Thailand returns to military monarchy

Thailand went to the ballot box yesterday to vote on a new constitution. The results so far seem to favour the change. But whatever the final result, the referendum is unlikely to resolve the country’s political crisis.

Since the shift from absolutist rule to constitutional monarchy and parliamentary government in 1932, the Thai people have developed a taste for democracy, yet they have never managed to entrench it irreversibly at an institutional level. Over the last 84 years Thailand has witnessed 19 constitutions and 13 coup d’états.

Thailand’s military junta, led by Prime Minister General Prayuth Chan-ocha, seized power in 2014 on the pretext of eradicating corruption under the government of Yingluck Shinawatra, just as the previous coup in 2006 did against her brother Thaksin Shinawatra. The referendum is ostensibly a stepping stone on the junta’s roadmap back to democracy.

The real issue, as Patrick Jory explains, is the ‘ongoing uncertainty about the future of the monarchy’, in light of 88-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s poor health. His reign of over 70 years makes him the longest serving monarch in the world and the longest in Thailand’s history. Thailand has undergone a great transformation under Bhumibol from a deeply poor country in the early days of the Cold War to middle-income status. But there is concern among those privy to palace patronage — including the military, bureaucracy, urbanised elite and other royalist supporters centred in Bangkok — about the royal succession after the King is gone. The Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, while protected by lèse majesté laws at home, has struggled in the age of digital media to preserve his royal image especially during his long sojourns in Germany where tabloid media have exposed his somewhat unroyal activities.

At stake is not just the continuation of the institution of monarchy and the traditions that it represents, but the wealth and the clout that the palace confers upon military, bureaucratic and political elites through its stewardship of the Crown Property Bureau (CPB) and the imprimatur that its blessing gives government. The CPB is estimated to control between US$37 to US$53 billion in assets — across hotels, land, banks and cement companies and the like — and is not required to pay tax. The King is in principle free to spend its income as he likes. While much of this wealth is used on the monarchy’s household expenses, it also funds provincial developments and charity that boost palace prestige. Yet the opaque nature of the CPB and its use makes cries from the military and royal supporters of Shinawatra family corruption ring hollow.

Thaksin, as prime minister from 2001 to 2006, introduced healthcare initiatives, rice subsidies and extended patronage to the poorer areas in Thailand’s rural north and northeast, that helped establish his election winning machine. Thaksin and his successor parties have won every election since 2001. Royalists and the urban elite worried that Thaksin had not only entrenched an electoral system that would keep out forever their favoured Democratic Party but also that his business empire would ultimately establish a patronage network capable of supplanting that of the monarchy.

For all his faults, including blurring the lines between politics, media and business and vigilante justice meted out to drug lords in Thailand’s far south, Thaksin recognised the inequality between urban Bangkok and the poor in the rural north and northeast. With three-quarters of government spending concentrated on Bangkok and surrounding areas which comprise only 17 per cent of Thailand’s 67 million people, Thaksin established a politics that attracted the loyalty of the rural disadvantaged. Yingluck (2011–2014) continued Thaksin’s strategy, focused principally on maintaining party popularity rather than on much needed structural and democratic reforms.

The last time the military government handed power back to a democratically elected government, after the 15 months between September 2006 and January 2008, it did not halt the success of Thaksin’s successor parties (the People’s Power Party under Samak Sundaravej and Somchai Wongsawat, and Pheu Thai Party under Yingluck). This time around the military government appears intent on preventing elected politicians from ever being able to threaten monarchical interests again. If the current referendum fails, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has said he will simply promulgate another before elections possibly in 2017.

As Pavin Chachavalpongpun explains in our lead essay this week, after the rejection of a previous draft constitution by a military appointed council in September 2015, Prayuth’s government has been at pains to emphasise that the writing of this new constitution ‘has taken place in accordance with the “roadmap to democracy”. They insist that it’s been transparent, open to scrutiny in the public domain and that they have been willing to take on board criticism’.

In reality anyone who speaks out against the draft constitution risks imprisonment. Under Article 44 of the interim constitution General Prayuth wields absolute power, and abuse of lèse majesté laws has skyrocketed in the two years since the military takeover. In spite of these risks, the country’s two main political parties, the Democrats led by Abhisit Vejjajiva and the Puea Thai Party backed by the Shinawatras, have both publicly opposed the draft constitution in a rare moment of agreement between the two rival parties.

Rather than paving the way for a return to democracy, the draft constitution is widely seen as having been designed to ‘allow the military and their royalist backers to oversee Thai politics for the foreseeable future, whatever the outcome of elections’. Its contents, drafted by a palace old hand appointed by the military, will enable the judiciary to intervene in politics, weaken future civilian governments by removing their authority over bureaucratic and military elites, give independent organisations such as the unelected senate and the constitutional court power to stymie the elected government, and provide advantage to autonomous candidates weakening the major political parties. As Chachavalpongpun explains, ‘Future prime ministers will not have to be elected members of parliament, paving the way for old generals to claim the position legitimately’.

The culture of absolutist rule, a winner-takes-all approach to governance and the idea that it is the military’s job to intervene to stop corruption by democratically elected governments continues to haunt Thai politics today. Extrication from this political mess requires that Thailand’s competing networks of patronage retreat under structural democratic reform that enables fair and unfettered participation in national political life for the urban elite and rural farmers alike.


Sumber - East Asia Forum