The last act for Thailand's PAD
By Shawn W Crispin
BANGKOK - A tense political
standoff between anti-government protesters and
Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej continued on
Thursday, with thousands of demonstrators refusing
to budge from their encampment around Government
House and police officials at the ready to arrest
and charge the movement's leaders with
treason
.
A criminal court on Wednesday issued arrest warrants for nine leaders of the
People's Alliance for Democracy's (PAD) for their roles in the violent attacks
launched against government buildings, including the Finance Ministry,
Transport Ministry and a state-run television station's offices, on Tuesday in
the Thai
capital. A civil court, meanwhile, ordered the protesters to vacate the grounds
of the government seat.
A Prime Minister's Office official told Asia Times Online on Wednesday night
that the government feared the demonstrators might torch the building if police
moved forcefully to arrest the PAD leaders, who include media baron Sondhi
Limthongkul, former Bangkok governor Chamlong Srimuang, academic Pibhop
Dhongchai and labor leader Somsak Kosaisuk. The group has stated its intention
to topple Samak's government.
Samak and his security forces have shown extraordinary restraint in the face of
the group's unprecedented attacks on government installations in Bangkok. The
beleaguered premier told reporters on Tuesday that the PAD was bent on stoking
violence and forcing him to declare a state of emergency, a case scenario that
would allow the armed forces to restore order and potentially take over
executive power.
Samak's temperance, analysts note, marks a break from his past pugnacious ways,
including his alleged - but contested - role in the violent crackdown on
left-leaning students in 1976, and his better documented heavy-handed handling
of farmer-led protests in Bangkok as a former interior minister in the 1990s.
Bangkok has not experienced this degree of political chaos since the fateful
events of May 1992, when anti-military government street protests took a
violent turn and troops in retaliation opened fire on unarmed demonstrators,
killing as many as 250.
Those protests were led by a younger and more democratically-inclined Chamlong
Srimuang, who appealed to Bangkok's masses through his simple, ascetic-like
touch.
The conflict was resolved only when the widely respected King Bhumibol
Adulyadej directly intervened, calling Chamlong and military leader Suchinda
Kraprayoon to kneel before him on national television and then moving to
establish a compromise interim government tasked with restoring democracy.
Throughout its protests in 2006 against then-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, the
PAD called on King Bhumibol to nudge Thaksin from power in the aftermath of
botched elections and establish a caretaker government until new polls could be
held. They appealed to a vague article in the former 1997 constitution, which
seemed to give the monarch mediating power over issues not outlined
specifically in the charter.
Bhumibol did not answer those calls and the military eventually staged a coup,
which Thaksin supporters have alleged was orchestrated by the royal advisory
Privy Council. The august body's president, Prem Tinsulanonda, has repeatedly
denied those allegations, insisting the military acted of its own accord.
Some speculate that the PAD's extreme measures this week were aimed at creating
a situation of anomie similar to 1992 where the revered, now 80-year-old
monarch would have felt compelled to intervene and through his unmatched moral
authority establish a middle way out of the political conflict. That conflict,
once defined primarily by pro- and anti-Thaksin camps, has been complicated
more recently by splits in the military between hardliners and a more moderate
faction that at present holds top command positions.
Some military analysts view this week's violence as receiving at least tacit,
if not logistical, support from some of the hardline elements, who favor a more
assertive role for the military in politics. An official attached to the Prime
Minister's Office told Asia Times Online his office was closely monitoring the
movements and actions of a group of military officials situated at the Nang
Lerng horseracing track, a well-known army haunt near Government House. He
named in particular General Panlop Pinmanee, who has previously denied any
association with the PAD, and Manoonkrit Roopkachorn, who was involved in
attempted coups in 1981 and 1985.
The opposition Democrats, too, are seen by some as at least tangentially
complicit in the PAD's attacks through member of parliament Somkiat
Pongpaiboon, who doubles as one of the protest group's leaders but who cannot
be immediately arrested and charged due to his parliamentary immunity.
Democrat deputy leader Korn Chatikavanij told Asia Times Online that Somkiat
was acting in his capacity as an individual rather than as a party member. At
the same time, Korn said he believed the treason charges filed against the PAD
leadership were "overly harsh and unnecessarily provocative". "We don't think
it is in anyone's interest to push the PAD into a corner. They have tens of
thousands supporters on the ground and perhaps millions through the ASTV
television station. It will be hard for them to just hit the off switch."
He said his party had offered to open a special session of parliament to
mediate the conflict, but that so far Samak had refused. Korn said he believed
army commander Anupong Paochinda's "grip on control was firm", but also
acknowledged "there was always the danger of a third hand with a hidden agenda
trying to bring the conflict to a head". He said the best democratic scenario
forward would be for Samak to resign and for the Democrats to form a new
government with realigned political parties.
Without that or a royal intervention, Thailand's increasingly assertive courts
will likely be tasked with resolving the political morass. The PAD's leaders
now face an array of serious criminal charges, including treason, conspiracy to
incite treason and refusal to disperse when ordered by law enforcement
authorities. If convicted of the treason charges, the PAD's leaders face
possible life in prison or even death sentences.
With arrest warrants and treason charges pending against the PAD leadership,
and the movement's arch nemesis, Thaksin, a fugitive from justice and in
self-imposed exile in Britain, political analysts anticipate a political course
shift in the months ahead with a new center coalescing among some previously
opposed political camps.
Conciliatory calls for some sort of - at least symbolically - royally endorsed
national unity government are expected to grow in the weeks ahead, with the
opposition Democrats somehow brought into the ruling fold. Such a case scenario
would also alleviate mounting national anxiety about the royal succession as
Bhumibol turns 81 in December.
Whether a national unity government would ease the passions of the PAD's
supporters or stoke new tensions among the northeastern region politicians, who
won last December's general elections under a pro-Thaksin, People's Power Party
banner, is altogether unclear. The reconstituted PAD rallies have been
populated in the main by middle-aged and elderly protesters hailing from
southern provinces, where the Democrats hold electoral sway.
That underscored the symbolic point that not all rural Thai voters favor
Thaksin and the legacy of his populist policies, and instead pointed to the
fact that the country is divided as much on regional lines as it is along
urban-provincial ones. At the same time, the PAD's protest movement lost the
Bangkok-based support it garnered in its previous incarnation, when in 2005 and
2006 it mobilized royal symbolism and captured the middle classes' imagination
with claims that Thaksin had shown disloyalty to the crown.
Many feared the reconstituted protest movement, which commenced its new
anti-Samak rally call in May this year, aimed finally at another military
intervention and suspension of democracy, which was confirmed to many last
month with PAD leaders' calls for a diminished version of democracy where 30%
of parliament would be elected, the rest appointed.
The royal yellow-clad PAD's renewed claim that its actions were first and
foremost aimed at protecting the monarchy also fell flat, partially because
Samak is a well-known royalist with a long family lineage serving in the royal
court, and more potently after Bhumibol effectively endorsed Samak's government
on national television on the eve of a previous PAD-proclaimed doomsday.
The PAD's lack of middle-class support was quantified this week in a Bangkok
University poll, which found that 68% of Bangkok-based respondents disapproved
of the PAD's siege of the government and state buildings. Fewer than 5% of the
respondents said they favored a military coup to restore order.
Instead, the PAD's resort to violence should be viewed as an act of desperation
to push its anti-democratic agenda. That it is was apparently rebuffed by
Samak's and his security forces' restraint and temperance will go down as an
irony in Thai history and help to rehabilitate the premier's controversial
history. Despite the PAD's and media's criticism, Samak has navigated a deft
path between pro- and anti-Thaksin forces.
He was also able in some ways to leverage the PAD to his political advantage.
By targeting and - though their megaphone criticisms - helping to topple
Thaksin's top lieutenants inside his administration, including former house
speaker Yongyuth Tiyapairat, Prime Minister's Office minister Jakrapob Penkair
and foreign minister Noppadon Pattama, Samak has been able to consolidate a
more independent grip on his government.
The protest movement's vigorous complaint against PPP MPs' proposed moves to
amend the constitution, including a possible rescinding of the amnesty clause
for the coup-makers the military wrote into the charter, allowed Samak to back
away from a move that would have irked the senior military figures, including
army commander Anupong Paochinda, he has angled with a large degree of success
to cultivate.
The PAD's apparent last act will also give Samak the opportunity to pursue a
more deep-reaching political reordering, including a move away from the PPP
northeastern region faction closely aligned to Thaksin, further cultivation of
powerbroker politician Newin Chidchob's political faction of 100 or so MPs, and
if he chooses, a potential alliance with the Democrats. The PAD's apparent
demise, it seems, will most likely be Samak's political victory.
Shawn W Crispin is Asia Times Online's Southeast Asian Editor. He may be
reached at swcrispin@atimes.com.
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