As Andrew Walker wrote last month, Thailand faces a stark choice: whether it is able to persevere with electoral democracy or whether it will plunge into escalating civil conflict.

There are clashes on the streets of Bangkok as former Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban appears determined to remove the government of Yingluck Shinawatra. Suthep himself earlier played a deadly role in the suppression of the red-shirt supporters of the current government and should be all too aware of the danger that the streets of Bangkok could become a war zone. Yesterday Suthin Tharathin, a leader of the Dharma Army, a Buddhist organisation, was the latest casualty, shot dead as he exited a polling booth which he and his supporters had shut down.

Suthep’s agenda is to oust Yingluck and replace her government with a hand-picked ‘people’s council’ and a royally appointed prime minister. His goal is to rid Thailand of the influence of Thaksin Shinawatra, Yingluck’s brother prime minister from 2001 until he was deposed by a military coup in 2006. As Walker explains, Suthep and his followers despise Thaksin and condemn the influence he has upon the government of his sister.

Yingluck has offered an early general election on 2 February. Suthep and his followers have boycotted the election plan because they know they would lose. Humiliated by successive electoral defeats, Thailand’s opposition is now walking away from the electoral process itself.

Suthep’s campaign started with broad-based opposition to comprehensive amnesty legislation that would have absolved former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra from his convictions of corruption and abuse of power but it has ended up as a civilian putsch by anti-Thaksin forces, led by the opposition Democrat Party.

Suthep and his cronies justify their extraordinary challenge to Thai democracy by vilifying Thailand’s voters, especially the rural voters who have provided the Shinawatras with their electoral dominance. They claim that Yingluck’s government is illegitimate because it was elected by poor and uneducated voters who sell their votes to the highest bidder.

The rush to confrontation on the streets of Bangkok has become more attractive for Suthep and his forces than the long haul of electoral rebuilding. Tearing down the electoral process and denigrating its outcomes rather than effectively participating in it is now the declared opposition mode.
Thailand’s electoral process has its problems but no serious analyst would suggest that the outcome of its elections over the past decade did not reflect the popular will. The Shinawatras’ electoral success has been entrenched by Thailand’s strong economic performance, rapid improvements in standards of living, declining poverty, universal health care and generous government subsidies for rural communities. A decade of electoral defeat is not unusual in modern democratic systems and it’s outrageous that the opposiion Deomcrats should simply declare foul because of their own faliure in the political contest..

In this week’s lead essay Jacob Hogan notes, ‘the Yingluck government was more or less able to keep the military on side and street violence at bay (but), by any standards, the Shinawatras had a very poor year in 2013′.

The Shinawatra regime has had its weaknesses. Thaksin was accused of putting his own interests ahead of the national interest. He appeared arrogant to many voters, including his own supporters. Yingluck’s government has been wounded by her recent political misjudgements and should now be a real target for an effective democratic opposition

The botched amnesty bill in November that was designed to clear Thaksin of his corruption charges and allow his safe passage back to Thailand caused protests and outrage. Poor policies, such as the rice subsidy scheme costing billions of baht, and concerns over graft on the loans for vast infrastructure and water-management projects, contributed to the shift in mood against the government. Yingluck’s Pheu Thai government has also undermined confidence in the appointed courts and independent institutions that act as checks-and-balances to the government’s power and underpin the Thai democratic system, and upset the country’s traditional elite.

Yet, none of this justifies Suthep’s attack on the foundations of Thai democracy. That is a recipe for destructive, ongoing civil conflict.

As Hogan concludes, while the protesters’ grievances with the government may be in many ways justified, and their arguments for decentralisation, media and education reform, and stricter measures to curb corruption valid, Suthep’s demands for the resignation of the government and installation of a reform council are fundamentally anti-democratic.

The urgent task is for the leaders of both sides to find a working compromise to halt the political unrest and street protests that have gripped the country for nearly a decade. Without compromise and the restoration of respect for democratic outcomes and the institutions that make democracy work, the risk is that the people will lose their political freedom and that economic chaos will inevitably follow political chaos, as investor confidence and the external demand that has driven Thai growth begin to unravel.

Peter Drysdale is Editor of the East Asia Forum.