While Thailand regroups after the worst riots in its modern history, experts say the country is not just struggling with the possibility of new elections — it is struggling with its own national identity.

“These incidents are the result of a dysfunctional political system dominated by kingpins — some heads of criminal syndicates, some wealthy by other means — who represent only themselves,” said Alan Klima, a UC Davis anthropology professor who studies the relationship among Buddhism, death and politics in Thailand.

On May 19, Thai soldiers converged on a heavily fortified camp held by thousands of anti-government protesters in Bangkok to bring an end to two months of increasingly violent demonstrations. The clashes between demonstrators and security forces left at least 85 people dead and swaths of Bangkok’s world-famous shopping district in fiery ruins.

The crisis has not ended, but rather the violence has abated for now as Thailand takes a collective deep breath. The future of this Southeast Asian country, Klima said, depends on how it reforms an unstable political system dominated by old-style political hierarchies.

“There has been a lot of switching sides. Before the red shirts came out, there were the yellow shirts which ousted the red shirts' favored political leader,” he said, referring to the different factions behind the unrest.

The red shirts are largely rural-based, while the yellow shirts typically come from Bangkok's middle and upper classes. One might think the red shirts are in favor of more redistributive polices and the yellow shirts are more business-oriented. But these are broad-based movements, not political parties, and they have no platforms or refined ideologies.

“They are simply organizations for the acquisition of power,” Klima said. "There is a readily available source of dissatisfied and disenfranchised people to supply protest movements against the status quo.

“Protesters are drawn in with highly idealistic visions as well as distorted information, on both sides.”

'Rebuild it with your conscience'

Navin Yavapolkul, a Thai native and UC Davis doctoral student in agricultural resource economics, said the conflict is less about ideology than about status and ill-formed political machinery.

“The problem is that we don’t yet have the electoral laws or political process to achieve the kind of stability needed.”

One of 72 UC Davis students from Thailand, Yavapolkul said he shuddered last week watching the TV footage of familiar Bangkok buildings set afire by mobs. That night he only slept an hour or two, and was in constant touch with friends and family, who are safe.

“When the city is burned and broken down, you rebuild it by hand. But when your soul is broken, you rebuild it with your conscience,” said Yavapolkul.

Is a larger civil war coming?

Klima said, “A civil war in the usual sense of the term is unlikely. However, the problems will not go away and protests will return.”

He believes an aggressive use of military power to stamp out the unrest will only backfire and make things worse in the long run.

“Hopefully, those in power now will realize that, but one never knows,” he said.

While a popular image of Thailand is that of a gentle, Buddhist society of renowned hospitality—it is called The Land of Smiles—the irony is that discord abounds, and the government has often resorted to force to solve political conflicts. Eighteen military coups have taken place since 1932.

As for that idyllic image, Klima said, "Those kinds of cultures only exist in movies like Avatar. Thailand has conflict, like all countries, but it does not have a way to resolve political disagreements, and won't until democracy and a free press become strong."

Divided nation

The question now is when the next elections will be held, and this is far from clear. This week, the government said elections could be considered only after violence and protests ended completely.

As for loyalties, the population, the army and even the monarchy seem divided. King Bhumibol, who has reigned since 1946, the longest-serving king in the world, remains silent in public — yet his wife is widely seen as a friend of the yellow shirts. The crown prince, on the other hand, is rumored to sympathize with the red shirts.

Yavapolkul said he was profoundly touched this week when Thais of different political persuasions came together for a mass cleaning of the mess in downtown Bangkok.

“The peace movement in the wake of this is clear, and it shows a lot about the people.”

He brushed off simple characterizations of the red shirts as poor, rural folk, and the yellow shirts as representing Bangkok’s established order, including the security forces.

“It is far more complex, as these broad categories represent widely divergent types of Thai people, and they are not so easily monolithic,” Yavapolkul said.

Monticha Sompolvorachai, a native of Thailand who earned a doctorate in agricultural economics from UC Davis and is now on the faculty at California State University, Stanislaus, said education and government accountability are the keys to a prosperous and free Thailand.

“What we need most is transparency and the ability to expose corruption, which is the thing that kills any attempt to do right in Thailand,” said Sompolvorachai, whose dissertation focused on credit and farm investment in rural Thailand.

As the world grows more globalized, improving school systems throughout Thailand is imperative, she said. Too few young Thais, for example, understand their country’s history. As a result, they are unable to connect in meaningful ways with the larger Thai community or the world beyond, she argued.

Elections and education

Doctoral student Yavapolkul, in explaining the unrest, pointed to Thaksin Shinawatra, a billionaire businessman who was prime minister of Thailand from 2001 to 2006. Beloved in the countryside for his populism but accused of many crimes of graft, Shinawatra was deposed in a 2006 military coup and is now living in exile.

While the yellow shirts blame Thaksin for behind-the-scenes orchestration of the recent uprisings, the red shirts believe he was unjustly removed from power, he explained.

“This is going to be a problem for a long, long time. No single election is going to wipe away all the pent-up resentment,” Yavapolkul said.

Thai culture, professor Sompolvorachai said, is a large part of the issue.

“Thai people generally are too shy and culturally inhibited to engage in productive debates. Thailand needs more people with critical thinking skills in the 21st century,” she said.

Long popular for tourism and foreign investment, Thailand can become a beacon of societal progress in Southeast Asia, Sompolvorachai said, if it builds a fact-based, candid approach to political reconciliation.

“I think education is the key.”