A History Of Thailand
Page 36
The coup group claimed that Thaksin’s government had committed lèse majesté, interfered with constitutional bodies, and caused social division. But there was also an element of military opportunism. Generals returned to the front pages, to the boards of state enterprises, and to other positions of influence. Over two budget cycles, the allocation to the military was raised by almost one half. Ambitious projects for buying arms resurfaced. The army was placed back in control of combating the militancy in the far south, reversing Thaksin’s order of 2002.
The main aim of the coup regime was to adjust the balance of political power by neutralizing Thaksin, reducing the role of elected politicians, and returning power to the bureaucracy and the army. The model for this project was the post-1976 era when many of the coup leaders had been involved in controlling the communist insurgency. In their internal documents, General Sonthi’s group imagined that the small number of former 1970s activists in TRT was now spearheading the old communist agenda through electoral politics. The generals talked of waging a ‘war for the people’ and ‘war for the king’. On the model of the old vigilante organizations, special army teams were sent into the villages in the north and northeast to ‘persuade’ people to drop their support for Thaksin and TRT.
The courts dissolved the TRT Party for electoral malpractice at the 2006 polls, banned 111 of the party executives from political activity for five years, and froze around 90 billion baht in assets belonging to Thaksin’s extended family. Several court cases were launched against the family for corruption. A hand-picked assembly drafted a new constitution that qualified the power of the executive, reduced the role of parliament, attempted to protect the bureaucracy against political interference, and gave seven senior judges immense power to appoint the members of agencies acting as checks and balances on the executive. The assembly passed an Internal Security Act, reviving ISOC, which had directed the anti-communist campaign in the Cold War era, and a Computer Crime Act that imposed harsh penalties. With these tools, the army intended to regain a supervisory role in national politics, rather on the model of managed democracy from the Prem era in the 1980s. Politicians were lured to defect to new parties that would cooperate with this project.
But the coup and the army’s subsequent actions failed to suppress the forces supporting Thaksin. General Surayud’s Cabinet, peopled mostly by retired bureaucrats, was soon perceived as incapable of governing the complex and demanding society that Thailand had now become. The initial enthusiasm for the coup quickly dwindled away. Those who had benefited from Thaksin’s populism and who felt they had gained a space in Thailand’s politics would not easily be pushed back to the margins. In villages, now much more sophisticated than in the 1970s, the army’s revival of ‘psych ops’ to eradicate support for Thaksin was fiercely resented. Although in exile, Thaksin maintained a public presence through the internet, and through the splashy purchase of a UK football club, Manchester City. Despite the party dissolution, several TRT politicians refused to be cowed and kept up constant public criticism of the coup regime. After announcement of elections to restore the elected parliament in December 2007, the TRT was reborn in the shell of the tiny People Power Party (PPP). Thaksin persuaded a veteran politician, Samak Sundaravej, to become its leader. Its electoral platform promised to bring back TRT’s policies, and its unofficial slogan was ‘Vote Samak, get Thaksin’.
When the new constitution was submitted to the first-ever national referendum in August 2007, the 58:42 margin of acceptance was far less than the coup government predicted, especially after investing public money heavily to win support and disrupt the opposition campaign. The generals used threats and funds to corral experienced politicians into new parties that could oppose the PPP at the polls, but most refused. At the election in December 2007, the PPP secured just less than an absolute majority, sweeping the upper north, the northeast, and the outskirts of the capital where many migrants from these regions lived. The Democrats won the south and central Bangkok. This stark electoral geography portrayed the division in the country over Thaksin. Samak formed a coalition government. Three weeks later, Thaksin returned from exile, showily touching his forehead to the motherland for the benefit of the crowds at the airport. The new government announced plans to revise the coup group’s constitution and block the judicial assault on Thaksin, his family, and associates.
The coup had failed to undermine Thaksin’s domination of the parliament and hence the executive. The forces arrayed against him now turned elsewhere, to the courts and the street.
The judiciary had played little part in Thai politics until the king urged the judges to unravel the tangle left by the 2006 election. Now the political role of the courts suddenly expanded. Within a few months, the speaker of the house was removed for poll fraud, the foreign minister for infringing the constitution, and the health minister for an incorrect statement of assets. Thaksin’s wife was convicted for tax evasion, and then Thaksin himself was sentenced to two years in jail for abuse of power in a sale of state-owned land to his wife. He fled overseas in advance of the verdict. In September 2008, Samak was removed as prime minister for receiving a small payment as host of a radio cookery show.
In parallel, Sondhi Limthongkun and the PAD revived street demonstrations. In May 2008, they established a permanent protest camp close to Government House. Several senior soldiers and prominent aristocrats attended. Donations from sympathetic businesspeople financed sophisticated staging with programmes by prominent entertainers, uplinked to satellite for a wider television audience. The crowds, swathed in yellow and emblazoned with slogans showing support for the king, were dubbed the ‘Yellow Shirts’. Sondhi Limthongkun called for the removal of the pro-Thaksin government, but also proposed a ‘new politics’, meaning that Thailand should abandon the principle of one person/one vote on grounds that elections were won with money (by vote-buying or populist policies) and hence the results held no legitimacy. Kasit Piromya, a former top diplomat turned PAD supporter, yearned for ‘politics that has something to do with the word morality’.
After Samak was replaced as prime minister by Somchai Wongsawat, Thaksin’s brother-in-law, in January 2008 the Yellow Shirt demonstrators occupied Government House. Violent incidents increased, including a pitched battle when the police tried to break a PAD blockade of parliament. The army repeatedly refused the government’s requests to declare an emergency. The PAD sent squads to disrupt government offices and temporarily occupy airports. In December, a large PAD group occupied Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport, causing it to be closed down for a week, stranding 350 000 tourists and causing massive economic damage. The army refused to prevent the occupation or to end it. The courts delivered another judgement, again dissolving the Thaksinite party (for electoral fraud by one executive member) and thereby causing the government to fall. The PAD demonstrators quit the airport. The army and some business leaders helped to establish a new coalition government, headed by the Democrat Party. Abhisit Vejjajiva became prime minister. His government gave a billion baht to ISOC to carry out another campaign to eradicate Thaksin’s influence, targeting the northeast.
The 2006 coup and its aftermath had done massive damage to the democratic institutions and traditions that had been shakily established over the prior three decades. A coup was again thinkable. The army was repoliticized. Parliamentary politics were hamstrung by the coup group’s constitution. A protest movement, based in the old elite and urban middle class, had disrupted government while enjoying apparent immunity from control by the courts or security forces. The judiciary had plunged into politics, heralded by some as advancing the rule of law, but lambasted by others for political bias. The claims of the army and PAD to be acting in defence of the monarchy had brought the symbolic capital of the royal institution into the centre of everyday politics. The PAD had proposed that Thailand should abandon the basic principle of electoral politics. Thailand’s democracy and monarchy had both been pitched into crisis.
R
ed Shirts
The coup and the subsequent attempts to eliminate Thaksin’s influence by military operations, judicial decisions, and street politics helped to provoke the first mass movement in Thai political history.
After the September 2006 coup, small groups of activists held protest rallies. In early 2007, remnants of TRT joined with these groups. From May, Thaksin began to appear at these rallies from overseas, first by telephone, later by CD recordings, and finally by live video link. In the areas loyal to Thaksin in the upper north and northeast, protest groups formed, often loosely associated with community radio stations or individual radio DJs. On 7 July 2007, the United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) was formed as an umbrella for protest against the coup. It staged a rally at the house of General Prem Tinsulanond, head of the Privy Council, accusing him of masterminding the coup. The UDD rallies in Bangkok gradually swelled as disillusion with the coup spread and fear of the army dwindled.
After the December 2007 election returned the pro-Thaksin party to power, UDD ceased activity but revived in May 2008 to counter the growing intensity and violence of the PAD rallies. In July, the Samak government launched a television programme Khwam jing wan ni (Truth Today) to counter Sondhi Limthongkun’s broadcasts from the PAD stage. The three presenters adopted red shirts as their uniform. Since the coup, some but not all protesters had worn red. From around this time, it became a badge. Aside from other associations, red is the colour representing the people in the Thai tricolour national flag and had been used in the visual identity of the Thaksinite parties, TRT and PPP. Perhaps more than anything else, it was simply the strongest visual contrast to yellow.
Through late 2008, Red Shirts held massive stadium rallies. They were attended by supporters bussed in from the north and northeast; by migrant workers from the same regions, especially the drivers of Bangkok’s taxis and motorcycle taxis; and increasingly by academics, activists, and urban professionals who felt that the whole sequence of events since the 2006 coup, and especially PAD’s ‘new politics’, was an attack on democratic values and practice. Many who had opposed Thaksin as a threat to democracy now opposed the PAD as an even worse threat.
Around the rallies of both colours, petty violence increased. On one side were groups wearing yellow shirts and claiming to defend the monarchy. On the other were groups wearing red shirts and claiming to defend democracy.
After the Somchai government was disqualified and the Democrat-led coalition installed in December 2008, the UDD launched a satellite television station, and in March 2009 established a permanent protest camp outside Government House, demanding the government resign and hold an immediate election. Thaksin appeared almost daily on video link from exile in Dubai, openly accusing the generals, especially Prem and Surayud, of masterminding his overthrow. Thaksin identified himself with Thailand’s democracy movement from the 1932 revolution through the incidents of 1973 and 1992, but did not deny that he was motivated also by a looming court decision on seizure of his assets frozen after the coup. His rhetoric grew steadily more intense: ‘If there is the sound of gunfire, of soldiers shooting the people, I’ll return immediately to lead you to march on Bangkok. I can no longer accept such dictatorship.’36
At the onset of the long Thai New Year holiday in mid-April 2009, taxi drivers started to blockade Bangkok’s traffic. A Red Shirt group travelled to Pattaya and disrupted a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), then returned to extend the blockade in the capital. On 13 April, the army brought 10 000 troops into the city to sweep the demonstration off the streets. Thirteen leaders surrendered and were detained. The camp was dismantled. The Red Shirts’ satellite television station and several radio stations were closed down, and thousands of websites blocked. Officially only two people died in the operation, but the scale of the military operation, as well as the protesters’ burning of 52 buses in their defence, signalled a significant increase in the level of violence.
The Red Shirt movement continued to grow, largely by local activism. In Chiang Mai, the number of Red Shirt groups increased from five to 24 between 2008 and 2010. The UDD conducted political schools, events held over two to three days, mostly around the north and northeast. A few places proclaimed themselves as ‘red villages’. Two skilled orators, Nattawut Saikua and Jatuporn Promphan, became popular in local meetings and on the revived satellite television channel. In early 2010, the movement began preparing for another Bangkok protest by holding rallies and fund-raising events around the north and northeast.
On 14 March 2010, thousands of Red Shirts poured into Bangkok, mostly in pickup trucks, dressed in red and blaring music, creating a carnival atmosphere. Initially they received a warm welcome, not only from migrants in the capital but also from many Bangkok salarymen and salarywomen. Officially the movement’s demand was again for a new election, but for many participants the aim was slightly different: ‘We all adored Thaksin and wanted him back as our prime minister. The government and the military drove him out of power.’37
An attempt at negotiation with the government collapsed within two days, possibly because Thaksin intervened. While most participants were committed to non-violence, a minority faction believed that only violence would bring any result. On 10 April, when the army tried to clear part of the demonstration, a scuffle erupted into a fire fight. A group of unidentified ‘men in black’, probably renegade soldiers and former rangers, attacked the soldiers, killing a prominent colonel. Over 20 protesters died, mostly from high-velocity rounds. Soon after, the protest site moved to Rajprasong at the heart of the city’s commercial district. Among some office workers and local businesspeople, sympathy declined as the disruption of city life lengthened and incidents of violence increased. On 19 May, the army cleared the demonstration by force. The retail complex behind the protest site was torched along with a handful of other city buildings. Four government offices in the provinces also burned. Over the eight weeks of the protest, more than 90 people had died, including about 80 protesters and around 10 from the security forces.
The Red Shirt movement was the political expression of the mass society that had developed over the past decades. The participants were mainly from the lower rungs of society, but often those with rising incomes, swelling aspirations, broader horizons from labour migration and new communications, and growing resentment of inequities in income, opportunity, and respect. They came especially from the upper north and northeast, culturally distinct areas that had been incorporated into Siam only in the 19th century. They expressed anger at ‘double standards’, meaning the unequal treatment of yellow and red by the courts and army, but more generally the inequities throughout society. They dubbed themselves as phrai and their opponents as ammat, feudal terms for serf and lord, to mock the paternalism of bureaucrats and bureaucrat-minded politicians. They were not so much seeking to overthrow the political order but to change it so they could participate more fully and benefit more fairly. As a result of decentralization of local government from the late 1990s and Thaksin’s tilt to populism, they had learnt to value elections as a means to gain a larger share. As one participant said, ‘Bangkok people already have a good life, they don’t need elections for change, but we do.’38
Thailand’s old institutions and large parts of the middle class opposed both Thaksin and the politics he came to represent. Thaksin had attacked the culture and prominence of the bureaucracy and tried to gain greater control over the army. The middle class felt threatened by Thaksin’s popularity and low ethical standards. Many had initially supported him and later turned against him with all the venom of a disappointed lover. The conservative response was also shaped by a fear of the mob lingering from the anti-communism of the Cold War era.
The clashes of May 2010 revealed a deeply divided society. Even before the smoke had cleared, another battle erupted over the memory and meaning of the events. The red side pictured the event as another instance of government and military committing violence against people
struggling for democracy, eliding the role of the violent elements in the movement. The yellow side painted the movement as fundamentally violent and ‘terrorist’, manipulated by Thaksin for personal interests, ignoring the aspirations of the majority of the participants.
Since 2004, the yellow side had called on the king to intervene in politics, adopted his birth colour as a uniform, swathed themselves in slogans about defending the king, and accused Thaksin of wishing to overthrow the monarchy. To counter Thaksin’s command of the electorate, they had argued that electoral strength should be balanced by morality, and had projected the king as the symbol or instrument of a moral force. In sum, the yellow movement had exploited the symbolic power of the monarchy in public politics. This had put the institution at risk and prompted criticism. In reaction, conservative forces repeatedly insisted that the monarchy was ‘above politics’, while more and more cases were launched for lèse majesté. The number brought to court had averaged one a year during 1949 to 1956, rising to 10 a year from 1977 to 1992, and booming to 111 a year from 2005 to 2009. A few high-profile cases resulted in convictions with long prison sentences.
With the emergence of the Yellow and Red Shirt movements, more people had taken an active role in politics than ever before. Even more had consumed politics at a slight distance through the satellite television channels and local radio stations. Thailand had rather suddenly become a very political society.