Shortly after 10pm Thai time this Tuesday, tanks under the command of General Sonthi Boonyaratglin rolled into the grounds of Government House in Bangkok’s old town, then took over the residence of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, away at a UN conference in New York.
Coup leaders apologised for the inconvenience, and Southeast Asia’s only democratic state ceased to be. Much of Thailand's educated urban middle class, once so central to the creation of Thai democracy, cheered. How did it come to this?
Prime Minister Thaksin was elected in 2001 on the biggest electoral landslide Thailand has ever seen. His brash new party, the populist Thai Rak Thai (or TRT, approximately ‘Thais love Thais’) was a runaway success on the campaign trail within months of its foundation. After the humiliation of the 1997 economic crisis, over which the government of Democrat Party leader Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai (the cleanest in Thai history) had the misfortune to preside, Thaksin’s bullish young party seemed to provide all the answers to a people desperate for political redemption.
Thaksin Shinawatra hailed from the northern capital of Chiang Mai. The most successful entrepreneur of Thailand’s telecoms boom, he made his billions cultivating connections with successive regimes, rising in the ‘money politics’ era of the early 1990s to briefly become Foreign Minister.
This young dynamo was the American-educated son of a comfortable and respected political family of northern Thailand, one of the many ethnic-Chinese clans that have integrated so successfully into the upper echelons of Thai life. That this was not the ideal story to sell the Thai poor was no matter. Thaksin became a son of the land, a self-made man of Thailand’s neglected north, with an invented life story embodying all Thailand’s pain and hope. The greatest achievement of political spin in the 1990s was not New Labour: it was Thaksin Shinawatra, and Thai Rak Thai. Thaksin had trodden Thailand’s murky borderland between business and politics as adeptly as anyone. Now he would apply all the technocratic skill he had used running his group, Shin Corp, to the rejuvenation of Thailand itself. Out with the old, in with the new. ‘I am determined to devote myself to politics to lead the Thai people out of poverty’, he said. ‘Nothing will stand in my way’.
Victory in 2001 capped a campaign of a new style in Thailand, but the result was familiar. The populist Thaksin, who back then was quietly backed by military friends, won a huge majority of the seats in the poor Northeast and a majority in the North, where vote buying is rife and family connections really count. In the capital the results were mixed (though Thai Rak Thai quickly lost Bangkokian support when the educated capital got suspicious of corruption). And in the staunchly Democrat, densely populated South and the Muslim extreme-south they won virtually nothing. Thai town and country, south and north, were once more pitted against each other. History was starting to rhyme.
Corruption returned so quickly that Thaksin’s support among educated Thais collapsed almost immediately. In fact, his premiership was nearly terminated as soon as it began. A month before the election that brought him to power, the National Counter Corruption Commission (NCCC) charged Thaksin with three separate counts of asset concealment during his previous ministerial tenure. Huge sums had been registered in the names of his housekeeper, maid and driver, putting two of the three domestic servants briefly among the top ten holders of shares on the stock exchange. This was a test case for the new ‘people’s constitution’ of 1997, which had created the NCCC and the first Constitutional Court. Thaksin’s view of the case, and his implicitly dismissive attitude towards checks and balances, was typical: ‘The people want me... and the people know what’s right for Thailand. And who should I be more loyal to? The people? Or the court? I love the people. I want to work for them.’
The court decided 8/7 in his favour. With that, the gap between business and politics was closed. However three weeks later, Chairman of the Court Prasert Nasakul published a statement that aroused speculation about his true feelings:
The heart of political reform is to nurture politicians who uphold sound moral principles and aspire to observe stricter dharma than other laymen. What the accused did shows he is a product of the past… Politicians who put their own self interest before the public interest cannot be expected to make a positive contribution to the society they are supposed to serve.
The Thaksin heartland is Thailand’s Northeast, or ‘Isan’, a region that was western Laos until two hundred and fifty years ago. Today, it remains mainly ethnic-Lao, speaking a mixed Lao-Thai dialect. It is inaccessible, politically backward and poor, fertile ground for any aspiring autocrat. It also constitutes around forty percent of the country’s constituencies and is the key to democratic power. If any one factor is responsible for the continually spasmodic nature of Thai politics, it is the cultural clash between the backward Northeast, and the educated South, especially Bangkok.
For four years Thaksin had his way, and little held him back: his war on drugs was run like a military campaign, a death toll of alleged dealers shot by police hitting TV screens each day. Human rights groups raised the alarm, which only seemed to fuel his popularity. The Senate, severed from party allegiances by the 1997 constitution, was gradually co-opted by TRT; the media were intimidated through frequent libel suits, with provocative programmes pulled as nepotism deepened. In the Muslim provinces, however, growing Islamic terror was not brought under control; indeed it was probably exacerbated by incidents such as the Takbai massacre in 2004 that left 80 dead. That ‘closed gap’ between business and politics was evident when, in 2004, Thaksin informed the media that he was close to privately buying a thirty percent stake in Liverpool FC; then within seconds a government spokesman announced that Thailand ‘as a country’ would make the purchase. Thaksin was becoming Thailand.
Soon, Thais’ strong civil society started to bounce back. The People’s Alliance for Democracy (or PAD), led by shady media tycoon Sonthi Limthimongkol delighted audiences with its Thaksin-bashing rallies in central Lumphinee Park. All importantly, Thaksin became seen as the source of disharmony during the sixtieth anniversary of the adored King’s coronation: a very bad move in this deeply Buddhist Asian society. Worse, rumours began to circulate in Bangkok early this summer of a so-called ‘Finland Plan’, a scheme to diminish royal prestige - and increase Thaksin’s - by making the poor reliant on a welfare state that would revolve around Thai Rak Thai, leading eventually to the creation of a republic.
Perhaps. But one thing is certain. If you are going to be an authoritarian, you need to keep stability: that is the currency of authoritarianism. In Thailand as a whole, especially the three Muslim provinces, Thaksin could not do that. In allegedly setting up fake parties to win a fair vote in April’s now invalid elections, and corrupting the Electoral Commission along the way, he enraged a civil society whose strength he underestimated. When he tried to secure promotions for his associates in the army this summer, thereby trying to bring that all-important institution under his wing, the Prime Minister was caught in a pincer movement between the old guard and civil society, that snapped shut when he was out of the country a little too long.
At the time of writing, sources in Bangkok close to the coup leaders told the author of rumours coming from Thailand’s new power centre (although it should of course be stressed that these remain unconfirmed): ‘Red zones’ have apparently been established in areas of central Bangkok where there may be gatherings of Thaksin supporters (Rathchadamnoen, Khao San, Thonglor and Ekkamai). Tanks were also sent into Chulalongkorn and Thammasat universities during the coup. Outside Bangkok, life goes on ‘as normal’, but contrary to media reports, we have received reports of shooting on the Petchaburi Road, one of the arterial routes leading east out of the city.
Many of Thaksin’s ministers were outside Thailand on Tuesday, including Finance Minister Dr Somkid Jatusripitak. Thaksin’s elder daughter had returned to university in London, his younger daughter had just flown to Singapore. At the time of writing, his son was ‘unreachable’. Following the coup, one report has said that heavy arms have been distributed by some Thaksin-loyalists in the army to some members of the police, eighty percent of whom are believed to have been loyal to Mr Thaksin.
In Paris on Tuesday, Princess Sirindthorn was accompanied to a musical show by the wives of some of PM Thaksin’s allies in the country, including the wife of Dr Somkid. One source close to the coup leaders also indicated that a meeting between coup leaders, the Head of the Privy Council Mr Prem Tinsulanond, and HM the King himself took place the day before the coup.
What now? When the army last took power in 1991, it ousted the corrupt Chatichai Choonhavan, a former general himself. But the new rulers liked their position, embezzled more than the cabinet they had kicked out, stuck around too long and were ousted in turn after demonstrators were shot. How much have things moved on?
In the 1992 protests, the King sided with the democratic forces, having failed to do so twice in the 1970s when he believed that the Communists were at the gates. His Majesty pronounced, and that was the end of that. Solutions now are less clear. That Thaksin got on the wrong side of the Palace is certain; a way out of this impasse is more difficult though, because Thaksin and his party have remained so popular upcountry. The balancing power of the monarchy, deployed reluctantly in recent years, is now coming into play, and Thais are seeing their choices curtailed: an anti-democratic manoeuvre that one power-network believes will save Thai politics from itself.
That change has happened by coup is symptomatic of the failure of Thai political culture (and much of East Asian political culture in general) to see democracy as an end, not just a means. The People’s Alliance for Democracy made Thaksin-style errors itself, as did the opposition in its boycott of the April elections. A better moniker would have been the PACG: the People’s Alliance for Clean Government. Thailand already had democracy. By implying otherwise, the PAD legitimised a coup: there seemed no harm in getting rid of a democracy that people had already forgotten. As long as Thai politics is tailored to such sentiment, the army will hold the bottom line: force. And Thailand will keep its reputation as a dysfunctional democracy.
With neighbours like tyrannical Burma, semi-democratic Malaysia and kleptocratic Cambodia, Thailand had become Southeast Asia’s democratic hub. Many of the region’s opposition groups have offices there. For Burma’s ethnic rebel armies, such as the Karen, Thai democracy provided a lifeline, albeit one that became less reliable with Thaksin’s courting of the Burmese junta for his own telecoms contracts. Thailand’s previous military premiers have come down harshly upon these groups, as they rush to do deals with foreign dictatorships before being turfed out. In the 1990s, even democratically elected General Chavalit Yongchayudh organised an operation to fly Burmese dissidents back home to torture and death, in order to seal his own logging contracts with Burma. This spring saw the worst violence in seven years in the junta’s genocidal campaign against the Karen. Exile groups are right to be nervous.
Thailand must change from within, by means cultural and institutional. Thailand’s free, dynamic economy ensures that Thais are getting more economic control, so they are demanding more political freedom and honesty too. As I argued in Bangkok’s The Nation earlier this year, the liquid complexity of Thai politics demands an approach that does not simply condemn the actions of a given side at a given time, as some western media have been prone to. Thaksin reduced rural poverty for now: but he did it in the wrong way, creating for the provinces a debt-based client state that demeans, not improves people’s lives. The opposition had a very strong case against his misrule: but they allowed anti-democratic forces to gain the upper hand in his downfall. The most damaging aspect of this week’s events in the long run is that as long as Thais rely on action from somewhere on high they will not be able to develop a culture of political responsibility.
We note with alarm that since taking power the generals have issued a communiqué banning political activity. This order must be lifted. The international community must now join opposition leaders in demanding earlier elections than the military appear interested in holding, as anything less will constitute acceptance of the validity of the coup. The generals must be made to keep to their word and leave office after the transitional period they have declared. In light of such developments it also appears that the BBC was mistaken in closing its Thai service earlier this year. In 1992, foreign broadcasts were pivotal in informing the Thai people of shootings by the military and returning the country to democracy.
Thai democracy must be bolstered effectively from the outside. An East Asian democratic group of nations, proposed by The Henry Jackson Society’s Tobias Harris in his analysis of Mongolia, would help strengthen democracy. This is especially necessary with a rising China, a country any autocrat can happily work with, and against the slow tide of Asian democratisation. Democracy will return to Thailand, and it will probably do so peacefully, as promised, provided that the generals do not attempt to re-write the constitution to ride back into Thai politics. When democracy returns, it must be vigorously supported through greater transparency and international support, so that this time, it returns for good.