Thai
military regains lost political
ground By John Cole and Steve
Sciacchitano
As the waters from Thailand's
recent devastating floods recede, they reveal a
distinctly changed political landscape. Prime
Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's governing Puea Thai
party, which held a commanding position in the
immediate aftermath of its landslide electoral
victory last July, is now on the defensive on
various fronts as it deals with public perceptions
that it badly mismanaged the crisis.
The
Royal Thai Army (RTA), which has suffered a steady
decline in popular support since overthrowing
former prime minister and Yingluck's elder brother
Thaksin Shinawatra in a 2006 coup, has now
regained much of that public prestige and
self-confidence due
to its comparatively efficient
and professional response to the flooding.
Last year's election, held in the
aftermath of a 2010 lethal military crackdown on
pro-Thaksin street demonstrators, left the army
demoralized and divided. In public, the generals
treated Puea Thai's victory as they would any
other electoral result. In private, many senior
officers felt that an ultimate battle with
Thaksin's political movement had been lost and
that it was only a matter of time before many of
country's institutions - including the military -
were fundamentally remade by Puea Thai.
The only thing that may have allowed the
generals to retain a modicum of their previous
post-coup power and prestige was the fortuitous
agreement they quietly concluded with Puea Thai
before the election under which Thaksin
interlocutors promised not to purge officers who
had backed the 2006 coup while in return the
generals vowed not to undermine any Puea Thai-led
government after the polls.
With the
political shift caused by the floods, a rough
stand-off has emerged between the RTA and its
political allies and Yingluck's Puea Thai-led
government. Normally this would lead to gridlock,
but the problems now faced by Thailand are so huge
that both sides seem to recognize that they must
cooperate to overcome them. That's been seen
publicly in the respectful way in which both
Yingluck and RTA commander General Prayuth
Chan-ocha have recently addressed each other in
press interviews.
These pleasantries,
however, should not be interpreted as indication
of a fundamental compromise over the direction of
the country. Both sides will undoubtedly keep
their long-term interests clearly in focus as
issues of national reconciliation return to the
political center stage. Yingluck's government has
indicated its intention to push through
constitutional changes that many believe will be
designed specifically to give Thaksin amnesty for
his criminal conviction and allow him to return to
Thailand a free man. He is at present in
self-imposed exile after being convicted in 2008
on corruption charges.
The difficulties of
dealing with the tremendous damage the flooding
has caused the country's economy, infrastructure
and international reputation within a political
system that has been in crisis for several years
seems likely to compel a level of cooperation in
the near term. In addition, preparing for the
shock to the system that will inevitably come when
84-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej finally passes
from the scene requires that both sides prepare
for the worst and begin to exercise more caution.
Faced with such an uncertain and
potentially treacherous future, it is somewhat
ironic that the army owes its recent success in
restoring its public reputation through its
professional handling of the floods by reverting
to its past, specifically to the
counter-insurgency campaign it waged against the
Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) almost 30 years
ago.
The army's initial response to the
insurgency was more often brutal than thoughtful,
but by the early 1980s an effective national
counter-insurgency doctrine (Prime Minister's
Order 66/2325) had been devised and employed that
later proved to be a major factor in the ultimate
defeat of the CPT. The doctrine emphasized
attention to local conditions, a detailed
knowledge of the problems faced by villagers,
close coordination by army field units with local
officials down to the village level, as well as
with other central government agencies.
Since virtually the entire senior
hierarchy of the army is now composed of veterans
of this campaign, and the doctrine itself has been
a core element in the RTA's officer education
system for many years, it has become something
akin to the collective DNA of the army officer
corps.
When responding to the recent
floods, and in the absence of strong civilian
direction by Yingluck's government, the RTA simply
reverted to what it knows best.
In this
case, the RTA's tradition of paying attention to
local officials and the needs of villages and
towns was exactly what was needed to deal with the
disaster. The RTA functioned as the agency of last
resort throughout every flooded locality in the
kingdom for hundreds of thousands of affected
people by rescuing villagers trapped by flood
waters, working around the clock to build sandbag
dykes and levees, and delivering food and water to
people stranded by the high waters.
(It is
also somewhat ironic that the reason PM Order
66/2325 was never publicly mentioned during the
flood relief effort was likely because its author,
former premier and army commander General Chavalit
Yongchaiyuth, is currently a member and senior
advisor of the Puea Thai party.)
Each of
the RTA's four Army Regions established its own
flood relief operations center, which were not
just inter-connected through the main Army
Operations Center in Bangkok but also with other
government agencies and nongovernmental
organizations. There was initially some confusion
within the army where only engineer and specialist
units were committed to the early phases of the
relief effort, but this was quickly rectified and
entire infantry regiments were later deployed.
Tens of thousands of soldiers worked
reflexively on whatever was needed to save or
evacuate a town, village or urban district on the
verge of being flooded. The key to their relative
success, however, was not simple numbers but the
close coordination between local commanders and
the village chiefs and mayors of towns located in
the flood zones.
Much of what the army did
was to simply apply common sense ideas, but in the
midst of a crisis even basic operations can be
difficult to implement on a large scale without
common procedures and understanding - exactly what
the army has developed over the years through PM
Order 66/2325's civil affairs doctrine.
None of this detracts from the RTA's many
deep-rooted deficiencies. It also suffers from the
same problems that plague other Thai institutions,
namely political interference, corruption,
favoritism in promotions, lack of realistic
training and poor equipment maintenance.
But the RTA's many critics who emphasize
only those problems frequently fail to acknowledge
the other reality exposed by the floods: the large
numbers of officers and soldiers who serve with a
genuine strong sense of national duty.
Royal affiliation Another key
part of the RTA's flood relief operations was its
treatment of the effort as a royal project. Royal
projects in a Thailand context refer in general to
activities funded and administered directly by the
royal family outside of normal government
channels, usually infrastructure and livelihood
programs.
This emphasis has generated a
certain amount of criticism, portrayed by critics
as both an unnecessary and overtly political move
while implying that the civilian government's
efforts were inadequate. However, the same
decision was taken in the early 1980s during the
counter-insurgency campaign, when due to
corruption in both normal civilian and military
channels relief supplies intended for poor
villagers in contested areas rarely if ever
arrived.
By designating an activity as a
royal project, it was administered by close and
trusted subordinates of the royal family who could
be counted upon to work honestly and diligently.
Similar calculations applied during the recent
flooding, when the RTA staff received reports of
relief supplies being diverted by unscrupulous
government officials.
Through these
decisions, the position of army commander Prayuth
has been greatly strengthened, both among the
general public and within the army. This is the
result not just of the RTA's flood relief efforts
but also Prayuth's personal conduct. He has bent
to show deference to Yingluck's civilian
leadership and responded positively to her crisis
management requests.
One prominent example
was Prayuth's voluntarily stepping forward to
publicly accept a 10% budget cut to help fund
post-flood rehabilitation and reconstruction. He
also kept his public comments during the crisis
focused only on the mission at hand and did not
wander off message into political topics,
including accusations by Thaksin's "Red Shirt"
supporters that he intended to stage a "water
coup" to overthrow Yingluck's embattled
administration.
Just as significant is
Prayuth's renewed standing within the RTA's
officer corps and the increased unity this
achieved within the RTA. Until now, Prayuth was
regarded by many officers as a somewhat divisive
figure by unfairly favoring certain officers,
especially his own pre-cadet Academy Class 12
classmates as well as cronies from his days at the
21st Infantry Regiment, for promotions and key
assignments.
Prayuth's professional
leadership during the flooding and the RTA's
renewed sense of self-confidence resulting from an
improved standing with the Thai public has to some
degree changed these intra-institutional
perceptions, with potentially important
implications for Thai politics.
Elected
officials with Puea Thai will have likely taken
notice of the shift. While there is no indication
the RTA aims for a return to its previous
domination of politics, the RTA's rehabilitated
image will make the men in green formidable
opponents for the internal government battles over
resource allocation that are sure to emerge in the
months ahead.
The recent public show of
unity between Yingluck's government and the RTA
during the floods does not represent a fundamental
reconciliation between the two sides of Thailand's
political divide. Rather, it is indicative of a
political calculation that cooperation in the
near-term is in the interests of both sides. Any
number of contingencies could, and almost
certainly will, bring this cooperation to an end
in the months ahead.
When this inevitably
occurs, Yingluck and her Puea Thai party will as a
result of the RTA's handling of the floods have to
contend with a much more cohesive and unified army
than existed just a few months ago.
John Cole and Steve
Sciacchitano spent several years in Thailand
while on active duty with the US Army. Both were
trained as Foreign Area Officers specializing in
Southeast Asia and graduated from the Royal Thai
Army's Command and General Staff College. They are
now retired and the views expressed here are their
own.
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