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Illusions of progress towards Thai democracy

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An anti-government protester stands in front of riot police officers during a protest to demand that the military government hold a general election by November, in Bangkok, Thailand, 22 May 2018 (Photo: Reuters/Athit Perawongmetha).

In Brief

22 May 2018 marked four years since Thailand’s last coup — the 12th successful one (out of 19) in Thailand since 1932. The motives behind the most recent coup were complex and depend on who you ask. But one thing is clear: throughout its history and in the years since the 2014 coup, Thailand’s fascistic tendencies have emerged through the crevices of an imaginary democratic state.

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Thailand was never able to establish its democratic bearings and has been constantly held back by military–monarchy interests.

Upon seizing power in 2014, the military junta was quick to suppress dissent, limiting rights and freedoms. The coup makers replaced officials at all levels with hand-picked senators and lackeys emplaced in all public sectors, administration, courts and so-called independent bodies. Aside from the implications of the 2017 military constitution, this would make it difficult for a new freely elected party to implement institutional or policy reforms.

At the heart of matters in 2014 was the need for the ancien regime to reassert its dominance, just as it had been concerned with losing power under prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2001–06. To really understand what is going on in Thailand today, one must critically examine the ‘Thaksin issue’.

The period between the 2006 coup and the current junta saw the intensification of propaganda efforts by the military–monarchy alliance to claw back political, cultural and economic power that it was in danger of ceding to popularly elected governments. The division in Thai society at all levels became irreparable, leaving little political middle ground.

The problem from the military’s perspective was the relative success of Thaksin and the elected leaders who followed him. The military–monarchy complex remains fearful of Thaksin’s ongoing popularity and his potential to mobilise mass support. The military government has even tried to copy a number of Thaksin’s social and economic policies without credit — and been unsuccessful due to a lack of popular participation. In Thailand, for a government to be allowed by the monarchy to govern, it must be ineffectual and irresolute, and not be seen to be undermining the standing of the palace or the palace’s control over the network circulation of wealth and benefaction.

In Thailand today, it is enough to accuse a prominent person of corruption, whether they are guilty or not, to bring about their downfall. The rest is then left to a complicit establishment media. This, combined with consistent propaganda, has left little room to discuss the Thaksin issue. Meanwhile the masses, who felt the direct benefits of Thaksin’s policies, still have not been successfully coerced or won over by the junta.

Thailand’s pro-democracy red shirt movement, which continues to appear in the media as the country’s decisive menace, has been decimated. Surviving leaders and those not currently incarcerated are under constant surveillance, and the movement has fragmented and been implanted with military agents. This makes it impossible, at this stage, for it to become a mass movement again.

With possible elections in February 2019, the coup’s leader General Prayut Chan-o-cha is pork barrelling in red-shirt areas and forging alliances with anti-democrats.

No electoral campaigning is allowed for Thailand’s registered political parties, though the junta can be on the campaign trail all it wants with all the resources of the state. A number of effective pro-democracy leaders and politicians were imprisoned or charged in the years following the 2014 coup, so they are disqualified from participating in the elections. The elections, if and when they come, will be concocted, bought and stacked.

Indeed, the military constitution of 2017, signed off by a junta-appointed national assembly, does not allow for a free and fair election nor does it establish a basis for democracy. The 2017 constitution, which followed a sham referendum, allows the military to control politics for at least the next 20 years.

The public protests in May 2018 at Thammasat University against continued military rule were orchestrated by a few ’non-politically affiliated’ NGO-linked factions of students. These groups’ leaders are mostly youthful middle-class individuals with ties to conservative activist Sulak Sivaraksa — who cheered the coup in 2006 and has praised junta-supported yellow-shirt core leaders responsible for thrice successfully sabotaging an elected government.

This is the irony. Although one may refer to oneself in Thailand as ’anti-junta’ and protest against the military, some public figures’ ideological links to real democratic aspirations are fuzzy and need to be read carefully.

There are also reasons why the yellow shirts now want to terminate the junta’s tenure, which they cheered in 2014. The ruling junta has failed in the last four years to achieve anything for them, only spending big for themselves. The economy is skewed and corruption is rife, with the military and their government lackeys faring quite well, while much of the rest of society is running on empty.

This is the scenario that confronts the new Future Forward Party under Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, its rich, ambitious, neoliberal and business-focussed leader. The party’s co-founder Piyabutr Saengkanokkul is more left-leaning, but Piyabutr is a far cry from his former teacher at Thammasat University Worachet Pakeerut of the Nitirat group, an association of legal scholars advocating for reform that has been silenced by the regime. Nevertheless, Thanathorn and Piyabutr share some common values if not direct links with Thaksin’s government. A number of commentators suggest that given a much weakened Pheu Thai Party, this new party is the only hope for anything like democracy in Thailand at this stage — whether this is true remains to be seen.

In order to challenge Thailand’s dominant military–monarchy hegemony and its power over public debate and politics, new movements and sites of struggle must emerge. It is the intrusion of the junta’s continuing false ideology and tradition along with the illusion of historical progress that has created Thailand’s current dilemma.

James L Taylor is an Adjunct Associate Professor with the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Adelaide.

2 responses to “Illusions of progress towards Thai democracy”

  1. After 32 years in Thailand I find this article to be very descriptive and honest about this country’s politics. The army has now installed itself into every institution in the country. Their collusion with the courts and judges makes a mockery of justice and protestors are convicted for nothing more than disagreeing. The anti-corruption body is a joke, the police ineffective and any election will be a farce.

    • Tthe question is, where do Thais go from here in such a deeply divided society which has no middle ground remaining: the ever-fearful (approx) fifty percent with something like “clear eyes” (taa sawaang) and the complacent, unaware, well-backed percentile with their eyes closed.

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