To Western observers used to their armed forces
staying out of sight until needed for overseas peacekeeping projects or support
in natural disasters, Thailand’s coup culture – 18 either actual or attempted
since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932 – seems surreal, almost laughable if
it were not such a problem for the Thai people. Repercussions are certain to
follow.
In general the international community has a great
distaste for military governments. Burma, the standout in the region, is
gradually shrugging off the generals’ shackles. ASEAN will not be happy with
uniforms instead of suits speaking for Thailand in its councils.
The military will claim its right to depose civilian
governments is enshrined in a century-old law framed when Siam (as it was still
called then) was an absolute monarchy and designed to protect the king from the
anti-royalist movements of the time, such as Bolshevism.
But the world has moved on and in the words of
Australia’s Ambassador to Thailand, James Wise, the democratic gene is out of
the bottle. The Pheu Thai Party Coalition Government, which draws much of its
support from the rural and urban poor in the central, north and north-east of
the country, has a 100-seat majority in Parliament and clearly reflects the will
of most of the Thai people.
This enrages the supporters of the Democrat Party,
the nation’s oldest, which traditionally has its power base in Thailand’s south
and among Bangkok’s educated middle-classes and aristocratic elites. It also has
close ties to both the military and the Royal House. The party once dominated
Thailand’s politics but since 2001 has increasingly seen its support eroded by
the populist policies of Pheu Thai and its predecessor Thai Rak Thai.
Its leaders, backed in the streets by the People’s
Alliance for Democracy, more commonly known as the Yellow Shirts, maintain that
Pheu Thai used pork-barrel politics to buy votes. They despise former Prime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, himself deposed in a coup in 2006, since convicted
of corruption and living in exile.
But so popular was Thaksin among his constituency,
largely outside the capital, that when democracy was fully restored his sister,
Yingluck, was elected at the head of the revamped Pheu Thai Party; that is
until she was toppled by a decision of the Constitutional Court, charged with negligence
after she backed a flawed scheme to inflate the price of rice to benefit poor
farmers.
Pheu Thai claims it was simply trying to remedy years
of neglect among citizens looked down upon by the aristocratic Democrats.
However the Democrats’ Yellow Shirt supporters have been able to disrupt the
capital with months of civil disobedience and have welcomed the military’s
intervention.
This will not solve anything. An election held
tomorrow would see Pheu Thai returned with its majority intact. The alternative
can only be a full-blown military government or a propped-up puppet Democrat
administration which would result in international condemnation, sanctions and
isolation.
As Pravit Rojanaphruk, a columnist for Bangkok’s
English-language newspaper, The Nation
put it: “The cycle of military intervention, with 18 coups in eight decades,
has to end for Thais to grow up and learn to take responsibility for
themselves.”
It needs the opponents of the government, in
Parliament and on the streets, to stop acting like spoilt children and work
towards becoming a democratic alternative that is attractive to all Thais
rather than elite, sectional interests.
Finally, the military has to realise the age of government
by the gun has passed. By staging the coup it is not the impartial referee
calling time out, but a partisan force which essentially supports a select minority
faction among the Thai people.
Its endless interventions into Thailand’s political
life are stunting democratic development and will eventually do far more harm than
good to the nation.
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