under an emergency law which protected them from civil, criminal, or other liabilities while performing their duties.14 No feasible solutions are in sight to give hope for a return to normalcy in the south. This is simply because the successive Thai governments have been fighting with faceless enemies who appear to be able to pick and choose their targets at will. It is sobering to hear Deputy Interior Minister Thaworn Senneam, who is in charge of the south, tell a newspaper reporter that it would take “at least twenty years” to bring the situation in the deep south back to normaI.15 In early November, former Prime Minister General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, now chairman of the PTP, Thaksin’s new party after the dissolution of the PPP in late 2008, floated the idea of giving autonomy to the three southernmost provinces of Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat in the form of a special administrative zone such as the Pattani City Administration.16 His idea was met with strong criticism from the Abhisit government. If the suppression of the red-shirt protesters during the Songkam riots exposed the structure of inequality in Thai society wherein the red and yellow shirts were treated differently, then this idea for solving the problem of violence in the south revealed what constitutes the unthinkable and unspeakable in Thai society. Autonomy for the south is a forbidden notion in the vocabulary of Thai politics. Environmental conservation and business investment interests clashed in early March when the Rayong Administrative Court designated the Map Ta Phut industrial estate area as a pollution-control zone. Furthermore, the Chiang Mai Administrative Court ordered the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) to pay compensation worth three billion baht to villagers affected by the pollution from its lignite power plant in the Mae Mo district of Lampang. An order from the Administrative Court on 29 September to suspend seventy-six industrial projects in the Map Ta Phut area sent a shock wave through the business community in Thailand. The suspension came after villagers and environmental groups accused the industry of malpractice for allowing projects without soliciting the opinions of locals and independent environmental organizations as required under Article 67 of the 2007 constitution and under a resolution of the National Environment Board (NEB).17 Chemical and cancer-causing substances had been found to be high in the affected areas, putting the lives of villagers at risk. The court ruling was interpreted by the business community as an obstacle to investment in Thailand as it would jeopardize new investment in other sectors such as tourism and agriculture. The overall picture of the economy in 2009 was quite bleak.18 The global financial crisis hit Thailand hard early in the year. The global recession that ปีที่ 5 ฉบับที่ 1 เดือนสิงหาคม 2553
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