ASIA
HAND Thailand: One way to leave your
lover By Shawn W Crispin
BANGKOK - Barring any major social
upheavals or new military interventions, it was a
verdict that promises to change fundamentally the
complexion of Thailand's democratic politics for
the foreseeable future.
Thailand's
Constitutional Tribunal on Wednesday handed down
an unexpected split decision on electoral-fraud
charges, stemming from annulled April 2006 polls,
against the country's two largest political
parties, ruling in favor of the Democrat Party and
against
the
once-dominant Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party.
TRT was founded by former prime minister
Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted last September
19 in a military coup on charges of corruption,
disloyalty to the crown, and sowing social
divisions that threatened the country's democracy.
Wednesday's decision in effect dissolves the party
and bans the now-exiled Thaksin and 110 TRT
executive members from entering politics for the
next five years.
The ruling Council for
National Security (CNS) created the Constitutional
Tribunal in the direct aftermath of last year's
coup specifically to rule on the pending
electoral-fraud charges and hand-picked the legal
body's nine justices. It also unilaterally issued
Decree 27, which called for five-year bans on
politicians who ran afoul of the 1998 Political
Party Act.
The tribunal somewhat
controversially ruled that the order had
retroactive effect, providing the legal
justification for its decision to ban TRT members.
As such, the decision also provides important
legal justification for the CNS's military
intervention and subsequent suspension of
democracy. Until Wednesday's verdict, the junta
had failed to make any of its initial charges
against Thaksin stick, raising hard questions
about the legal legitimacy of the coup.
A
criminal court had earlier this year dropped the
lese majeste charges against Thaksin, and
the junta-appointed Assets Examination Committee
has so far failed to uncover hard evidence
implicating the former premier in any high-level
corruption. Moreover, a tribunal verdict that had
allowed TRT executive members to contest upcoming
elections would have raised the possibility that
once in office, they would have attempted to turn
the legal tables on the CNS.
The junta
members' attempts to include a blanket amnesty and
institutionalize a future political role for
themselves through the establishment of an
emergency council in the new draft constitution
highlighted those concerns. And the junta's
controversial bid to embolden the Internal
Security Operation Command and empower it to
appoint a deputy governor for each of the
country's 77 provinces clearly indicate that the
military intends to extend its political influence
rather than return to the barracks after elections
set for this year.
The conservative
Democrats, who vigorously locked horns with
Thaksin's populist administration, are from the
CNS's perspective a more agreeable lot to lead the
military's promised transition back toward
democracy. The tribunal's decision likely ensures
that the Democrats, who won a mere 123 of a total
500 parliamentary seats at the 2005 polls, will
score a resounding victory in the upcoming
democratic elections.
Resurgent
Democrats Such an electoral result would
be well received on international markets because
of the Democrats' strong track record of
neo-liberal policy during the two governments the
party led in the 1990s, including in the aftermath
of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
The
Democrats will likely run on a technocratic-savior
card, aiming to restore the investor confidence
that the ruling CNS has so badly eroded over the
past nine months through a series of erratic and
inward-looking economic and financial policies,
including the imposition and then gradual
relaxation of capital-control measures on foreign
equity, bond and currency transactions.
Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva, while
lacking grassroots appeal, is widely viewed as a
clean-hands reformer. Meanwhile, deputy party
leader Korn Chatikavanij, a former JPMorgan
banker, is already being tipped as the country's
next finance minister, and there is talk that
former World Trade Organization chief Supachai
Panitchpakdi will cut short his current term as
secretary general to the United Nations Conference
on Trade and Development to take up an economic
portfolio under a new Democrat-led government.
What's yet to be seen is whether the
military openly attempts to establish and field
its own political party to contest the next polls.
Earlier there were reports that CNS secretary
Winai Patiyakul was in behind-the-scenes
negotiations with previous labor minister and TRT
political operator Somsak Thepsuthin, [1] who days
after the coup broke away from the party with a
faction of 80 members of Parliament, known
collectively as Matchima.
Somsak was
reportedly preparing to establish a new political
party that would have been willing to field
military-affiliated candidates. Other breakaway
factional leaders, including former TRT finance
minister Suchart Tancharoen, had in recent months
made overtures to the CNS. However, Wednesday's
decision banned Somsak, Suchart and other TRT
faction leaders, indicating that the CNS's
overtures were part of a broad divide-and-rule
strategy aimed at accentuating TRT's internal
divisions.
Political focus will now likely
shift to former central-bank governor and military
loyalist Pridiyathorn Devakula, a minor royal who
temporarily served as both finance minister and
deputy prime minister for economic affairs under
the CNS's appointed civilian government.
Pridiyathorn is known to be politically ambitious,
and there have been unconfirmed reports that he is
in the process of generating funds to launch a new
political party that would likely be willing to
field military candidates.
The fading
masses Of course, the wild card in all of
this is how the decision to dissolve the TRT and
ban its top politicians will be received at the
rural grassroots, which overwhelmingly voted the
former party into power in 2001 and 2005. Dire
predictions of social unrest over a guilty verdict
against TRT, which tribunal judges at least
partially defused by taking nearly 12 hours to
read their verdicts, have so far proved to have
been overblown.
While the military
mobilized 13,000 security personnel to guard
against possible unrest, fewer than 100 people had
gathered at the court when the tribunal's judges
commenced reading their verdicts early Wednesday
afternoon, and foreign monks attending a religious
seminar nearly outnumbered the hundred or so
anti-coup protesters who briefly assembled at
Bangkok's Sanam Luang park.
Both the
exiled Thaksin and TRT's in-country party leaders
have so far publicly called for calm among their
supporters. But the lack of a popular response to
the tribunal's decision to ban TRT would appear to
indicate that Thaksin's political pulling power
has greatly dissipated since the military seized
power and banned broadcast media from relaying his
messages inside the country.
Political
power has always been determined through elite
settlements rather than a manifestation of the
popular will in Thailand, including Thaksin's
spectacular rise and now equally spectacular
demise. Rather than anticipating his and the TRT's
possible return to power, the more relevant
analysis now turns to the military's long-term
plans to recalibrate the country's political
balance.
Note 1.
Photographs of Somsak playing a friendly game of
soccer with CNS leader General Sonthi
Boonyaratklin were splashed on the front pages of
Thai newspapers less than a week after last year's
coup.
Shawn W Crispin is Asia
Times Online's Southeast Asia Editor.
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
