THAILAND: Unending Political Crisis Fuels Talk of Army Coup

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jul 10 2006 (IPS) - Thirteen years after Thailand saw the back of its last military dictator, there is growing speculation in some political quarters that the country may be ripe for another round of military rule.

The prospect is being openly bandied about in both the Thai and English language press – as if it is a perfectly normal form of political activity in this South-east Asian country, rather than one that is extraordinary.

Giving rise to these speculations is the continuing political deadlock that has gripped the country for the past five months. It pits an increasingly beleaguered caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who enjoys wide support among the country’s majority rural voters, against a small, yet vocal group of upper and middle-class voters in Bangkok.

‘’A coup can go either way: supporting Thaksin or overthrowing him,” wrote Thanong Khanthong, managing editor of ‘The Nation,’ a fiercely anti-government English language daily on Friday. ‘’There were rumours earlier that some military factions would like to stage a coup and support Thaksin’s return to power. This plot went back to February this year.”

Adds Thanong in his column: ‘’There were also rumours about an attempt to launch a coup to sack Thaksin and to prevent the Apr. 2 (parliamentary) election from taking place. But this attempt was put on hold due to some mishap.”

Media reports, a few months ago, had it that the country’s army chief was going on the alert and there were rumours of tanks heading towards Bangkok, evoking scenes witnessed during previous military coups.

On Friday evening, a senior cabinet minister in the caretaker government told a few foreign correspondents that the political currents in the country are moving towards a possible extra-constitutional move. ‘’The old illness is coming back in different shapes and forms,” said Chaturon Chaisang, acting minister of education. ‘’The old illness is the acceptance that a group of people – a military regime in the past – can rule the country better than people with elected authority.”

‘’This is a critical stage for Thai politics,” added Chaturon, respected for being one of the few independent voices in the government, given his over 30-year record as a champion for democracy. ‘’What some people are trying to do now will result in the destruction of democracy. That is unacceptable. It is like burning a forest to get rid of one person.”

It is a view that is winning sympathy among some local and foreign analysts IPS spoke with. ‘’It is worrying that there are people in the opposition who think that a military coup is a possibility to get rid of Thaksin,” says Giles Ungpakorn, political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. ‘’It would be a severe step backwards if that would be the case.”

‘’I am somewhat disturbed at the way people are warming up to the idea that a coup may not be a bad thing to solve the political mess Thailand is in,” adds Michael Nelson, senior research associate for South-east Asian studies at the University of Passau, in Germany. ‘’Some actors feel that a coup may not be that bad because all the avenues to get rid of Thaksin have been exhausted.”

Such open talk of a coup adds to the intrigue and uncertainty that has created a political crisis not seen since this country became a constitutional monarchy in 1932. A case before the Constitutional Court is one in which the attorney general has called for the country’s largest political party – Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai ûTRT) which Thaksin heads û and the oldest party, the Democratic Party, to be dissolved due to violations at the Apr.2 general elections.

This looming legal battle is just one of many in the Thai courts following the controversial April poll that Thaksin called to defuse rising political tension following anti-government streets protests. Demonstrations in Bangkok, since the beginning of February, have accused the Thaksin government of corruption, nepotism and abuse of political power.

The TRT, which won thumping majorities at general elections in early 2001 and 2005, had little to celebrate following the April poll. For one, the main opposition parties boycotted the poll and there was an unprecedented number of protest votes cast to show voter disenchantment with the Thaksin administration. On the other hand, a court annulled the results of the poll where the TRT virtually won all the seats in the legislature to make the country a one-party state.

With no end in sight for this continuing political turmoil – and Thaksin, a billionaire turned prime minister, charging that he may be pushed aside through unconstitutional means – familiar headlines from the past about a possible coup in the making have returned. Thailand has witnessed 17 coups over the past 74 years and it has been governed for 46 of those years by military dictators.

In November last year, a spike in criticism against the government led by Sondhi Limthongkul, a media mogul, saw mention of the ‘C word’ making its way in the local press. A deputy minister was quoted as having said that he has been able to ”smell the unmistakable odour of a possible coup against the government for the past three days”.

A similar hint of military intervention had dogged the Thaksin administration in June 2002, following disagreements between sections of the military and the government over national security policies concerning neighbouring military-ruled Burma.

”What is happening makes Thai democracy a contradiction in terms,” says Nelson, the German academic who has written extensively about Thai politics. ”Nowadays, coups are not good to solve political problems.”