Still Life with the Thai Flag (2008)

This series is my photographic equivalent of offering up blood sacrifices. I was moved to produce these pictures after the election of 23 December 2007, when the People Power Party (the reincarnation of billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra’s old ‘Thai Loves Thai’ Party which was dissolved for massive cheating in the elections of 2006) won the right to set up the next government, with Samak Sundaravej as their new prime minister. Mr Samak, a veteran extreme right politician, had been the deputy Interior Minister (the ministry that oversees the Police Department) in 1976 when soldiers, police and lynch mobs perpetrated shocking violence against students and other protesters for democracy in a shameful event that is known as the “October 6 Massacre”. When similar violence erupted in the “May Massacre” of 1992, Samak was again accused of supporting and abetting thuggish violence against unarmed civilians. He is now under investigation for corruption in a fire truck purchase deal for the city of Bangkok when he was its governor, and he freely admits to being Thaksin Shinawatra’s nominee, the caretaker of his political party, while Thaksin himself remains in exile in England, as owner of Manchester City football club. While Bangkok, the Central region, the East and the South voted against the PPP, and many provinces in the Lower North switched allegiance from Thaksin, the Upper North and the massive Northeast overwhelmingly voted for them. It shows that these people do not give a damn about the many accusations against Thaksin, whether they be about corruption and nepotism; the undermining of independent watchdog organisations; the disrespect towards the monarchy; or the refusal to pay income tax on the 2 billion US dollars sale of ShinCorp (his telecommunications, television and banking empire) shares to Temasek (Singaporean government investment arm). It is hardly surprising, therefore, that they should be equally uninterested in Samak Sundaravej’s personal history. This is strange to me: pro-Thaksin voters are enamoured of his wildly populist policies—cheap healthcare, village fund, cheap housing—yet they have never wondered where the enormous tax money to fund these paradisiacal schemes will come from, when even Thaksin himself avoided paying income tax. As I offer up my blood sacrifices, I am haunted by these questions: How can this society continue? How do we co-exist with these people?