Bra i dagens BP.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In need of a local Mandela
A few "conflict resolution" specialists have been in town to share the lessons and experience learned from their work in conflict areas around the world.
Few of these people have been asked to compare the Thai experience to that of South Africa's. That both countries have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission may be one reason. I myself do not believe one country's problem, or solution, is readily applicable to another's. Our so-called amart-versus-phrai class war is not exactly comparable to the South African apartheid system. Here, you may not advance in your career as fast as your colleagues with a fancy last name but there, under apartheid, if you were born black you didn't get to work on certain jobs at all - to go to school or use public services for that matter - in areas designated "for whites only".
Granted, both countries suffered from violence and divisiveness as a result of inequality and injustice. South Africa has emerged largely triumphant from its divisive years - its TRC, established in 1994, wrapped up its work in 1998.
Thailand, meanwhile, is still at best muddling through, with far too many committees to count working away diligently at far-too-many-to-trace aspects of "national reform".
Broadly speaking, however, there may be a basic anatomy of conflict and ways to overcome it, that both if not all countries can share.
If there is any lesson to be drawn from the South African experience, it would be that violence is no way to settle conflict, no matter how deep-rooted, hostile or justified it is.
Since Nelson Mandela, the first South African president from a "fully representative democratic election", won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, many people have forgotten that he was at one point commander of the military wing of the African National Congress.
In fact, it was the young Mandela who convinced the leadership of his party, built until that point on the firm premise of non-violence and Gandhian approach to conflict resolution, to start embracing violence as a means for them to counter the repression. Mandela's group undertook bombings of military targets. Mandela himself went underground. He was later charged with sabotage and sentenced to life in prison.
As is already well known, Mandela spent 27 years in prison. "I came out mature" - that is how Mandela describes his prison experience, the brutal deprivation that became the greatest moulding of his character.
One of the many things Mandela learned from his years in prison was, in order to free his people - the oppressed, the second-class citizens, the phraiof South African society - from injustice at the hands of the whites, he actually had to free the oppressors first, from fear.
Mandela realised that the ANC could not beat the whites, even if they were a minority, into accepting the equal rights of the blacks who were the majority, even though he had all the justification in the world to do so. That is why he decided to make the almost unthinkable, extremely risky move of entering into secret negotiations with the then South African president, P W Botha.
Since he broke away from the ANC's established policy of no negotiation with the government until apartheid was abandoned and political prisoners set free, Mandela could have been branded a traitor if his people found out what he was doing. He could have crushed the hope for reconciliation and started a civil war instead.
As it turned out, Mandela managed to use negotiation as the main tool to convince all sides to go down the reconciliation road, which finally ended in the first democratic election in South Africa in 1994. Needless to say, he had to overcome many difficulties and strong resistance not only from the opposite camp but also from those on his own side.
Why am I discussing this at length? The short answer would be that I would not want to see the worthy agenda of the red shirt movement - the part that reminds the public about what a hopelessly unequal society ours is and that tries to push people in power to restore a blurred sense of justice - fade away or get buried under the weight of anger on the red shirts' part (and under the length of red tape on the government's part.) I would like to see the passion of people pushing for change in a non-violent, constructive way, not the current drowsiness of people waiting for some 100 committees to draft the change agenda and hand it over to them.
It seems we need someone who understands the demands of reconciliatory leadership like Nelson Mandela. The problem is we don't seem to have anybody.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
http://www.bangkokpo...a-local-mandela