ASIA
HAND Back
to the brink in Thailand By
Shawn W. Crispin
BANGKOK - Thailand's
politics have returned to the streets, threatening
new rounds of instability amid a contested
parliamentary push for national reconciliation.
While the return of protestors opposed to former
premier Thaksin Shinawatra may on the surface
signal a repeat to the run-up of the 2006 coup,
the latest mobilization at least initially lacks
crucial military support.
Establishment
forces, including the opposition Democrat Party,
the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) protest
group, and a section of the royal palace, stand
opposed to four national reconciliation bills they
believe aim narrowly to give amnesty to, and
restore the court-confiscated assets of, the self-exiled
Thaksin, who is the real
power behind his sister Yingluck's Peua Thai
party-led government.
An attempt last week
to rush the bills' passage was upended when the
Democrats violently disrupted parliament, and PAD
and aligned multi-colored street protestors
surrounded parliament to block Peua Thai
politicians from entering the building.
At
the height of the commotion, the Constitutional
Court ordered parliament to suspend the bills'
third reading until it could review a petition
challenging the legality of a related charter
change bill.
Thailand's courts have played
a prominent political role since the 2006 military
coup, including rulings that disbanded two
Thaksin-aligned parties and dissolved two of his
aligned governments, and last week's controversial
order was viewed by Thaksin and Peua Thai as an
attempt to usurp power. They claim the move
violated separation of power provisions in the
constitution and are now threatening to impeach
the court's seven judges.
It all sets the
stage for a potential violent showdown, including
clashes between rival pro- and anti-Thaksin
protest groups, when the bills are eventually
reintroduced into parliament. Thaksin has bid to
rally his red shirt United Front for Democracy
Against Dictatorship (UDD) group, imploring in a
fiery speech on June 2 to fight back against
attempts to "steal" power from the people.
During the same speech, Thaksin said he
had been "betrayed", though without saying by
whom, and regretted that red shirts had been
"forced to drink their own blood". He also
lambasted a 2010 Supreme Court decision that
confiscated US$1.4 billion of his wealth and
served as a spark for the red shirt protests that
paralyzed Bangkok's commercial hub and degenerated
into violence in April-May 2010.
The
rousing oratory harked back to earlier speeches
where Thaksin urged his followers to stage a
"social revolution" and marked a notably hard turn
from his more conciliatory May 19 message, where
he called on red shirts to put aside their
grievances, including demands for justice for
those killed during the April-May 2010 clashes
between protestors and troops, for the sake of
national reconciliation and his return from exile.
That speech alienated many red shirts,
revealing more clearly lines between genuine
progressives fighting for political change and
those aligned with Peua Thai's and Thaksin's more
narrow political and personal agendas. Cognizant
of that widening split, Thaksin and other red
shirt instigators are now trying to unify his
fractured movement by manufacturing the threat of
a possible military coup against Yingluck's
elected government.
Few military
observers, however, believe that a putsch is
imminent. Instead, they say, Thaksin's camp and
the top brass led by army commander Gen Prayuth
Chan-ocha have found common cause in the four
reconciliation bills' amnesty provision.
Significantly, the provision would not challenge
the legal basis of the 2006 coup and would absolve
soldiers of responsibility for the killings of
presumably scores of civilian red shirt protestors
during the 2010 crackdown.
The apparent
agreement comes amid a complex negotiation of
carrots and sticks. A broached military reform
bill aimed to give more discretionary power to
civilian politicians over future personnel
reshuffles, traditionally the preserve of top
commanders. State prosecutors, meanwhile, have in
recent weeks said they have compiled enough
evidence to implicate the military in as many as
18 of 92 protest-related deaths.
"Military
leaders feel they can't move forward without an
amnesty. The top brass and all generals in line
for promotion have blood on their hands," said one
military insider who requested anonymity. "They
want the reconciliation bills to work."
Significantly, earlier pressures on
military interests waned in the run-up to last
week's legislative push for reconciliation. So,
too, did earlier widespread rumors that soldiers
aligned to Thaksin were plotting a counter-coup
aimed at ousting Prayuth and his top deputies to
pave the way for Thaksin's safe return. Both sides
have in recent months reportedly established
secret "war rooms" to monitor each others'
movements.
Thaksin claimed in April
without naming names that at least four different
assassination plots had recently been hatched
against him. Analysts and diplomats believe that
the former premier would not feel secure enough to
return to Thailand as long as Prayuth and other
staunch royalists command the top tiers of the
armed forces.
While the Democrats, PAD and
parts of the palace remain vehemently opposed to
Thaksin's return, an emerging analysis is that the
military feels it could keep closer tabs on
Thaksin's movements and meetings if he was based
inside rather than outside of the country. Amid
these maneuvers and apparent recalculations,
Prayuth twice reaffirmed his support for
Yingluck's government during last week's fracas
inside and outside of parliament.
That
stance has exposed establishment divisions,
pitting conservative groups once allied in their
opposition to Thaksin into pro- and anti-amnesty
camps. "The commander-in-chief of the army is with
Thaksin now," said Sondhi Limthongkul, a co-leader
of the PAD, soon after his group closed down
parliament on June 1. "[Prayuth] is only
interested in keeping his post and getting lots of
budgets from the government."
Military
motivations Tacit military backing was
crucial to past PAD street movements, including
the 2005-06 mobilization that paved the way for
Thaksin's military ouster. Many observers also saw
the military's hidden hand in the PAD's week-long
airport seizure in 2008 that created the chaotic
backdrop for the judicial intervention that
toppled Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat's
Thaksin-aligned government.
One military
insider believes the top brass is opposed to
staging another coup because of the risks it would
entail to the royal succession from King Bhumibol
Adulyadej to Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn. Any
military intervention in politics, the insider
believes, would likely be resisted by
proliferating red shirt villages, which by some
estimates now account for 20,000 of 77,000
villages nationwide, concentrated in Thaksin's
stronghold north and northeast regions.
Many of the villages have been
indoctrinated from above specifically to protect
democracy against a future military coup. One
researcher who recently visited red shirt villages
in northeastern provinces quoted residents as
saying their areas would become bastions of
resistance similar to Homs, in Syria, in the event
of another military intervention. Others, the
researcher said, invoked the possibility of
launching a "Thai-style Arab Spring".
In
recent weeks, Prayuth has held meetings with
various colonels to assess the leanings of
battalion commanders and glean their assessments
of the security situation in the geographical
areas they oversee. Rather than allowing colonels
to read prepared assessments, as they have in
similar meetings in the past, Prayuth reportedly
led probing question-and-answer sessions that at
times challenged their security assessments
through his alternative sources.
The
combination of a promised amnesty and the threat
of a red shirt uprising that could complicate the
succession appears to have influenced the top
brass's position. The military insider predicts
that even if the situation in Bangkok descends
into chaos, with rival red and (pro-PAD) yellow
shirt protestors clashing violently, the military
would step in only briefly and return power to
Yingluck once order was restored.
That
puts the military at seeming odds with the
Democrats and the PAD, which have mobilized around
the notion they are fighting for rule by law and
against a white-washing of Thaksin's conviction.
It's a theme they argue is consistent with King
Bhumibol's recent speeches to high-level judges in
which he has urged them to rule with righteousness
and in the national interest. They also note that
earlier red shirt pleas for a royal pardon for
Thaksin have been met with silence from the
palace.
To be sure, both the Democrats and
the PAD would benefit from an amnesty for their
roles in recent political confrontations. Former
prime minister and Democrat leader Abhisit
Vejjajiva, however, has stood consistently on the
legal argument that troops under his command used
proportionate force during the 2010 lethal
crackdown.
His political and palace
supporters argue that any full accounting of those
events will reveal that Thaksin and his renegade
military allies instigated the violence through
armed attacks on security forces, including the
first salvo grenade attacks launched by mysterious
"black shirts" that killed foot soldiers on April
10, 2010.
Abhisit, whose supporters
believe he narrowly survived a red shirt
assassination attempt in April 2009, now travels
in an armored car due to fears for his security,
according to a person familiar with the situation.
Fears of Thaksin's return and rehabilitation are
also wrapped up in a post-reconciliation election,
a contest in which Thaksin would potentially run
and the Democrats would stand to lose substantial
ground. One party member believes that Thaksin's
ultimate aim is to drive the Democrats into
"extinction".
Yingluck and Thaksin have so
far executed an effective double game, with the
former frequently bowing to royal authority while
the latter moves from behind the scenes to
consolidate power at the expense of establishment
interests. It's still unclear if Thaksin's
carrot-and-stick tactics have worked to split
conservative camps, or rather they have moved
apart naturally due to a divergence in their
perceived medium-term corporate interests and
survival.
While the Democrats and the PAD
are known to be aligned closely with the palace's
current Bhumibol-led configuration, some believe
that connection will diminish after Crown Prince
Vajiralongkorn takes the throne. The military
frequently mobilizes defense of the monarchy
themes to justify its outsized political role, and
thus has a strong interest in the continuation of
the royal institution's current central role in
Thai society after the succession.
It has
been lost on few observers that King Bhumibol has
recently resumed a more prominent role after over
two years of hospitalization. Some observers read
special significance into the fact the revered
monarch wore military fatigues punctuated with a
Special Forces red beret during his recent
historic visit to Ayutthaya province, the site of
an ancient royal capital and various pivotal
battles against invading foreign forces. Special
Forces carried out the 2006 coup and played a key
role in the 2010 suppression.
Royal family
members and top advisors have announced in recent
months that the monarch will soon have recuperated
enough to walk again after being confined to a
wheel chair and could soon leave hospital to
resume residence in one of his royal palaces. It's
a message that has been cheered by loyal royalists
and serves perhaps as a reminder to those making
preparations and cutting backroom deals that the
sun has not set yet on Bhumibol's righteous reign.
Shawn W Crispin is Asia Times
Online's Southeast Asia Editor.
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