No other words seem to prick the easily excitable hearts of Thai protesters and their belligerent ringleaders more sharply than this coinage, always recited in its foreign form: "double standard." These past few years, the phrase has morphed from a foreign term scarcely used or understood here, to one of the most commonly heard and effective marching orders. When someone - of whichever coloured camp - shouts "DOUBLE STANDARD!" the rest of the column becomes instantly roused and willing to go to any lengths to rectify that injustice, inequality, indiscretion... all the myriad things that are less than fair in this country... in their own way and, well, by their own standards!While there is no doubt the phrase has caught on with the protesting crowds, I wonder what the practical use will be of its constant recitation and regular usage as a pretext to protest.
On Monday, members of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) went one step further and unfurled a red banner reading "Village of Double Standards" at Khao Yai Thiang, Nakhon Ratchasima. Their target was a 14-rai property owned by former prime minister and Privy Councillor Surayud Chulanont. The UDD protesters said they were making a point against what they perceived as the government's (and judiciary's) "double standards" in dealing with forest encroachers. While some villagers who occupied forest reserve land on the mountain have been sued for encroachment, Gen Surayud, who bought and thus occupied a piece of land there which technically couldn't be sold, was only asked to return the land without facing prosecution.
The Office of the Attorney-General ruled that Gen Surayud and the man who sold the plot to him did not have to face punishment because they only violated a cabinet resolution that allowed landless farmers to use forest reserve land for farming, without the right to sell it to other people.
The devil, they say, is in the details, and I think the same applies to the practice of double standards. The UDD did not specify if the villagers they upheld as committing the same mistake as Gen Surayud had purchased the land that technically can't be bought on Khao Yai Thiang? Or did they simply occupy land that was actually classified as forests? This is not to say that the villagers are wrong if they are forest squatters. This is to say that that would be a completely different problem requiring a completely different set of standards to deal with it.
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