THAILAND: Protests Against Puppet Assembly Begin

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Oct 25 2006 (IPS) - In the words of Uchane Cheangsan, Thailand’s military-appointed parliament is a legislative body of ‘’servants of the secret thief.” The pro-democracy activist needs little prodding to elaborate who the ‘’thief” is – the coup leaders.

”They stole democracy from the Thais,” said Uchane, a leading member of the Sep.19 anti-coup network, soon after the National Legislative Assembly (NLA) had its opening session Tuesday. Some 40 members of this network staged a protest, including carrying a wreath, outside the parliament to mark the occasion.

Although small in number, the critics of the coup have turned to the streets of the Thai capital to serve as an opposition platform to challenge the legitimacy of the junta’s power. The Sep.19 network, which is in the vanguard, was formed soon after twice-elected prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted from office when tanks and troops took over the streets of Bangkok.

On Monday afternoon, some 200 activists marched to the Democracy Monument, located in a historic neighbourhood here, calling for political reform incorporating grassroots concerns. The previous Saturday, Oct. 14, close to 250 students and activists took to the streets outside Bangkok’s Thammasat University chanting anti-coup slogans.

These early sparks of protest, however, have not come in the way of the junta’s plans to push through with a political agenda it announced after grabbing power from Thaksin, who was away in New York at the time and has since taken refuge in London. The inaugural sitting of the NLA was the third step in this military initiative, following the introduction of a new constitution and the appointment of a prime minister.

And as the first order of business, the 242-seat NLA elected 68-year-old Meechai Ruchupan as its speaker. But this choice of Meechai, a leading legal advisor of the junta, was not without controversy. Questions were raised in the media concerning his suitability, given the role of advisor he had played at one stage during the five years of the Thaksin administration.

‘’Mr. Meechai is facing pressure from those opposing Mr. Thaksin,” the ‘Bangkok Post’ newspaper reported Tuesday. ‘’They say he should not be allowed to lead the legislative assembly because he served as a legal adviser to the Thaksin government.”

The questions over Meechai, however, are not all that the parliamentarians handpicked by the military have had to confront. Pro-democracy and grassroots activists questioned the junta’s choice of men and women to make up the new parliament, since a third of the new legislators are serving and retired military officers. The others are technocrats, former civil servants and senior academics. Absent from this body are voices representing the country’s majority, the rural poor, say activists.

And in the days ahead, The NLA will also have to convince the large number of Thais who came out in support of the coup that it is an institution determined to strengthen the country’s journey back to democracy – which the Thaksin government was accused of undermining. It is as high as another expectation among Thaksin’s critics – ending the culture of alleged corruption, nepotism and abuse of power he created as the country’s leader.

‘’The new assembly has to prove that it is going to make a difference and not be a body of technocrats,” Sunai Phasuk, researcher for Human Rights Watch, the global rights watchdog, told IPS. ‘’They have to help achieve the democratic reform that was promised.”

And the test of sincerity can be gauged ‘’by the way the NLA functions,” he added. ‘’The NLA will be able to push democracy forward if it permits democratic procedures to be established inside the assembly. It will have to be watched.”

NLA members are hopeful that such a climate can be achieved. ‘’We will take a part in helping the government’s plans towards political reform after the rules and regulations to establish commissions are set up,” Gotham Arya, an NLA member, said in an interview.

‘’The NLA will also be pushing for good governance,” added Gotham, who is also director of the research centre for peace building at Mahidol University. ‘’There will be criticism and I humbly accept that.”

Yet a forbidden area for the NLA is to hold the military-appointed government, led by Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont, a former army commander, accountable. The new rules enforced by the junta, which now calls itself the Council for National Security (CNS), has reserved that role to itself.

For its part, the NLA can only debate government policies, but lacks the power to impeach or censure a member of the Surayud administration, a feature of Thailand’s 1997 constitution annulled after the coup.

The new constitution guarantees the CNS other sweeping powers that also reduce the power of the NLA. They include the power to remove the prime minister and appoint a new one and also the power for the head of the CNS, coup leader Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratklin, to attend cabinet meetings.

According to some analysts, the junta does not sound convincing, particularly when its actions are measured against declarations, following the coup, that it will help rid Thailand of corruption and restore democracy. ‘’We have had a coup and the coup plotters have established their own government and own assembly. How can such an assembly advance democracy?” asks Michael Nelson, a German academic specialising in Thai political culture.

‘’The government is accountable to those who have tanks and guns,” he said in an interview. ”There will be a problem within the new assembly too because the majority in the assembly are against the few liberals who have been chosen. What space will there be in the assembly for these liberals to do something good?”