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Thai alert
No right-minded person can support the military overthrow of a civilian leader. But the net losers will be the Thai people and its economy. The coup will not easily heal the divided polity.
It is a measure of the division that has emerged in the Thai polity that many in Bangkok welcomed the military coup that appears to have toppled the elected government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Given the decline of dictatorship around the world, people had come to believe that military coups d’etat had gone out of style. In fact, though this is the first coup in Thailand in 15 years, they are part of the political DNA of the country we associate with beaches and smiles. Ever since absolute monarchy ended in 1932 after a bloodless coup d’etat engineered by a group of civil servants and army officers with the support of army units in the Bangkok area, Thailand has lived with a series of strongmen, of whom only some went through the tedium of democratic elections. But this is the first military takeover since 1991, when General Suchinda Kraprayoon toppled a civilian government but was himself ousted by street demonstrations the following year.
Mr Shinawatra’s uniqueness was not in just his business prowess — he was one of the richest men in the country — but the fact that his Thai Rak Thai party founded in 1998 was the first party in Thailand’s democratic history to win a mandate by itself. But his problem is that while his base among the peasantry and the working class lies in the countryside, it is the ‘crowd’ in Bangkok — like Paris in another era — that often decides Thailand’s political fortunes. It was they who compelled him to dissolve Parliament earlier this year, protesting against a tax-free $ 1.9 billion sale of his family telecom business to a Singapore company. After a short break, Mr Shinawatra resumed office as interim Prime Minister with the promise of holding elections later this year. Given his strong support base, it was almost certain that he would have returned to power, if he chose to contest.
No right-minded person can support the military overthrow of a civilian leader. But the coup had, in a sense, taken place earlier when street demonstrations had made Mr Shinawatra’s prime ministership untenable. The net losers will be the Thai people and its economy. The coup will not easily heal the divided polity. But these are matters that the Thai people need to sort out for themselves. Neighbours and well-wishers like India can only wish them well.
