by Zoe Daniel
I’m sitting with Sky News reporter Adam Harvey, the son of a late Channel Nine legend, who has since moved to the ABC. He’s been filming and reporting the whole thing on his own without a cameraman, reminding me of my days in Africa. Rumpled and worn down, we both feel like the odd ones out among the other journalists, and that’s confirmed when the flight attendant whispers to the Channel Ten crew that we ‘look like ABC types’. We both laugh. I will be forever grateful to Channel Nine for fitting me on that plane even though I didn’t quite look the part.
As the sun sets we fly in over the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, and land after an eight-hour journey. It feels strange to be in Australia for the first time in almost a year without seeing friends or family. I call my brother but he’s out of town so I overnight at a hotel before taking the earliest flight back to Bangkok.
The kids fall all over me with joy when I arrive. I’m relieved to have made it back but I’m also completely spent. It’s dusk, and Rowan, Mum, my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law and her husband are sitting on the terrace drinking gin and tonics, while Arkie and Pearl play with their cousin in the garden. I feel as though I’ve arrived from another planet. I’ve spent the last week wishing I was home and now that I’m here I feel like I don’t belong.
I end up feeling subdued throughout the Christmas period. I just can’t shake 2010 out of my head.
Rowan and I take the kids away to a quiet island off the coast of Phuket in the new year, but I still don’t feel myself. I lie awake worrying about random things. During the day I feel off-colour and tired, so much so that we cut the trip short. I’m out of kilter and it continues for two or three months as I battle virus after virus and general fatigue.
When the Japanese tsunami happens on 6 March, I’m both dreading the prospect and desperate to go, but I don’t get called and I can’t speak to ask: I’ve lost my voice due to chronic laryngitis. It’s the last straw.
Needing to get out of Asia, where I’m always waiting for the phone to ring because of one disaster or another, we decide to go to Australia for a holiday. We fly to Perth to see Rowan’s sister, over the red rock of the Kimberley and then along the coast, landing on a stunning, clear blue day. Compared to Bangkok the air is sharp and clean, and we revel in it as we visit the zoo and King’s Park, and the kids play with their cousins. I forget about work in just a couple of days.
We fly on to Tassie and spend Easter at the beach with my dad, his partner, Kim, and my little sister, Elie. There are wallabies in the garden and we take Dad’s boat out to fish for flathead. Elie waterskis on the river. The kids walk the dog and ride bikes and play in the park. It’s cool and crisp and sunny. On Easter Sunday we have an egg hunt.
There’s little mobile coverage and next to no internet and I don’t watch or listen to any news.
My headaches go away and I can sleep again.
It’s exactly a year since I started the job.
SEVEN
It’s also a year since the madness of the redshirt protests, and Thailand will finally head to the polls in July.
Nothing has been resolved. Supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra, the populist former prime minister, still think the rich and privileged are controlling the country and that the Bangkok elites hold too much power. But as prime minister, Thaksin stood accused of various crimes, including profiting from office, muzzling the media and ordering the killing of thousands of drug dealers outside the auspices of the law. The pro-establishment yellowshirts and the conservative supporters of the ruling Democrat Party still see Thaksin as a threat to democracy.
An election is at least a step in the right direction. It might allow a democratic resolution to the stalemate, but no one is quite sure whether the result will hold. There have been eighteen coups or attempted coups since 1932, so there’s a good chance that, although it’s promising not to, the military will attempt to eject the government if the result goes in the redshirts’ favour.
Thaksin is still living in Dubai, unable to return to Thailand. If he does he’ll face two years in jail on corruption charges. He remains a highly influential figure who is seen to be running the redshirt-backed Pheu Thai Party from afar. Daily, the papers are full of speculation about whether he’ll try to return, as well as declarations by his opponents that if he does he’ll be arrested. He still has a massive following, yet the feelings about him on both sides are so strong that it seems conflict would be inevitable if he came back.
Enter Yingluck Shinawatra.
Either a brilliant masterstroke or a desperate idea, the installation of Thaksin’s youngest sister as the party’s leader turns the election campaign on its head. Democrat leader Abhisit Vejjajiva, tainted by his part in the military crackdown, has a real fight on his hands.
Yingluck has been university educated in Thailand and the United States and is a senior manager in one of her family’s telco companies, so she comes with credible experience. She’s also a fresh face, happens to be stunningly beautiful and carries the Shinawatra name. To the electorate, it’s an irresistible combination.
Thaksin hasn’t done a television interview in years. Since the unrest we’ve been in contact with a number of his former colleagues and key advisors, seeking an interview with no success. We’re one of many media organisations that want to talk to him. We’ve recently travelled outside Thailand for an exclusive interview with his former spokesman, Jakrapob Penkair, who’s in hiding. He tells me that Thaksin wants to move on, rather than focus on Thai politics.
A direct interview with Thaksin, however, remains elusive. Finally I speak to my boss, Bronwen: she happens to have a contact who may be able to help, and makes some calls to nudge our request along.
I’m at my desk a couple of days later when an email drops in from a key contact. It’s done.
Even as we make plans to fly to Dubai, I can’t quite believe we’ve locked in what will be a world TV exclusive. I keep my mouth shut and the staff do the same. Until we have the interview ready for broadcast, we could be pipped at the post.
As David and I leave the office for the airport with all our gear, we run into a colleague in the hallway. ‘Where are you off to?’ he enquires curiously.
‘Just an interview,’ David and I respond in unison. We jump into the lift and dissolve into fits of nervous giggles.
We fly to Dubai and talk our way through customs with the shaky claim that we’re transiting to go shopping. We haven’t had time to get permission to bring all our gear into Dubai, so we have no choice but to wing it, which seems reasonable when we won’t be filming on the street.
I’m relieved when we reach the hotel, a gleaming place called Media One that’s full of young, wealthy expats oozing glamour as they float through the foyer, the women in mile-high miniskirts, the men in sheer open-necked resort shirts, making their way to the hotel’s hip bar. Music pumps all night into the desert sky.
When I open the curtains in the morning, everything is the colour of sand as far as the eye can see. How stark Thaksin must find his home in exile compared to the steamy, tropical green of Thailand, I think.
A car arrives to pick us up. The driver takes us to an elegant but unassuming house in a gated compound with a couple of luxury cars in the driveway. We’re given a pair of slippers each and ushered inside. I’m expecting things to be quite formal so I’m slightly unprepared when Thaksin himself greets us as soon as we enter. He sits down with me for an informal chat while David sets up lights and cameras. For someone who hasn’t done a TV interview in years, he seems keen to talk.
His agenda is to convince the Thai electorate that Yingluck is going to be her own woman as prime minister and not his puppet.
‘The party’s slogan is, in English, “Thaksin thinks, Pheu Thai acts”,’ I begin. ‘So are you in fact the de facto opposition leader from outside the country?’
‘Well, I may influence in terms of the ideas and thinking because I have more experience than others, and then I just want to see success. And I just shar
e my experience as former prime minister and the experience of running around the whole world.’
‘So is it fair to say, though, that a vote for Pheu Thai is a vote for, if not you, your policies, your attitudes?’
‘I think it’s a vote for policy. Most of the people know, it’s a vote for policy.’
‘Well, in fact you’ve been quoted as describing her as your clone. What do you mean by that?’
‘Well, she’s my youngest sister. She works for me from the beginning. So I teach her, I train her; the working habit style is nearly exactly like me.’
‘But in describing her as a clone, are you saying that she’s your puppet, that she’s doing what you tell her to do?’
‘No. No. No. Clone is meaning that this same culture, the same background, the same ideas, the same attitude, the same thinking.’
Thaksin is sitting on a white leather couch, with framed family photographs on a sideboard behind him. Yingluck, he says, learnt politics as a child. She won’t have a problem being prime minister even in the dog-eat-dog political environment in Thailand, which may be known as the ‘land of smiles’ but isn’t always a happy place. The other big question, though, is whether installing her is a temporary measure to get himself back to the top.
‘I still want to be a university lecturer, that’s my dream. Playing golf. Giving guidance for my children for their business endeavours. That’s what I really want to do.’
‘Is becoming prime minister again not on the table?’ I ask cynically.
‘My youngest sister is already there, so no need for me to go back as a prime minister.’
‘Well, unless she made space for you later.’
‘No, no, even that, even that.’ He’s firm.
David and I are both very pleased to have it over and done with. We go back to the hotel and make a back-up copy before heading straight to the airport for an overnight flight. We then spend the weekend quietly editing in the office and it runs with a splash on Monday’s Lateline.
That night I stagger home from work, exhausted but satisfied at the mere fact that we’ve been able to pull it off. I really need to debrief with Rowan but he’s flown out of the country for work again. Nisha has put the kids to bed and the house is silent. There’s no food in the fridge so I eat Vegemite on toast for dinner, washed down with a glass of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc from the dregs of a bottle in the fridge door, and read the reaction to the interview on Twitter before crashing into bed.
Thaksin’s comments are instantly picked up by newspapers and television worldwide. ‘I Don’t Want to Lead Again, Says Thaksin’ is the headline on the front page of the Bangkok Post.
Thai TV runs the interview repeatedly and Jum jokes that she keeps seeing me with Thaksin on TV at home or in shops around Bangkok.
She has a surprise for me: Yingluck, who we’ve been chasing hard for a couple of months, is suddenly available. It’s clear that the campaign is swinging into action.
We turn up at party headquarters, where Yingluck appears in a silky white Pheu Thai tracksuit top, sharp against the red party banners. She’s not as confident as her brother and her English is shaky, but she’s no pushover. I remind myself that she’s only forty-four, just a few years older than me, and she’s campaigning to lead a country of around sixty-seven million. She’ll need to have guts to do it.
‘Politics is a hard game … particularly in Thailand. Are you strong enough?’ I ask.
‘I don’t think Thai people will need me to just join the politics and play the politics on a daily basis. They need me to … solve the problems.’
She says she’s not a puppet.
‘Your brother, Dr Thaksin, calls you his clone. Who wins in an argument between you? What if you disagree with him?’
‘No … His cloning means that he used to teach me, in terms of thinking, management styles, because I used to work with him. But when we make decisions … I have to be myself to make decisions.’
Pheu Thai is advertising Yingluck’s gender for all it’s worth. Being young and beautiful and a mother are playing well. Although criticised by commentators and to a degree the international press, her physical softness and a tendency to ungainly naivety may prove helpful, particularly up against the formal, English-educated stiffness of Abhisit Vejjajiva, who is suddenly also available to talk to us.
He has a big problem, having been the prime minister when the crackdown on the redshirt protests took place. All the polls are against him.
‘Would you accept that the community is more divided now than it was when you took office?’ I challenge when we meet at Democrat headquarters.
‘I don’t think so,’ he replies. ‘I think in many ways there was the basic division there. And the beginning of it all, of course, was the former Prime Minister Thaksin, who has been a divisive and a central figure to the conflicts. But I think that the organisation of groups like the redshirts and with some violent tendencies have made it more difficult.’
‘Do you accept responsibility for what happened in Bangkok in April and May last year?’
‘Right after the events, you know, we had a censure debate. We’ve had a number of independent commissions. We’re making progress with the cases.’
‘So you’re saying you won’t accept responsibility …’ I interject.
‘I’m saying the truth needs to be known. But I can confirm that the kind of wild allegations made against me – that I ordered a violent crackdown, killings – that just doesn’t square up with the facts if you look at the chronology of events.’
‘Who ordered the army in if it wasn’t you?’
‘It was clear that no losses would have taken place had there been no armed elements infused among protesters, firing bombs, grenades, bullets at the military, possibly at people as well.’
‘You put the blame on the redshirts for forcing your hand to send the military in – is that what you’re saying?’
‘I’m saying that we had to uphold the law. And we were under tremendous pressure because they were causing a lot of trouble for ordinary people. But we exercised restraint, patience, tolerance. We offered real solutions like concrete dates for early elections. And every time it was rejected by them.’
I think we both know that he’s the outgoing prime minister, but he’s not letting go yet.
‘No, I’m saying that if the people vote for the Democrats to lead the next government, we address all people’s concerns including the redshirts. That’s the way to move things forward.’
We’re well into the to and fro of the campaign when Jum presents me with something else entirely.
Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, now about half a year out of house arrest, has agreed to our interview request. Despite being supposedly free, she’s still being closely watched and is mostly cloistered at her house in Yangon. The country remains closed to journalists.
Our trusted local fixer, Jimmy, and Jum and I have spent months pushing for the interview. I’ve secured a tourist visa just in case. Now, just as the Thai election looms, I need to get in and out of Burma for Foreign Correspondent before turning my attention back to the poll. A correspondent’s life is feast or famine and this is definitely the former.
The flamboyant and funny ABC India cameraman Wayne McAllister will be coming to Burma with me because David is still banned. We’ll be posing as tourists again, with small cameras, and we’ll have to sneak in to see the Lady at her house as well as filming discreetly around Yangon. It’s very tight timing and another secret mission so we go into lockdown mode again.
The night before I leave, Rowan is away. I have an early flight and he’ll land from wherever he is in the afternoon. We’re still attempting to tag in and out of the country so the kids have at least one of us at home all the time. We’ll pass somewhere in the sky maybe.
Arkie knows I’m off to see ‘Daw Suu’, as she’s affectionately called by the locals. He and Pearl have seen her picture in the newspaper. They know her as the good lady wit
h the flowers in her hair who was put in jail by the nasty generals. Nisha, being Burmese, has reinforced the country’s reputation as desperately poor and riddled with cruelty and conflict. The kids have decided it’s definitely a scary place but I try to reassure them and encourage Arkie to make Daw Suu a card because she’s just celebrated her first birthday since being released. Carefully he cuts her photograph from the newspaper and pastes it onto a big piece of blue cardboard next to a picture he’s drawn of our house. He asks if she can come to visit us and I promise to suggest it if I get the chance.
Later that evening I’ve read the kids their bedtime stories and I’m just switching off the light when Arkie bursts into tears. ‘Please don’t go to Burma, Mummy. I’m frightened.’ He clings to me and sobs.
I curse myself for telling the kids about what I do, remembering my own terrifying nightmares from childhood when a little bit of knowledge of politics and war can be too much. Early awareness of the world is good, except when it’s scary.
‘Why are you so worried about me, mister?’ I try to ask lightly.
‘Because Daw Suu is a good lady and you’re a good lady and those men put her in jail so what if they put you in jail too? And then I won’t be able to see you any more.’ He weeps in great, gulping waves, soaking me with tears.
Getting arrested is always a concern when I go to countries where I’m not meant to be, but I push the thought away. ‘Mummy’s too smart for those bad men,’ I say, more firmly than I feel. ‘I’ll be back in a few days, I promise.’ I rock him to sleep, worrying about everything that could go wrong on the shoot.
Later that night, Pearl climbs into the big bed with me. She shakes me awake. ‘Mummy, I don’t feel well.’ She then starts vomiting.
I strip the bed, replace the sheet, cover it with towels and grab a bowl from the kitchen. For hours I hold her over the bowl as she repeatedly throws up. I wonder how on earth I’ll leave Arkie sick with anxiety and Pearl so unwell.