The Coup Attempt in Thailand

September 4, 2008

So what is up in Thailand?

A ‘People’s Alliance for Democracy’ (PAD) is demonstrating against the government that was elected last December and is ruling within a six party coalition with two-third of the seats in parliament.

The PAD followers demand that Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej steps down, but have little else that one could describe as a political program.

The prime minister, like his predecessor Thaksin Shinawatra who was
ousted in 2006 in an army coup, has his base in the poor rural parts of Thailand
in which the majority of the population lives. Samak has introduced
cheap health care and village development programs in the agricultural
areas. Are these programs partially corrupt. Sure.
Are these programs designed to buy votes. Yes. But that is part of any
democracy. What else are tax policies and earmarks in the the U.S.?

Leader of PAD is the right-wing media mogul Sondhi Limthongkul who’s newspapers, websites and TV stations drive the protests. He has support from largely middle class urbanites including a union for well payed government employees and part of the army establishment. To gain some popularity the PAD claims to act for the king who has so far stayed neutral and did not intervene on either side.

Despite its name, the ‘People’s Alliance for Democracy’ is very undemocratic:

"Democracy has been here 46 years and we keep getting the same vicious circle," Sondhi told The Associated Press in an interview on the grounds of the Government House, as the prime minister’s office compound is known. "Something has to be wrong with the system."

The ‘vicious circle’ Sondhi describes is that the majority votes for politicians who implement social programs which help the majority. Then they get reelected. Something has to be wrong with that system.

So how can that system be changed by a minority? Not in a democratic way of course and that is the reason for the ongoing protest which include brutalities by Sondhi’s private paramilitary thugs.

Sondhi’s aim is to destroy Thailand’s democracy so that policies can be implemented that help him and his mostly well-off supporters instead of the more poor majority.

The People’s Alliance for Democracy says Western-style democracy has allowed corruption to flourish and has proposed a new government blueprint that would make parliament a mostly appointed body with only 30 percent of lawmakers elected.

In any ‘western’ democracy a movement that illegally sizes official buildings and TV stations, while demanding an appointed instead of an elected parliament would be shut down within hours.

But the prime minister so far does his best to avoid an open conflict with big street fights between the police or army and the PAD. The situation in Thailand is vague. The army could again stage a coup, King Bhumibol Adulyadej could intervene and a big fight is probably exactly what Sondhi wants.

Prime minister Samak now offered a democratic solution to the current crisis. A countrywide referendum that would simply ask the question:

Do you want the government to continue in office?

The answer would likely be an overwhelming ‘Yes’. But this solution, because it is democratic, will likely not be excepted by the undemocratic PAD.

One would hope that in a case like this some ‘western’ support would be given to help the democratic forces against the PAD elitists. But so far I have seen little of such.

A few days ago the editors of the Guardian, alleged to be somewhat left of center, even wrote this nonsense:

One retired general, Chamlong Srimuang, an influential former politician and army officer, said the protesters were doing nothing wrong. Samak said earlier this week that he had a sword – the riot police closing in on the prime ministerial compound – but would not use it. He must now realise that his government can not last, and call fresh elections.

The Guardian editors do not tell their readers that Chamlong Srimuang, who ‘said the protesters were doing nothing wrong’, is the number two leader of the PAD. And why should a prime minister with a solid majority he won just seven month ago step down? Because some very rich people and their paid thugs protest in the street? Because the haves say the have nots should not be represented in the parliament?

How would the Guardian, and other ‘western’ media, argue if the same demand would be made in their countries?

Posted by b on September 4, 2008 at 15:22 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Rick? you around?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 4 2008 15:31 utc | 1

There is a recent special issue of Journal of Contemporary Asia that dissects the 2006 coup. While the Thai academics, in particular, had been quiet on this front–although they would privately acknowledge that the king was really behind the coup–all the articles point to the coup as a royal usurpation of power in alliance with various anti-democratic (or, are they “democratic” in the present use of the term in the West?) forces. If the academics (who are, in the end, a particularly vulnerable lot, since they are usually employees of the state and often have little interest in political agitation) are willing to come out openly on stuff like this in academic pubs, then everyone is Thailand really knows what’s really going on. This is a fascinating development.

Posted by: kao-hsien-chih | Sep 4 2008 16:38 utc | 2

@kao-hsien-chih – I think it is more of a succession fight. The king is near death and its mostly General Prem, who has his own agenda, speaking for him.
The crown prince had/has good relations with Taksin and less good with the army. General Prem and the establishment does not want him to become king and prefer his Princess sister who lectures at a military academy and is more of a manipulatable figure than the lively crown prince. To get here in would require a significant change in the constitution and is risky revolt against the crown prince.
Prem organized the 2006 coup so stop an alliance between Taksin and the crown prince. But even after the military then changed the constitution (the upper house/senate is now ‘appointed’) and tried to manipulate the election, the voters picked the Taksin follower Samak and filled the lower house with his supporters.
So in that sense the coup was unsuccessful and must be repeated. Sondhi was Prem’s tool in the 2006 election and is it again now. The picture is quite complicate but if one likes democracy one can not be with the Sondhi crowd.
I wonder why the Guardian folks did take his side …

Posted by: b | Sep 4 2008 17:35 utc | 3

I’m not being sarcastic, but is this tale supposed to have a resonance vis-à-vis the United States of America? It has all the right ingredients. To those of my acquaintance here in the U.K. (both Guardian and non-Guardian readers) it strikes us that the present day socio-political situation in the States is a powder keg waiting to go off, with the matches to light the fuse firmly in the hands of the neocons and the religious right who are just waiting for the opportunity to declare martial law under a military junta. Don’t think it couldn’t happen. As Nietzsche so aptly stated: “There is a calm before every great storm. The ideas that change the world arrive on dove’s feet”. Of course this Republican crowd are more like vultures.

Posted by: Spyware | Sep 4 2008 20:13 utc | 4

“I wonder why the Guardian folks did take his side …”
The answer to that is easy. The Guardian is the media arm of the english labour party. It may once have been a left wing vaguely anti-imperialist organ but since the advent of New Labour which was Tony Bliar’s massive constitutional change of the labour party that removed power from the traditional leftish bases and put it into ‘modern’ (ie big donors and the parliamentary party’s self servers). Over the last decade control of the traditional leftish power bases such as the Guardian has shifted into the hands of the new-Imperialists who have taken over ‘new Labour’.
This is why the USuk appellation is so apt. Just like the ruling elite of amerika, england’s ruling elite have recognised that the easiest way they can survive economically is to steal other nation’s resources through modern day corporate imperialism.
England went bust after WW2 when it lost the colonies, and although some economic recovery was made in the 80’s from scotland’s North Sea oil resources, that has largely run out.
The north Sea money was misappropriated and pissed up against a wall which left england with the same conundrum as amerika.
If x is the amount of money must be diverted to the masses, not too much just sufficient to keep them from rioting, then y amount must be diverted to the elites. x + y = z the total national income. But z was small and getting smaller.
The smart way to deal with this is to invest all of z in educating and developing the major national resource of a nation, the citizenry. The problem with that is firstly it takes a while at least a generation to turn the huge underclass of england or amerika into productive citizens. amerika and england have a long history of keeping the masses downtrodden and educating them as little as possible. And because of the history of oppression of the underclass in both nations, not only would it take a very long time to make the poor productive, what’s to guarantee another Harold bloody Wilson wouldn’t surface and fuck it all up again? There is no trust of the citizens by the elites.
So it was judged easier to continue to dole out the alms at a subsistence level and then use any motivated poor as instruments to steal resources from those countries unlike amerika or england, that hadn’t already mined every resource outta the ground. Rather than run the risks that can arise from over-educating the poor, skill shortages can be met by bribing skilled people away from their homelands to live and work in england. Use em then kick em out on their asses when they are no longer useful. Does this sound familiar to amerikans?
So now with the rise of “new labour” the Guardian has been taken over by ‘young guns’ with political ambition in New Labour. That means they write that georgia is a victim of Russian brutality, Zimbabwe isn’t broke because the world has been deliberately sabotaging it’s economy, but because “Mugabe” who must be in several million places at once making decisions, has made it broke. And Thailand (such a lovely place to rave in. Phuket especially. Yeah right Phuket was beautiful 30 years ago now it looks like a grimy if tropical Las Vegas by the sea Las Vegas by the sea or Scunthorpe? Same thing really.) Thailand will be better if the people running it continue to put the needs of foreign visitors and the ruling elites, ahead of the needs of the population. The world according to guardian correspondents.
They also write in support of longer prison sentences for poor english. Just like their old nemesis the Daily Telegraph, the guardian cranks up law and order campaigns about non issues that are designed to keep the bourgeoisie on side Make ’em too scared of their neighbours to band together and fight the pricks who are really stealing from them.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Sep 4 2008 20:47 utc | 5

We’ve seen this before in Caracas, and the spin is similar. Mobs that would be cleared out of the streets by riot police in any “democratic western” capital 5 minutes after they would dare to disrupt trafic are portrayed as non-violent freedom fighters against the “corrupt” “dictatorial” “fundamentalist” -pick the label- government.

Posted by: estouxim | Sep 4 2008 21:35 utc | 6

interesting perspective, bernhard. thanks!
There is something quite analogous between Thaksin and many other alleged “electoral authoritarians”–Chavez and whoever is in charge in Russia come to the top of my mind. They are all genuinely popular with their electorates. They can unquestionably win in a fair election. But their methods of politics (corruption, selective use of state-sponsored violence, etc.) aren’t palatable to western tastes–and, in several cases (e.g. Russia and possibly Ukraine before the so-called Orange Revolution–but then, Ukraine didn’t have a single leader who was genuinely popular nationwide) the concern is probalby justified. By opposing these practices, alleged “democrats” in these countries can find allies in the West.
I don’t know if the distinctions are as stark as people make it out to be: corruption is endemic in electoral politics of practically every Western country, after all. One could be like Chalmers Johnson and declare Japan, Italy, and United States less democratic than they purport to be…but the truth is that democracy is inherently corrupt, to a degree. Besides, many of these alleged do-gooders are often far more authoritarian than, or at least as undemocratic as, those whom they replace–Saakashvilli being one such example. Personally, I wonder if many of these alleged sponsors of democracy in the West, however well-meaning they might be (and they mean well–I know quite a few of them.) are really “democrats” at heart.

Posted by: kao_hsien_chih | Sep 4 2008 22:07 utc | 7

If the people voting in a democracy vote mostly according to their own interests and profits, then at the end of the day the whole system ends up to be just as corrupted as a banana republic – the main difference is in the numbers of people who’ll benefit or steal from it.

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Sep 4 2008 22:44 utc | 8

Thaksin may indeed be a proponent of the dictatorship of the majority, just like so many other populist pols. However when there is a yawning chasm between the haves and have nots, a desperate need for genuine land reform after decades of military rule on behalf of a small and inordinately wealthy elite, then dictatorship of the masses by way of the electoral process, is vastly superior, in terms of obtaining the most justice for the most people with a minimum of violence, than any of the viable alternatives.
Continued dictatorship by the elites of the political, economic and military classes, is not only grossly unjust, and far more unjust than any dictatorship of the masses could be; it is a recipe for disaster.
Thais have already suffered from the violence of the ruling elites determined not to lose an iota of their wealth and power, during previous periods of dissatisfaction with status quo by the masses. It is inevitable that periodic violence will continue, escalating each time until the masses also resort to violence taking control after a bloody and superfluous civil war.
Superfluous because allowing a measure of dictatorship of the masses will achieve the same end, and even better from the point of view of the present elites, that control is likely to be temporary.
Many lives will be lost and ways of living ruined on all sides of the divide if Thailand tries to suppress the reforms the hoi polloi have been demanding for decades.
When an elected government which seeks to redistribute power and wealth does hold sway for long enough to effect real change, we all know what comes next.
Thai people particularly those who have managed to gain the most from the changes will elect a different regime. A regime which consolidates the earlier reforms but halts new reforms.
“pulling the ladder up behind you” is the best description of this ugly phenomenon.
Exactly the same pattern as we have seen in so many other ‘democracies’.
That is, democratic dictatorships are impermanent and power can be transferred from them without violence. As we can see at the moment; that isn’t true of the old school Thai ruling elites (military chiefs, wealthy corporate and/or land-owning clans, and the royal/aristocratic class – sometimes all of the above in one person) who are determined to hang on their power and their material wealth for eternity, and meet any attempt to change that, whether it be by revolution or through the ballot box, with violence every time.
The Thaksin alternative is far from ideal but it is also by far the best, realistic alternative on offer for the Thai people. Anything more radically reformist would be crushed by outside meddling in the unlikely event of largely peaceful Thais, going for the complete destruction of western capitalism in their homeland.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Sep 5 2008 5:34 utc | 9

Uncle,
Did you mean to ask “Rick, you around?” on this thread because I don’t know much about Thailand’s politics to post anything worthwhile. I guess that is why I like b’s posts so much more than Billmon’s even though Billmon’s writing style is excellent. With Bernhard we expand our knowledge or at least are able to look at something from another angle. I haven’t been posting much because I am stressed from all ends with work… Have been getting only about 5 hours of sleep each night and it is taking its toll… Right now worried about r’giap. As soon as anyone hears anything I hope he/she reports it to us. Anyways, all I know about Thailand is that decades ago, around the Vietnam War and after, the country was very, very pro-U.S. and very anti-Soviet, probably the U.S’s best ally in the region.
Debs,
Good points. As far as your x,y,z analysis, I think the amount of x is insufficient mainly because the elites just don’t give a shit, and not that those in control actually desire that the masses live in squalor. As far as getting skilled people from other countries to work here, it is now pretty difficult with the tight immigration restrictions. It is really a shame, some good small companies here in America could use some skilled help from people from other countries but it is too difficult now.
B: ”In any ‘western’ democracy a movement that illegally sizes official buildings and TV stations, while demanding an appointed instead of an elected parliament would be shut down within hours.” One would hope, but corporations and big lobby groups do the same here in the West …but you and everyone else here knows that.

Posted by: Rick | Sep 5 2008 5:36 utc | 10

I think the comparison with Chavez was the most off. Chavez is voted for by city dwellers and hated by westerners because he’s trying to provide real emancipation for the poor. Chavez actually came to power after riots cost about 3000 lives under the former neoliberal regime, the army wouldn’t shoot their own countrymen anymore. This fact is always censored in the western media.
Thaksin is pretty much the polar opposite, he’s playing to the country potatoes and is a very right wing authoritarian type who’s hated in the cities, the better the education the more he is disliked.
The Thai establishment may not just be looking to secure its status, but it looks like they are actually trying to prevent a premature democratic failure.
How come the English still have a Queen and the house of Lords, if they are that “democratic” btw. They are the ones who have not made it into the democratic era yet…

Posted by: antonymous | Sep 5 2008 20:29 utc | 11

The analogue between Chavez, Thaksin, and Putin (or, whoever is really in charge in Russia) lies in HOW they created their machines, not so much in terms of whom they recruited (one might even add Hizbullah and Hamas into the mixture, while we are at it–except they hadn’t quite captured the state, as such). All these guys are genuinely popular. All built their support by providing needed services to the needy people whom no one else would paid attention to–although who the needy people were, and who their enemies were, would vary from case to case to, as were the methods through which services were delivered and what services they provided. At the same time, they all engaged in rather unsavory activities on the side. That too can’t be disputed–and indeed lies at the core of the accusations against them as being “undemocratic” entities. Hardly polar opposites, these guys are. Every one of these is, at least in terms of tactics, populist.
Their opposite numbers in various countries, too, are far more analogous than not. None of their enemies would actually win in a pure electoral contest. They all seized and maintained power and wealth at the expense of their societies. They are much distrusted by their own countrymen–or, often, quite hated. They all have close ties to the West, however, and are very good at reciting nice sounding “democratic” catechisms and pointing to where their adversaries are behaving “undemocratically” to the Western media…and no, they don’t really believe in democratic rule if that means they may have to surrender power and influence. (although, again, their manifestations are different. Saakashvilli, obviously, is far savvier than Mubarak or King Abdullah bin Saud, for example.)
At the heart of this is some notion of what constitutes “democracy.” Is it just that people should have chance to choose who should govern, or are there other conditions? Many western do-gooders obviously don’t think the first condition is enough–and are happy to join with far more unscrupulous types in championing the anti-populists. Beneath this, I think, lies a not-so-subtle racist tone: the choice of a “subhuman” people, be they Russian, Arab, Asian, African, or Latin American, is not good enough, so a “Western”-style leader (meaning they are friends of the West) should be chosen and imposed upon them, regardless of their wishes. I don’t think most people see this general pattern: people who have objections to Mubarak love Saakashvilli, or, as above, those who think Chavez or Morales are terrific think Thaksin is a scum, for example. I submit to you, though, that all these guys are really products of the same process, however different they might look.

Posted by: kao-hsien-chih | Sep 5 2008 22:09 utc | 12

ATOL has an interview with the ‘protest leader’ Sondhi Limthongkul. He is even more lunatic than I thought. What Sondhi really wants for Thailand
So what does he want?

ATol: How do you hope to be remembered historically as a key leader of the PAD movement?
ATol: I don’t. I tell you honestly I hate the day I had to take this road. Let’s wrap it up and create a new society and then I’ll disappear. I’m not running for office, I’m not interested.
But if there is a change in government and there is a new panel to reform and supervise the country in an authoritative manner, if I was invited and had the power to change things, I would do it as my final act for the country. I’d play that role.

Shorter: Make me dictator and all is well …

Posted by: b | Sep 8 2008 15:17 utc | 13

Thai PM convicted by constitution court, losing premiership

BANGKOK, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) — The Constitution Court of Thailand on Tuesday ruled Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej violates the charter by hosting cooking shows on TV programs after he took the premiership in January. The ruling means Samak’s premiership will be ended.
The court voted unanimously to give a guilty verdict against Samak and disqualified him as the prime minister.
In the one-hour open ruling, the court said all the nine judges considered Samak has broken the article 182 of the Constitution which prohibits prime minister or minister to be employee of any profiting company.
The court reasoned that the Constitution was aimed to prevent conflicts of interest on part of Cabinet members so Samak had violated in the intention of the charter although he host the programs on part-time basis.
The entire Cabinet also lost its status but other Cabinet members became caretaker ministers until new Cabinet is found, the court ruled.
Samak is the first premier whose status was revoked by court in Thai history.

I’d say the king has spoken, silently as ever, because the TV show is certainly not the reason for this coup.

Posted by: b | Sep 9 2008 10:11 utc | 14

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