ASIA
HAND Show and tell time for
Samak By Shawn W Crispin
BANGKOK - Will new Thai Prime Minister
Samak Sundaravej serve as ousted premier Thaksin
Shinawatra's loyal proxy, or will his strong
royalist credentials and well-known ambitions to
one day serve on King Bhumibol Adulyadej's Privy
Council steer his premiership in an unexpected
direction? The answer to that pivotal question
could be the difference between stability and
instability in the months ahead.
The
People's Power Party (PPP), the reincarnation of
Thaksin's banned Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party,
recently opened Parliament in the lead of a new
democratically elected six-party ruling coalition
in control of 315 of the Lower House's 480 seats. Veteran
politician Samak, PPP's nominal
party leader and well-known Thaksin ally, was as
expected selected prime minister on Monday.
The mainstream media have portrayed the
PPP's election win and its formation of a
coalition government as democratic vindication
against military rule and for the exiled Thaksin,
who was ousted in a September 2006 military coup
and is expected in the coming months to return to
Thailand to face criminal corruption charges.
The ousted premier is now in Hong Kong and
according to media reports holding meetings and
fielding phone calls from coalition politicians
and senior military officials, including coup
leader General Sonthi Boonyaratklin, in
preparation for his return. On the surface those
machinations could be perceived that the
politically polarized country is moving towards a
sort of rapprochement between pro- and
anti-Thaksin forces.
Thailand's democratic
aftermath, however, is considerably more
complicated and likely less stable than the
PPP-led coalition's parliamentary numbers might
suggest. With a new democratically elected
government and prime minister now in place,
Thailand's political conflict has returned from
competition for rural support to where it first
commenced: between competing Bangkok elites with
the monarchy in the middle.
On his return
from exile, Thaksin will continue to be shadowed
by what many Bangkok-based Thais view as the still
unresolved charges - first lodged by
anti-government street protestors, and later by
military coup-makers as a major justification for
staging their putsch - Thaksin was perceived as
disloyal to the royal crown. Thaksin and his
supporters have, of course, steadfastly denied the
explosive allegations.
That at least
perceived conflict was indirectly raised by Chat
Thai party leader Banharn Silpa-archa when he
presented his preconditions to the PPP to join its
coalition: first a PPP promise to respect and
uphold the monarchy, and second to stop criticism
of Privy Council President Prem Tinsulanonda, who
has been widely accused of orchestrating the coup
and a target of criticism among certain Thaksin
supporters.
It was also evident in
Thaksin's unusually public call from exile for an
audience with King Bhumibol on his return to
Thailand - a request that one royal insider says
"has not yet been graced with a reply". The
80-year-old King Bhumibol, whose health has
deteriorated significantly over the past year, has
on several occasions called on the military and
politicians to put aside their differences and
unify to put the country back on a stable track.
Political heavies It's not
apparent yet that the two sides have heeded that
royal counsel. Despite the new coalition's call
for national unity and reconciliation, the PPP has
appointed some of the country's most
controversial, confrontational and provocative
politicians to the new government's top spots.
Chief among them is new Parliament speaker
Yongyuth Tiyapirat, a former government spokesman
under Thaksin who the military accused of
preparing to arm pro-government thugs to confront
peaceful anti-government street demonstrators at
the time of the coup.
PPP deputy party
leader Chalerm Yoobamrung, a former police
intelligence chief famed for his stinging
parliamentary oratories and notorious for his
gangland sons, one of which fled the country but
was later arrested for his alleged role in the
killing of a police officer in a Bangkok
nightclub, has been tapped to take over the
powerful Interior Ministry - which significantly
has sway over the national police force.
Then there is the street-fighter Samak,
most notorious for his alleged role in the bloody
crackdown on left-leaning student demonstrators in
October 1976, but also popular for his populist
touch among the Bangkok masses. The 72-year-old
veteran politician has at times admitted, and then
later denied, that as PPP leader he is serving as
Thaksin's political proxy. On the campaign trail
he frequently promised to reverse the military's
constitution tribunal decision which disbanded TRT
and banned 111 of the party's senior members,
including Thaksin, from politics for five years on
electoral fraud charges.
That, in theory,
would open the way for new polls in which Thaksin
could run and would likely win based on his strong
support in the country's northern and northeastern
regions. Yet it's not a given that Samak, who
first announced a three-step political plan to win
the premiership in the mid-1980s, will obediently
serve Thaksin's whims and desires, particularly if
it entails dissolving the government he now leads.
A fiery orator and right-wing populist,
Samak first captured the country's popular
imagination in the late 1950s as a brainy
schoolboy contestant on a question-and-answer
television game show, Tick Tack Toe, which
he won 18 months in a row. He later leveraged that
popularity into a political career, first by
joining the now opposition Democrat Party, and
later by forming and leading the Prachakorn Thai
party, which was in and out of government
throughout the 1980s and often sat in opposition
to then prime minister, now privy councilor,
Prem's government.
His party was
outmaneuvered and depleted by political rivals
throughout the 1990s, but Samak nonetheless won
the Bangkok governorship in 2000, thumping a rival
TRT candidate by a two-to-one margin. He later
found common cause with Thaksin, including through
his provocative radio talk shows, which in 2005
broke taboos in attacking Prem and was
subsequently removed from the airwaves by the
military.
Blurred
loyalties Samak's loyalties are crystal
clear in the perceived conflict between Thaksin
and Prem, but become blurred when viewed through a
wider royal prism. Some royal insiders believe
that Samak's ambition to eventually be appointed -
and perhaps even replace the 87-year-old Prem - to
King Bhumibol's Privy Council outweighs his fealty
to Thaksin. "There is a hope that he turns his
back on Thaksin and re-elevates the monarchy out
of the pit of politics," said one royal insider.
Samak told Asia Times Online in a November
interview that the coup was staged because of
wrongheaded perceptions that Thaksin intended to
one day change Thailand from a monarchy to a
republic. He said he accepted the PPP's leadership
because he was one of the few people who could
clear Thaksin's name with the monarchy and that
the military's allegations that the former premier
was disloyal to the crown were "not true" and
"unfair". "I can talk the royal family's language,
I can ask and answer questions many [others]
cannot," he said, while claiming not to have taken
"a single baht" from the billionaire Thaksin in
exchange for his support.
At the same
time, certain other Thaksin supporters have used
the military coup as justification for criticizing
the royal institution, seen most clearly in the
proliferation of websites and VCDs that have
critically questioned what they perceive to be the
monarchy's influence on politics. (By Thai law,
the monarchy is above politics.) Some of these
critics are now known to be attached to the PPP,
which brings under one umbrella seemingly
incongruous cliques of provincial heavies, former
leftist student activists and ethnic-Chinese
Bangkok elites, who, unlike the former two groups,
are said to prefer conciliation to further
confrontation.
Added to the government's
complicated mix are five other political parties,
some populated by politicians who strongly oppose
a possible Thaksin comeback and reconstitution of
the TRT. Wobbly coalition governments frequently
collapsed under the weight of factional defections
throughout the 1990s, and the new PPP-led
coalition is considerably more polarized and seems
unlikely to coherently unite under the
controversial and often confrontational Samak.
The irony of course is that democratic
chaos and a new bout of political instability,
particularly if attended by street protests and
potential violence, would play directly into the
military's hands. Current army commander-in-chief
General Anupong Paochinda, who lent his support to
the 2006 coup, has repeatedly said that the
military has permanently retreated from politics
and that under any circumstance another coup would
be "dumb".
Yet already Anupong has
expressed his reservations if the next appointed
defense minister is a civilian rather than a
soldier. Should pro- and anti-Thaksin tensions
flare up again, as some predict they could with
the ousted premier's return to Thailand or through
perceptions that he is calling the shots for the
new PPP-led government from behind the scenes,
another military intervention in the name of
protecting the country and monarchy from a
politically resurgent Thaksin is not beyond the
realm of possibility.
Shawn W
Crispin is Asia Times Online's Southeast Asia
Editor. He may be reached at
swcrispin@atimes.com
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