Political Turmoil in Thailand
The conventions of inverted pyramid journalism mean that things like a story about increasingly high-tension clashes between protesters and police in Thailand wind up sort of burying the issue of what the dispute is about. One hesitates a bit to try to summarize the situation, since anything I do will strike a Thai person or a real specialist as overly simplistic, but I think it’s useful for people to have a summary at their disposal.
The key figure in the dispute is Thaksin Shinawatra, who became Prime Minister in February 2001. Thaksin was a populist leader with a rural economic base, who pursued policies designed to appeal to that downscale constituency who felt that Thailand’s growing prosperity had not been broadly shared. This naturally antagonized the Bangkok-centered elite which, significantly, included not only wealthy businessmen but a broader swathe of the urbanized middle classes and also important elements of the state apparatus including the security services. All this opposition led to a 2006 coup, which ended with Thaksin fleeing the country to avoid corruption charges. The coup installed in office a former general named Surayud Chulanont, who ruled until late January 2008. Upon the restoration of democracy, Thaksin’s party came back into power.
Soon enough, however, this new government was also brought down. Not, this time, through a coup. But not entirely through constitutional measures, either. Instead, a series of protests led by anti-Thaksin “yellow shirts” essentially made the country ungovernable which set the stage for parliamentary moves that brought Thaksin’s supporters down. The latest round of protests is led by pro-Thaksin “red shirts” who are trying to bring the yellow shirt faction down.
The whole thing illustrates, I think, the fact that “democracy” is a somewhat problematic concept. Peaceful demonstrations are, of course, an integral part of a democratic process. And so is popular pressure forcing political change. But at the same time, elections and adherence to constitutional methods are also integral to the idea of a democratic process. When you have so much power in the hands of street demonstrations, then you seem to have slipped off the democratic path in some key ways. But at the same time, draconian crackdowns on demonstrators are hardly the hallmark of democracy, either. Democracy as we understand it simply assumes a baseline level of public consensus such that opposition party leaders won’t seriously try to challenge the legitimacy of election winners. When that consensus doesn’t exist, things start getting very fuzzy. You can see some of this on display in Georgia, where yesterday’s hero of democracy is now facing a mass protest opposition movement of his own.
38 Responses to “Political Turmoil in Thailand”
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April 13th, 2009 at 11:07 am
These protests aren’t genuinely about anything. They’re Thai Teabagging.
April 13th, 2009 at 11:09 am
The NYT headline says it all:
Clashes Over Protests Are Intensifying in Thai Capital
The clashes, it seems, are about the protests. The protests, one surmises, are about the clashes. Got it?
April 13th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Thaksin had some significant problems. He was, first off, of Chinese ancestry, and in a country like Thailand that means he will have to undergo some prejudice. And also there were (legitimate) suspicions that he was trying to establish some sort of a diarchy, with his own power base and patronage network independent of the Crown.
I do think the yellow-shirt faction has tried the best it could to govern as reasonably as possible. The current PM, although also being Thai-Chinese, is from Eton & St. John’s, Oxford, while the current finance minister was at Winchester and also St. John’s Oxford. I think they can reasonably show some degree of dignity impossible otherwise.
April 13th, 2009 at 11:31 am
“The whole thing illustrates, I think, the fact that “democracy” is a somewhat problematic concept.”
I don’t understand why interventionist doves are so skeptical of democracy. Is it because Bush made it a naughty word?
Even though there are protests and clashes at least there aren’t assassinations, like in Lebanon, where Syria assassinates anti-Syrian politicians and Israel assassinates Hamas figures.
Democracy didn’t arise in the US until 1824-1840, 169 years ago, and even then women and blacks couldn’t vote. You have to take the long view.
April 13th, 2009 at 11:36 am
I won’t pretend to know the first thing about Thai politics, but you make a good point when you say that Democratic rule depends on an unspoken agreement to abide by the rule of law. I think this is widely missed, and the reason for the continued failure of many of our foreign nation building projects.
It is this exact issue that makes the last administration’s actions so problematic – the foundation of our civil society rests on the belief that no man is immune from the law, and that is now an open question (it has always been hard to implement in practice, but at least everyone paid lipservice to it).
This is why, for me, Obama’s recent turn to support immunity for some presidential actions is so troublesome, and far outweighs any benefits universal health care or better foreign relations might have.
April 13th, 2009 at 11:37 am
The use of the word ‘downscale’ to refer to poor people is a grating example of the spread of marketing jargon into politics. Unfortunately it’s more and more common.
April 13th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Shinawatra was a terrible owner at Man City, too…
April 13th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Peter K.,
Re: You have to take the long view.
Of course. The ‘democratizers’ always say this. Because it couldn’t possibly be that ‘democracy’ itself is simply a bad idea, or at the very least glaringly inappropriate for some regions of the world.
Yglesias, as much of a cosmopolitan fool as he often is, has a point here, and his skepticism about ‘democracy’ is very well founded. Now I await his realization that liberal democracy is deeply flawed not just in practice but also in its theoretical basis.
April 13th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Really, the whole thing is a cover for a struggle between monarchists and (small-r) republicans. Weirdly, unlike in most European countries, the monarchists are the urban middle class and the republicans are the rural poor.
April 13th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Now I await his realization that liberal democracy is deeply flawed not just in practice but also in its theoretical basis.
What we really need is christian autocracy! After all, that has proven to be without practical or theoretical flaws in the past! Hector, you’re a genius!
April 13th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
I think Hector is more of a Christianist-Leninist. Think of the Soviet Union before or after Stalin, and replace communism with Christianity. That’s what Hector wants.
April 13th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Hector is a troll.
April 13th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
“Thaksin had some significant problems. He was, first off, of Chinese ancestry, and in a country like Thailand that means he will have to undergo some prejudice.”
I don’t think that was an issue. The Chinese are 15% of the people, but they control 50% of the economy. The Chinese essentially form the backbone of the Bangkok Elite and are resented in rural areas, not the cities. If anything, Thaksin’s Chinese heritage would hurt him with his own constituency, not the Yellow Shirts. And that’s what’s weird about Thaksin: he was Bangkok’s chief of police, the owner of Thailand’s largest telecom firm, and Thailand’s richest man. He’s not the stuff that rural populists are usually made of. I think the key was that he was in the Police, which has constant conflicts with the Army (often over their competing drug-running operations). So if the Army favors the urban royalists, he has no choice but to side with the rural populists.
It’s impossible to boil Thai politics to a few issues, but here’s two anyway. First, the Bangkok Elite wanted to speed up the realignment towards China, and they thought he was dragging his feet. The Red Shirts, of course, thought he was moving too fast, but he was still the lesser of two evils. And he could win them over with water rights issues, agricultural loans, and the Thirty Bhat health care plan. Second, Thaksin was really corrupt. Corruption is the norm in Thailand and arguably necessary to keep Thailand functioning. But he took it to a level that made even the Thai blush. And his corruption didn’t give the Bangkok Elite their proper cut. In the end, not giving the proper cut is probably what brought him down.
April 13th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
“or at the very least glaringly inappropriate for some regions of the world.”
Hector has a good point here. I’d have disagreed with him a decade ago. But six trips to Thailand have made me somewhat jaded about democracy. Thailand’s democracy never really got going, and coups are the normal way of transferring power. The only reason they haven’t had serious civil wars is that His Majesty always steps in and forces a peaceful solution. But the King is nearing death, and his successor (son) is a drug addict with AIDS. It’s hard to imagine how the son can fill his father’s very large shoes. He just isn’t loved the way his father is. Without the current King, civil war along a rural/Police vs urban/Army split may be in Thailand’s future. But who knows? That may ultimately pave the way for democracy to take hold. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. Perhaps a Russian-style, Mafia-based system is the most appropriate for Thailand.
April 13th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
So that’s what the Tea Parties are about. In order to protect the U S of A from turning into the dreaded France (or into Stalinist Russia or Hitler’s Germany, which are plainly exactly the same thing as each other and the same thing as France) – the idea is to turn us into Thailand. Mass gatherings of tirelessly raging dittoheads and Dobbsians, rendering the country ungovernable until it is placed back into the reliable hands of the royalty, symbolized here as in Bangkok by its sacred elephants.
April 13th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
The difficult part of democracy is to compromise. To be able to do that one needs a decent and incorruptible elite that can be trusted by most of the people.
April 13th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Good point, Mr Sterk. The problem in Thailand is that they have a ruthless and totally corrupt elite that nobody trusts. And their idea of compromise is to buy people off. Not exactly fertile ground for democracy.
April 13th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
merits mentioning that the corruption charges that took down thaksin were entirely legit.
i was bumming around thailand around the time when the first protests were breaking out in earnest (early 2006).
April 13th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Hector has a good point here. I’d have disagreed with him a decade ago. But six trips to Thailand have made me somewhat jaded about democracy. Thailand’s democracy never really got going, and coups are the normal way of transferring power. The only reason they haven’t had serious civil wars is that His Majesty always steps in and forces a peaceful solution.
No Hector does not have a good point. He never does. Democracy is the least bad option, all others are worse. Sure you have an enlightened monarch now, but the next one could be a tyrant.
The US still has loads of corruption, Blagojevitch, Jack Abramoff, etc. Interestingly the European social democracy of Sweden has virtually no corruption.
The problem with tyrannies is they won’t go quietly or easily. China’s exports have dropped 40% and if things don’t turn around the Chinese Communist Party will experience some mahem – since there’s no way to affect change via the ballot box – that will make Thailand’s look like a picnic.
April 13th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Sure you have an enlightened monarch now, but the next one could be a tyrant.
True, but if you stick to democracy, you get tyrannous electorates a lot more often than enlightened.
April 13th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Well, with universal suffrage, at least.
April 13th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
It’s hard to imagine how the son can fill his father’s very large shoes.
Careful now. With Hector involved in this thread this kind of talk might well end in a 3000 word dissertation on the opinions of a goat herding monk whose opinions were scraped off the leather pages to make room for equally stupid ideas 1200 years ago.
April 13th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
True, but if you stick to democracy, you get tyrannous electorates a lot more often than enlightened.
More often than not dictatorships are harder on their citizens and their neighbors. It’s a historical fact.
People who say otherwise are just trying to be contrarian and different but it’s a lie.
April 13th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Doesn’t the king himself have Chinese ancestry? Or perhaps that’s just a rumor I heard from a treasonous, red-shirted hooligan. I wouldn’t want Matt’s blog to be blocked to Thai audiences, after all.
April 13th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
“Doesn’t the king himself have Chinese ancestry?”
He’s half-Chinese. Historically, the Chinese have controlled commerce in Thailand. To maintain power, Thai kings had to marry into the powerful Chinese families. Perhaps that’s the origin of his strange name. By strange, I mean not really Thai
“Sure you have an enlightened monarch now, but the next one could be a tyrant.”
Not really. The next king will surely be incompetent, but he can’t really be a tyrant. The King has little authority in Thailand, he’s really more of a figurehead. The only real power is the power of suggestion. But that power requires people to respect the King and choose to carry out his wishes. With the current King, that power is not in question. The Thai respect and love him dearly, so they do what he wants. The successor does not have such respect and the Thai will probably not listen to him. The last time I was in Thailand, I noticed that fewer people were smoking cigarettes. I asked an ex-pat about it, and he said: “Oh yeah, the King suggested that people stop smoking, so many people quit.” The current King is granted that kind of respect. The next one will not be granted that respect.
April 13th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
What’s weird to me about these Thai protests is that there don’t seem to be strong ideologies involved. In early 20th century continental Europe (or in late 20th century Latin America), such a class conflict would mean the working class adopting socialism and the upper class adopting fascism – I suppose it can still happen.
Yeah, the king had a Chinese grandfather. I understand that Chinese ancestry is very common in Thailand, especially among the wealthier. Unlike in Indonesia or Malaysia, there’s no religion barrier, so intermarriage and assimilation are pretty common.
The real WTF comment on this thread is not Hector’s but Myles’ regarding the fitness of Thailand’s new rulers based on their educational accreditation. Though I suppose it’s better than Jesuit Communism.
April 13th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Danny,
The only reason my comment wasn’t WTF is because my deep hostility towards liberal democracy is already well known on this blog. As, I might add, is Myles’ fondness for English preparatory schools. My ideal society is neither Jesuit nor Communist, but I suppose “Jesuit Communism” is a decent dumbing-down for historically illiterate American hipsters. Apropos of which, you may want to consult the history of the Jesuit reductions of Paraguay. Paraguay, btw, is a good example of a society where historically the only decent governments have been fiercely authoritarian, which is probably why most Paraguayans in surveys today think authoritarianism is better than ‘democracy.’
There is little reason to think that elections are a particularly good way of choosing leaders, or that people know what is good for them, or that freedom is the highest good. On the contrary, these are deeply pernicious errors.
April 13th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Here’s where I break with Hector. Hector is truly hostile to democracy. I think of democracy as the least-bad option in almost every case. But I have noticed that democracy just doesn’t seem to work in some countries. Thailand happens to be one of them, so Hector and I are in agreement here. I’m not sure why Thailand is one of the exceptions, Thai politics is just way too complex for me to come up with a good reason. But their history with democracy speaks for itself. But what’s interesting is that, as dysfunctional as Thai governments have been, Thailand has mostly avoided serious violence and has progressed well on every developmental aspect. They are doing a lot better than India, for instance.
April 13th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Just to make clear, while I’m not particularly fond of liberal democracy _in principle_, it works okay in practice for some countries. In the United States, at least, most people seem to be reasonably happy with it; I think they’re wrong, but certainly we could be in a worse situation, and I don’t argue that we should change it and move immediately to an agrarian Christian-socialist utopia. In many countries around the world, however, it is a singularly bad system which accomplishes nothing but to entrench oligarchies and decadent elites.
April 13th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
“agrarian Christian-socialist utopia”
Yikes! That sounds like a combination of the Khmer Rouge and the Spanish Inquisition. I’ll pass on that, thank you.
April 13th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Thaksin is, to rounding error, Thailand’s Berlusconi; corrupt, owns the TV stations, democratically elected, in trouble with the courts unless he gets to pass some laws to exempt himself. The rest of the context is different, but you still can’t take any position on whether Thaksin should be allowed to be PM that doesn’t also apply to Berlusconi; if you’re a yellow shirt, then Berlusconi should be removed.
April 13th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
such a class conflict would mean the working class adopting socialism and the upper class adopting fascism – I suppose it can still happen.
You could argue that they are, just rather mild forms of them. The yellow shirts are definitely (more) pro-monarchist and nominally were pro-junta. The red shirts are in favor of policy proposals normally classified on the left side of the political spectrum.
fostert has summarized the situation excellently in the above posts. The current king is far more loved than Queen Elizabeth II and the disdain for his son is far more than that for Charles. Although there’s a possibility this may change on the acession to the throne – which, like Charles, everyone is kinda (pleasantly) surprised hasn’t happened by now. And everyone IIRC loves the son’s wife who unlike Charles’s first wife, has the political bennefit of being alive.
April 13th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Yeah, the king had a Chinese grandfather. I understand that Chinese ancestry is very common in Thailand, especially among the wealthier.
Aside from the central basin, Thailand’s largely a collection of rivers and mountain passes located between two seas, a few trade routes, and the traditional imperial power of Asia, so it’s always played host to a lot of foreigners, either merchants passing through or armies securing access. This is part of why both prostitution and “destination” shrines are so prominent – that’s how you extract money from a transient population. It also inculcates a good deal of cosmopolitanism at the elite levels of society, analogous to premodern Baghdad.
April 13th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
“Thaksin is, to rounding error, Thailand’s Berlusconi; corrupt, owns the TV stations, democratically elected, in trouble with the courts unless he gets to pass some laws to exempt himself.”
That’s mostly correct, but I’m not so sure about that “democratically elected” part. Elections aren’t exactly free and fair in Thailand, especially in the rural areas that supported Thaksin. Let’s put it this way: The night before an election is called the “night of barking dogs.” The term comes from the hordes of party officials that go through the villages, triggering the barking of dogs. But this is no ordinary “get out the vote” drive. The officials bribe voters into voting for their candidate. And the bribes are substantial, often four months’ wages for a farmer. In theory, a farmer could take the bribe and vote the other way, but ballots aren’t really that secret. Election officials are easily bribed and party officials know who voted for whom. If you are a farmer and didn’t keep your promise, plan on your loans getting called in and losing your farm. This practice was recently banned, but enforcement is easily contradicted by bribes (as is always the case in Thailand). In rural areas, the candidate who offers the most bribes usually wins. And Thaksin is Thailand’s richest man, so who do you think can offer the most bribes? I’ll let the reader decide whether this system is really democracy.
April 14th, 2009 at 12:45 am
When the BBC reported on the yellow-shirt protests, it made the point that they were essentially “anti-democracy protestors”, in that they wanted to tighten the franchise and strengthen the authority of the king and the old ruling interests against the rural populists. The American media didn’t really mention that much, if they mentioned Thailand at all.
That doesn’t make Thaksin any kind of hero, given that he’s astonishingly corrupt, but it does illustrate how messy Thai politics is. The comparison with Berlusconi is somewhat skewed, given the north/south, urban/rural divide in Italian politics. You could make a similarly imperfect analogy to Hugo Chavez, but that better-matching political and ethnic division doesn’t quite fit the two demagogues themselves.
Much respect for fostert’s comments. It’s a long while since I was in Thailand (several coups ago) but I still remember how pictures of the king were proudly displayed all over the place.
April 14th, 2009 at 7:55 am
Re: You could make a similarly imperfect analogy to Hugo Chavez, but that better-matching political and ethnic division doesn’t quite fit the two demagogues themselves.
Chávez is, like him or hate him, considerably more ideologically coherent than either Thaksin or Berlusconi. He’s less a garden variety “populist” and more in the tradition of 20th century Latin American socialism, makes a lot of somewhat sophisticated ideological arguments and has a definite vision of what his ideal society would be. This isn’t really the case for the other two- they want to alter society at the margins a bit, but not to carry out a sweeping transformation that will fundamentally change the economy, culture, and value system of the nation. As cynical as you may be about revolution, that is what Chávez wants to achieve, and he’s been fairly honest about it in the last few years.
Also, Chávez sees himself as a man of the army and as a revolutionary in the Latin American tradition more than as a garden variety elected president, so I don’t think either Berlusconi or Thaksin is a great comparison.
April 14th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
“I still remember how pictures of the king were proudly displayed all over the place”
You can rest assured that the pictures of the King are still everywhere in Thailand. The image of his face is now permanently etched in my mind. The Thai restaurant near me has a great picture of His Majesty with a famous American. When I first saw it, I thought “who’s that guy next to the King of Thailand? He looks familiar.” Then I looked more closely and realized it was Elvis Presley. I was surprised at that, but I shouldn’t be. I have seen more pictures of King of Thailand than I have of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
April 14th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
I get the sense that both factions in Thailand are in that awkward phase where they don’t know what they want but they know they don’t have it yet and they blame the other side. And so they take out their anger on each other but no matter who’s in power, they don’t get what they want.
At any rate, for those interested in the ongoing protests, I came across a video that states the case for both sides in what (I think) is a fairly objective way: http://www.newsy.com/videos/never_ending_protests_in_thailand/.