Thailand

Photo courtesy of Ho New / Reuters In the Sunday New York Times, Seth Mydans and Thomas Fuller, the Bangkok correspondents, have written an insightful article on Thailand’s King Bhumibhol Adulyadej and why he has not intervened in the ongoing chaos in Bangkok. After all, during previous rounds of bloodshed, such as in 1973 and 1992, the king did step in, trying to mediate between warring factions and help preserve some kind of peace. Fuller and Mydans correctly note that one of the main reasons why the king has not intervened this time around is that, unlike during past demonstrations, this time one side (the red shirts) might not listen to him, since some of the red shirts do not buy into the myth and moral force of the Thai monarchy. That’s not surprising, given that the monarchy historically has used its power to benefit a certain segment of Bangkok elites, while arguing that the rest of the country should exist in a “sufficiency economy” (i.e. that the little people should know their place and stick to basic farming while the upper classes run the rest of the economy). However, what Mydans and Fuller fail to note is that it is not as if the king’s enormous popularity, bordering on Kim Jong Il cult status, just collapsed this month. For years, the rural poor, and the working class in Bangkok, have begun to recognize that the king does not necessarily act in their interests. For at least five years, and probably more, I have heard veiled criticism of the palace from taxi drivers, farmers, and other working class Thais, usually expressed in vague ways or targeted at the crown prince or even the queen, who is even more pro-elite and pro-army than the king. As Paul Handley shows in his groundbreaking 2006 book on Bhumibhol, The King Never Smiles, educated Thai liberals who desire a real democracy have long realized that the king, though in some ways a positive influence, has also often used that influence anti-democratically. Many of these same liberal intellectuals served as sources for Handley, or helped point him to important evidence. It was only the strict Lèse majesté laws in Thailand, which make any criticism of the palace a crime, that prevented such an outpouring before, but those laws increasingly seem to be failing, as anger builds and the Internet and other media allow greater discussion of the monarchy.

Photo courtesy of Reuters/Adrees Latif With an apparent compromise this week between the government and the red shirt demonstrators camped out in Bangkok for months, Thailand’s political crisis appears to have been defused. The government got much of what it wanted – a delay on a new election until after the reshuffle in the army slated for September. The protesters, who were getting tired of sleeping on the streets during the hottest time of the year, could at least save face by saying that they forced Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to speed up his time frame for dissolving Parliament and calling a new poll. But like a bad horror movie, this “ending” will only lead to more, and nastier, sequels. None of the major problems actually have been resolved. For example: The concern about royal succession. The crisis did not make it any easier for average Thais to discuss the royal institution – in fact, the Thai government shamefully tarred the demonstrators as anti-monarchist “terrorists,” and has increased the use of lèse majesté laws to stifle debate. The schisms in the army. One of the likely reasons why the army commander in chief never moved to crack down on the protesters is that he could not trust his junior officer corps and rank and file soldiers, many of whom have sympathy for the red shirts and may have been leaking intelligence to them about the military’s next moves. (The snipers who shot at the military on April 10, provoking bloodshed, had extremely detailed information about the army’s command structure.) The fundamental change in Thai politics has not been accepted. The rural poor and middle class, and those who have not had access to the major institutions of power, like the army and the civil service, are not going to go back to the past, even though they have accepted a compromise with the government. If Bangkokians continue to dominate all elite institutions, and there is not a real federalization of political power, expect the anger to build up again. The future of Thaksin has not been resolved. Although the red shirt protests became a broader social movement about far more than Thaksin, the former prime minister remains a powerful figure. Without any real resolution on his assets, or whether he can return to Thailand, many of his supporters will remain furious. So, when will “Thailand Crisis” come to a theater again? Could be as early as September. But certainly plan on watching it by December 2010.

In a new article for Newsweek, I examine the roots of Thailand’s current political struggle. Despite the media’s portrayal of the red shirt-government clash as a class war, this is only partially true. To be sure, there is a significant class divide – the region where the red shirts mostly hail from, the Thai north and northeast, is poorer than Bangkok – but the divide is much greater and complex. Thais today are split as much by their feelings about the country’s traditional institutions – the monarchy, the army, the civil service, Bangkok business – as they are just divided by income level.

Photo Courtesy of Reuters/Stringer Thailand More violence looms in Bangkok – the military reportedly will crack down on protestors camped out in the business district within 48 hours – so it seems like a good time to reflect on the winners and the losers, thus far, in the high-stakes standoff in Thailand. The Winners: The rural poor. They have not yet achieved their stated goal of getting Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to quickly call a new election, which a pro-poor party likely would win. Still, the red shirts have demonstrated staying power and organization and, most importantly, they have shown they are a movement that stands for more than simply restoring Thaksin Shinawatra to power – a fact that Bangkok’s elites still do not seem to realize. Prime Minister Abhisit. He has not cleared the red shirts out of Bangkok, and his supporters don’t understand the movement, but the prime minister has cemented his position as the indispensable actor in his ruling Democrat Party. Abhisit’s urbane style appeals to Bangkokians and foreigners, and he has shown a degree of ruthlessness people did not see in him before. The Democrat Party does not have a better candidate, and if they go to the polls in the near future, Abhisit likely will still be at the top of their ticket. Brave tourists. You will never get cheaper hotels and tour packages than now for a country that, outside of Bangkok, remains relatively serene. The Losers: The monarchy. Behind the scenes, the fear over the king’s eventual demise looms large. The fact that the king has not tried to intervene in this standoff suggests he realizes the red shirts, dismayed by the palace’s support for the army and for Abhisit, might not listen to the king this time. And any greater attention paid to the crown prince hardly throws the monarchy in a flattering light. The army. In the initial violence on April 10, the Thai army showed that it is horribly ill-prepared for the protesters’ tactics. The military’s intelligence and decision-making appears slow and compromised by leaks, and though it continues to play a pivotal behind the scenes role in politics, it has lost much credibility. The protest leaders. The rural poor have gained enormously from the protests, but the actual leaders of the demonstrations have not fared so well. By allowing violence to stain the demonstrations, they have lost some of the moral high ground and given the army an excuse to crack down. The protest leaders also have not enunciated a clear platform for what they would do if they ruled Thailand. Thailand’s Deep South. The Bangkok chaos has distracted all attention from a bloody insurgency in southern Thailand that has killed over 3,000 people in the past ten years. Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya. His Ahab-like pursuit of Thaksin and his ridiculously over-the-top condemnations of the former prime minister, likening him to Stalin and Hitler, has made Kasit look petty and foolish. Thaksin had many flaws as a prime minister, but a comparison to such mass murderers makes someone watching Kasit doubt any other statements the foreign minister makes.

Photo courtesy of Reuters/Eric Gaillard The standoff in Bangkok looks like it will come to a head dangerously soon. Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has tasked the commander in chief of the armed forces to take control of the situation, probably because he wants to prod the commander, now essentially the fall guy, to move faster. Neither side seems ready to budge: The red shirt protestors remain camped out in the center of the financial/shopping district, and the security forces are moving closer to them. King Bhumibhol has not made any move to intervene. Some Thais believe that this is because the respected monarch is very sick, which he is. But the decision by this politically savvy monarch may be just as much because Bhumibhol has realized that this time, unlike in the past, Thais will not listen to him if he intervenes, and so he does not want to threaten his credibility by taking a stance. After all, the red shirts feel so increasingly alienated from the monarchy, because of its role in supporting the government of Abhisit, that it is likely that a royal intervention would not make much difference to them. The fact that Queen Sirikit and Thailand’s crown prince publicly attended the funeral rites of one of the military officers killed in the street violence on April 10 only further suggests to the protestors that the monarchy is not the impartial actor it portrays itself as. Worst, neither the monarchy nor other elites in Bangkok seem to have realized, as the well-known blogger Bangkok Pundit notes, the rural masses are no longer as uneducated and complacent as in the past – they have gained such a sense of empowerment, through greater rural education and political federalism, that they will never be talked down to again. Still, Abhisit’s government cannot let the red shirt demonstration go on. It paralyzes traffic and commerce, it makes the prime minister look extremely weak, and it is destroying Thailand’s vital tourism industry. Bangkokians are right to insist on some degree of order in their city, which is increasingly turning into a realm of lawlessness. And it is certainly reasonable for the government to arrest red shirt leaders who have committed or planned violent acts. The trouble is, any crackdown on the red shirts risks looking like a double standard, since the security forces did almost nothing against elite yellow shirt protestors (including now-foreign minister Kasit Piromya) who, in 2008, launched a similar takeover of Bangkok’s main international airport, causing similar chaos and damage to the Thai economy. If Abhisit does crack down, the red shirts will legitimately question why this double standard exists. If he doesn’t, he will lose his Bangkok support base and probably the loyalty of many junior army officers, who are furious at the red shirts and want to make a move. Ultimately, the most plausible – and unfortunately, dangerous- scenario is that Abhisit will authorize a real crackdown by the security forces, but will step back from direct control of the operation, to give himself some deniability if it goes wrong. And that could lead to violence that will make April 10 look like nothing.

Over this past weekend, Thailand’s volatile political situation, which had been burning hotter and hotter since early February, finally exploded in violence that killed at least twenty people and wounded hundreds. Though both the protestors and the government have stepped back from the brink temporarily, the battle is likely to resume, since underlying grievances on both sides are no closer to being resolved. In a new CFR Expert Brief, I examine the factors behind Thailand’s deterioration, look at whether the country can step back from much worse violence, and discuss the role for the United States, a treaty ally of Thailand and long the country’s most important partner.

The once-prosperous democratic ally of the United States faces continuing upheaval unless the elite and opposition agree to political reforms and a frank debate about the future of its monarchy, writes CFR’s Joshua Kurlantzick.

Over the weekend, Thailand’s Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjavija, besieged by street protests of the red-shirted supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, suddenly reversed his position and declared that he was open to direct talks with the reds’ leaders. (Abhisit previously had said he would not listen to any ultimatums for talks.) The red shirts immediately asked for the dissolution of Parliament, which presumably would lead to a new election that their party would have a strong chance of winning. Some media coverage suggested that these talks signified a breakthrough, a compromise that created the possibility of ending Thailand’s standoff, which in recent days has included bombings and grenade attacks.

Can Thailand get out of its seemingly intractable political crisis, now going on five years and counting? Thousands of red-clad protestors remain camped out on the streets of Bangkok, railing against the elites who deposed Thaksin Shinawatra and the subsequent government. They’ve enjoyed significant support from working class men and women in Bangkok. The elites – the army, elite business and politicians, the monarchy, the bureaucracy – have tried everything to stop them. As the knowledgeable Thailand blogger Bangkok Pundit notes, the elites tried to keep the protestors from coming to Bangkok by banning their cars, lavishing money on entertainment in the provinces to keep them in town, and other tools – though it didn’t work. Elite Bangkok media, like The Nation newspaper, portray the mostly nonviolent red protestors as rural hordes planning to pillage the capital. I don’t see much chance of this divide getting narrower anytime soon. As I note in a forthcoming piece in the London Review of Books the fundamental truth is that most Thai elites, having tasted democracy in the late 1990s and early 2000s, are afraid of its impact. Democracy, which would empower the rural poor, would dilute Bangkok elites’ economic and social privilege, and make it harder for them to topple governments they didn’t like, a Thai tradition. At the same time, the rural poor and other red shirts have grown so furious since Thaksin was forced out in 2006 that, if their party came to power again, they likely would take any measure possible to punish Bangkok elites. And no one speaks about the eventual demise of revered King Bhumibhol, who has held the political system together. This week, The Economist has a lengthy feature on the ailing king’s ultimate demise, but because of strict lèse majesté laws, the magazine is not being released this week in Thailand. This even though the king has publicly said that he should not be above criticism, yet in recent years royalist elites actually have cracked down harder on anyone accused of defaming the monarchy. What’s needed, then, is both simple and difficult. Thailand needs concessions and a serious, open debate about the future of the monarchy. The king has tried to encourage this, but so far has failed. Thailand also needs to hold another election – Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva seems reluctant to call one – and for all parties, including the military to respect the results, even if a Thaksin proxy party triumphs. Elites simply will have to become accustomed to some loss of power. At the same time, any party elected mostly by the working class will have to realize that it cannot just trample on the long-held privileges of the elites, or run the risk of inflaming Bangkok sentiment again. Other populist leaders, like Brazil’s Lula, have learned as much, and prospered as leaders with a broad popular base. Such a leader is possible in Thailand – but as protests drag on, it looks less and less likely.

This past weekend, over 100,000 protestors from rural Thailand descended on Bangkok in a push to oust the government and, possibly, return to power their hero, populist former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who spoke to the crowds, dressed in red (Thaksin’s color), from an undisclosed location overseas. Demanding that the government resign, the red shirts have massed along major arteries in Bangkok and marched on the army base where leaders of the government are holed up. Thailand’s media seems unable to remain neutral on the red shirt protests. The Nation, a prominent newspaper representing the Bangkok elites who support the government of Abhisit Vejjajiva, consistently portrays the red shirts as dangerous rural masses intent on causing violence, though so far the demonstrations have remained peaceful. (See nationmultimedia.com for coverage of the protests.) Other papers, more supportive of Thaksin, portray the protestors as a kind of peaceful party, rolling into town on their pickup trucks, blasting Thai country music, and joyously affirming their right to demonstrate. But the heated debate on the red shirt protests misses an essential point. Whether the rally succeeds in ousting Abhisit’s government or not, it marks a major milestone in the development of Thai politics. For decades, it was assumed that Thailand’s rural poor had no voice – that people from the rural areas would just accept whatever political decisions were made in Bangkok, even though the Bangkok elites comprised a small minority of the country’s population. By and large, that assumption held: The elites, working through the monarchy, bureaucracy, courts, and Democrat Party, did manipulate Thailand’s political system to ensure they stayed on top, and the rural poor simply went along with any changes. Even when the rural poor elected a leader sympathetic to their interests, elites in Bangkok could bring down the government, through a coup, maneuvers in Parliament, or street protests. Now, the reverse has happened. The elites have their leader, and the rural poor have come to topple him. This weekend’s protest, by far the largest in years – it could still swell to 200,000 or even 300,000 – shows that the rural poor have gained their voice, and even are willing to come to Bangkok, where they feel alienated and alien, to express it. Even if Abhisit’s government does not fall, and Thai politics returns to the stalemate of the past five years, the red shirts have made their point. Thai politicians no longer can simply mouth platitudes of support for the poor, and then decide Thailand’s course for themselves. The rural poor now will have a say in determining the country’s direction – and what’s so dangerous about that?

In the wake of the February 26 court decision seizing the majority of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s assets, the whole Thai political class is wondering what happens next, and Thaksin’s supporters are promising to bring hundreds of thousands of protestors to Bangkok next week. After the decision, and the expected protest, can Thailand heal its increasingly sharp divisions? I don’t think so. Wandering through Chiang Mai, the biggest city in northern Thailand – and Thaksin’s traditional power base – virtually everyone I met was in a fighting mood. Outside one of the city’s oldest temples, groups of working-class men – noodle stall owners, tuk-tuk drivers, construction workers – dressed in red, Thaksin’s color, had camped out semi-permanently, selling souvenir paraphernalia bearing Thaksin’s face to earn a bit of money. In other words, fighting Bangkok had become their life – and once a cause becomes your life, it’s a lot harder to compromise. The court decision, which left Thaksin with the money he’d made before becoming prime minister, was, according to some Thai elites, a kind of compromise, since it would allow Thaksin to retire a very rich man. The government thus seemed to be counting on either Thaksin exiting the political scene because his fight was only about getting back his assets or his supporters being mollified by the court. A few Chiang Mai businesspeople told me that Thaksin had been allowed to keep the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars, suggesting that maybe Thaksin didn’t have it so bad – the exact response the government wants. But working class Thais, the foundation of Thaksin’s support in office and now in exile, weren’t buying it. Some offered surprisingly sophisticated analyses of the political situation. One tuk-tuk driver, whose three-wheeled taxi was festooned with Thaksin memorabilia, told me that the Bangkok government had accused Thaksin of having the telecommunications company he’d run, Shin Corp, profit from the gains in the Thai stock market when he was prime minister, but when the market went up all manner of companies, including many owned by Thaksin’s enemies, did well. Another tuk-tuk driver wondered why the courts had spent so much time investigating Thaksin but seemed to pay little attention to allegations of graft against a range of figures in the Democrat Party, which now rules the country. Yet another Chiang Mai local, who owned a small convenience store, offered a sentiment I heard many times across northern Thailand, saying simply, “The government [in Bangkok] thinks [Thaksin supporters] are stupid, that they can just shut us up and we’ll accept it, like in the past.”

It’s Antonin Scalia’s nightmare. Challenged over the past decade by the rise of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the first Thai leader to unite the rural poor and challenge entrenched elites, those elites – the military, Bangkok businesspeople, the monarchy – have fought back, using a unique weapon. Thailand has in many ways become what some observers are calling a “judiocracy”: Powerful judges, egged on by the crown, deliver verdicts designed to cripple Thaksin and his supporters, and keep the elites in power. The rise of the judiocracy started in the mid-2000s, around the time that Thaksin was pushed out in a coup. Thailand’s revered king, Bhumibhol Adulyadej, is theoretically a constitutional monarch, but in reality he plays a powerful behind-the-scenes role in Thai politics. But the king is elderly, and ailing, and the palace seems to be seeking ways to perpetuate elite control. On at least two occasions, he has called on Thailand’s judges to make decisions with “righteousness,” a kind of code for activist judges finding on behalf of elites. As Thai politics observer Shawn Crispin notes, “The high courts and judges assume the role the monarchy has traditionally played in mediating the country’s complex and often heated political disputes.” In other words, making sure the power of the masses, who have enough votes to elect populists like Thaksin, is diluted. In the past five years the judiocracy has barred one of Thaksin’s allies from politics for hosting a televised cooking show (supposedly a conflict of interest), come down against other members of Thaksin’s party, and convicted Thaksin’s wife of assets concealment. In the most recent example, the courts last week declared that the courts would be seizing most of the former prime minister’s assets, in a highly dubious decision that enraged Thaksin’s supporters, who are now calling for a million-person rally in Bangkok. Just like in an autocracy, in a judiocracy the rulers brook little dissent. People who criticize court decisions can be held in contempt of court and punished. Prominent pro-elite media outlets savage anyone who dares question the rightness of these powerful judges. Of course, in turning itself into a political force, the judiciary is destroying any sense of impartiality it still enjoys with average Thais. In Chiang Mai, Thaksin’s home base, nearly everyone I met, from taxi drivers to local businesspeople, had lost all trust in the judges. “Bangkok people, they won’t let [Thaksin] win,” one local landlord told me. “It’s all fixed.”

As a stay this week in Chiang Mai has shown me, Thaksin Shinawatra, the former Thai prime minister forced out by a coup in 2006, isn’t going away as a political force. Chiang Mai and the North are Thaksin’s traditional power base, so, perhaps unsurprisingly, nearly everyone I met in the area was convinced that the economy performed better under Thaksin and that the country would go downhill until he returned. Outside one of Chiang Mai’s older temples, vendors had set up stalls selling bumper stickers, CDs, jackets, T-shirts, and many other items featuring Thaksin’s grinning face. Polls show that Puea Thai, the political party that serves as a proxy for Thaksin, would win the most seats in a theoretical national election, the major reason why the ruling Democrat Party seems wary of calling a poll anytime soon. The ideas that Thaksin trumpeted also have grown into a much broader movement, which has gone unrecognized by elites in Thailand, who despise Thaksin and see his hand behind every protest. Though Thaksin was hardly an example of democracy as a prime minister, he instilled in rural, poor Thais the idea that their votes mattered – they voted for the populist Thaksin, and he delivered populist economic policies – and, unlike every previous Thai politician, he actually had a real political platform designed to reduce economic inequality. For the poor, who have not benefited from growing trade with China or investment from the West and Japan, Thaksin’s policies resonated. Now, the red-shirted groups (red was Thaksin’s color) that have formed across the North and other parts of Thailand, have built upon Thaksin’s ideas and created their own self-funded social and political networks, broadcasts, and publications. In fact, hundreds of people now descend on the red shirts’ Chiang Mai offices every day because the protest movement has become their community. And Thailand’s elites will find that it’s a lot harder to shut down a community than to get rid of one man.

In recent weeks, Thailand has been awash in rumors of an impending coup, which would be the second in four years, and the last one led to the current downward spiral in Thai politics. Some Thais believe that elements of the military loyal to the pro-Thaksin Shinawatra “red shirts” want to remove the current, anti-Thaksin government. Others think that the current Bangkok government, led by the Democrat Party, eventually will have to call an election and will lose to Puea Thai, the pro-Thaksin party; the military would then step in and prevent Puea Thai from controlling Parliament. Either way, a coup would be a disaster. Last time, in 2006, the military demonstrated that it could not manage Thailand’s sophisticated economy and complex civil society, spooking foreign and domestic investors. A coup now also would prove a critical test for Washington. Last time, the United States, which had no love for Thaksin, essentially condoned the coup, and did not cancel the Cobra Gold joint military exercises. The thinking was that the government that replaced Thaksin eventually would be more progressive and pro-U.S.; and, that an ally like Thailand, which has been helpful to the war on terror, was not worth alienating, especially when doing so might push Bangkok closer to Beijing. That was a mistake. By choosing sides against the will of the majority of Thais, the United States potentially alienated large portions of the country. And, while Thaksin was a badly flawed leader, the current government has hardly shown itself to be more progressive; Human Rights Watch’s annual report denouncing its widespread abuses. The government also has not been able to use its time with Thaksin out of the country to win over more poor, rural voters, the key to elections. And while a harsher line toward Bangkok might indeed push the Thai government closer to China, Beijing still cannot provide much of what Bangkok needs, like sophisticated military-military cooperation and training. No, in 2010 sanctioning a coup can no longer be an option.

In the rush to save as many of the injured from the Haiti earthquake and to provide basic social services in Port-au-Prince, there has been less focus on how to prevent the tragedy’s aftermath from being exploited. But as the 2004 Asian tsunami showed, Haitians and foreign donors will need to move quickly to ensure that areas of Haiti damaged by the earthquake are not quickly snapped up by speculators, forcing people from ever returning to their homes. When the 2004 tsunami hit, I was in the south of Thailand. After early confusion over the scope of the damage, we quickly realized that a catastrophe had occurred, and when I went to the island of Phuket, much of the construction along the coastline had been decimated. People were in shock. But it wasn’t long before developers began to take over much of the damaged land – in Thailand, as in most other developing nations, land rights are hard to document. Developers who allegedly wanted to secure land along the beautiful coastline, to build new resorts, either sent goons to forcibly take over land or tried to quickly buy out survivors returning to their homes. Without formal land titles, many tsunami survivors – in Thailand, and in Sri Lanka – had little recourse but to turn to the local police or courts – which, in many of these areas, had close ties to the same powerful local businesspeople trying to grab land. When I traveled through southern Thailand a few months after the tsunami, I met one angry resident after the next, claiming they had lost their lands and had to move to Bangkok to look for work. Worse, the rapid redevelopment of areas like Phuket set the stage for worse damage in the event of another tidal wave, since unchecked coastline development was destroying the local ecosystem – primarily, mangrove forests – that served as a natural barrier against the sea. This kind of large-scale land-grabbing could easily repeat itself in Haiti, where land rights barely exist. (Even if they did, many people have lost all their documents in the earthquake.) One potential solution would be to institute a short-term freeze on any land transfers in Port-au-Prince, so no one can buy up or steal survivors’ properties. This will provide some breathing space so that, in the longer-term, the Haitian government can develop a system to adjudicate survivors’ land claims – and possibly develop a more effective formal system of land titles.