. If we look at the use of lese majeste, the Pua Thai Government's record of abusing freedom of speech was just as bad as Abhisit's military-backed Democrats.
The Minister for Information Technology and Communication Anudit Nakorntup showed himself to be a rabid royalist censor, threatening Facebook users who so much as clicked "like" in response to a post deemed to be insulting to the monarchy. Worse still, Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubamrung was appointed as "lese majeste supremo" to hunt down dissenters.
The reason why Taksin will not lead an all-out struggle for democracy against the dictatorship is linked to Taksin's royalism, or more importantly, to his commitment to defending the status quo and the Thai ruling class in its present form. He and the generals are merely rivals for power. Taksin wants to re-join the elite club at some point in the future. He is desperate to prevent radicalisation of the democracy movement. But we must do everything to encourage such radicalisation and the struggle for a democratic republic.
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