Prachatai has a longer report on the court’s decision to send Akechai Hongkangwarn to jail for lese majeste.
Akechai was sentenced to five years in prison (reduced for “cooperation”) and a fine of 100,000 baht for selling documentary CDs of an Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary program on the monarchy and for having copies of Wikileaks documents that the court deemed were defaming to the queen and the crown prince.
Details of the “Foreign Correspondent” documentary and a link to the now well-known birthday party video are here. The Wikileaks cables are from 2008, indicating “the Queen supported the 2006 coup” and from 2010 about “opinions about royal succession from Privy Council Chair Gen Prem Tinsulanonda, Privy Council member ACM Siddhi Savetsila, and former Prime Minister Anand Panyarachun.” These can be found here, here and here. The court essentially refused to allow any of these big shots to be called to give evidence.
The report states that the judges “deemed the content of the materials misleading and defamatory for the monarchy.” It is a royalist fabrication that the materials are misleading. In fact, they use material directly from the palace and from the mouths of royalist flunkies to paint an accurate picture of the monarchy. That these insider accounts may be defamatory says more about the palace than of anything else.
But the propaganda-defending courts noted that:
The country’s constitution and criminal code stipulated that His Majesty the King is the head of state and highly revered. No one shall violate or use rights and liberties for any adverse effects. The state and its people have duties to uphold the monarchy system forever…. Any defaming speech causing irritation to … His Majesty shall not be acceptable,” the judge read out the verdict.
As usual, the royalist courts manipulate the constitution’s words in order to lock up someone considered guilty of telling the truth. Akechai is reported as being “upset by the court’s decision as his intention was merely to spread neutral and objective information produced by foreign media outlet to the public.” The court’s ruling is a reminder that truth shall not be spoken.
Sulak Sivaraksa commented that “the punishment for lese majeste is too severe. The monarchy should also be for open for criticism as it is important for democracy…”.
Continuing our Groundhog Day royalist political strategy, we turn to the judiciary. As we noted in our post on Anand Panyarachun and the “policy corruption/this government is the worst ever” hocus pocus, PPT has posted on the op-ed coaching manual by Voranai Vanijaka pointed out, where he pointed out that the weapons that can be used against the elected government are tanks, streets and judges, and the the use of the mainstream media, conveniently, the president of the Constitutional Court has come out barking.
It is as if we are making this up at PPT, but it is the royalists, seemingly stunned by the quick crash and burn of Pitak Siam that has quickly turned to the other tools in its kit of anti-elected government workshop. Immediately after that event we noted the judiciary stepping up, but the story on Kangaroo Constitutional Court president at the Bangkok Post is simply remarkable.
Like Anand, Wasan Soypisudh believes the country has no future. Wasan’s elitist position is that “Thai people mostly don’t understand their own duties, don’t respect other people’s opinions. Democracy must be engaged with rational discussion, not the dictatorship of the majority…”.
Essentially, this rather dull man thinks he, as a member of the judiciary that is meant to oversee the constitution – including the current military junta instituted one – is failing to comprehend its provisions. He reckons that Thais are pretty darn stupid and don’t think about democracy. It seems he fails to understand what has been happening for the past several years and the determination of people to make their votes count, even when defeated by royalists, judiciary and military.
Actually, it seems that it is Wasant who is pretty darn stupid, for he claims to be traveling around the country asking average people pretty darn stupid questions. The report lists several questions Wasan claims to have asked people in the Northeast. Most questions apparently caused people to be stumped or confused. That’s because most of the questions simply make no sense.
Yet Wasan interprets these responses as evidence of “the ignorance of some Thai people about democracy, the rule of law and justice.” In fact, it is Wasan who is confused, He thinks people “mistakenly believe that if they win a general election and command the majority of seats in parliament, then they can do absolutely anything they please.” This is bizarre when it is Wasan and his unelected ilk who actually believe they can do whatever they want. For example Wasan’s court has ignored the constitution to do whatever it wants.
And we’ll simply ignore Wasan’s complete ignorance of international experience.
Unsurprisingly, Wasan took aim at “populist policies which people can become addicted to and which require a huge budget year after year, eventually leading to overwhelming public debt and causing the country to go bankrupt.” Anand was probably listening, although even he may have gagged at Wasan’s collapse of the Eurozone crisis with populism and government employment.
His final point expresses his elitist hatred of politicians: “This parliament is full of so many political animals swearing at each other.” But the saviors are judges, just like Wasan: “The difference between politicians and judges is that we hold judges to higher moral and ethical standards.”
What he means is that the Constitutional Court is biased, corrupt and the royalist’s political tool. PPT has posted a lot on this, so we won’t link to them all. Instead, interested readers can follow this tag.
The royalists seem to be like leopards, and completely unable to change their spots as far as their Groundhog Day political strategy is concerned. As the op-ed coaching manual at the Bangkok Post a week or so ago by Voranai Vanijaka pointed out, there are tanks, streets and judges that can all be used to bring down an elected government, sometimes in coordinated action. What he left out were the use of the mainstream media and having so-called liberal royalists shouting about the country being ruined.
PPT recently posted on how the media concoct stories in order to make the government seem immensely corrupt, pandering to notions of “policy corruption” that were spread in the past. Now, as a reader points out, the most eminent “liberal royalist” has again jumped on this corruption bandwagon, shouting of imminent doom at the hands of corrupt politicians.
Former unelected and military selected prime minister Anand Panyarachun is one of the old men who believe they should be running the country because they hate elections and have long promoted the fiction that only elected politicians, as grubby populists, are corrupt and ruining the country. Of course, all of their patrician friends in palace, military and business are, by their definition, squeaky clean.
Anand
Anand is back in the anti-Thaksin Shinawatra saddle. Back when the People’s Alliance for Democracy were on the streets and when the military were engaged in plotting with the palace to illegally overthrow the elected government in 2006, Anand was an anti-politician, anti-populist, anti-Thaksin ideologue.
Anand’s role back then is usefully summarized in a Wikileaks cable where coup supporter and then U.S. Ambassador Ralph Boyce stated that coup supporter Anand was considered “Thailand’s most distinguished elder statesmen.” He also notes that “Anand made waves in August [2006] when he publicly denounced Thailand’s course under Thaksin.” That was just before the coup. Immediately after the coup, Anand supported it by repeating unfounded rumors, forgetting that he himself was never elected he claimed that “Thaksin’s administration had already become undemocratic,” and added:
Thaksin had controlled the media, suppressed the free flow of information, and manipulated an uninformed electorate. He had corrupted the judiciary, to the point that court cases against him could not proceed. He had sabotaged the Constitution, manipulating political institutions that were supposed to be independent, destroying the system of checks and balances set up by the 1997 Constitution. Thaksin’s administration lacked accountability and transparency. In this environment, elections by themselves hardly ensured democracy. Thaksin blocked off all avenues for political change, leaving his opponents no option other than a coup.
It was really Thaksin who was responsible for the coup! There’s even more in the cable worth reading, such as Anand criticizing the 1997 constitution (which was partly his own work) and arguing for a less democratic form of government.
This is all a long background to the most recent work of this patrician ideologue for the royalist elite. At PhuketWan, Anand fumes: ”This government is taking the country to hell. ” Yet another elected government with a substantial popular mandate is attacked by a man never elected to any public office. He claims that there is “hardly an area of society where the effect of corruption is not being felt.” This is not an accident, he asserts, for “[c]orruption was growing more organised and networks of greed were spreading through every aspect of Thai society…”. Anand says: ”It shouldn’t be like this, but the power of money is now the ultimate authority.” He says corruption is worse than it has ever been under this government which is “taking the country to hell.”
We assume that one old man’s feelings – well, more than one, we are sure – about this government amounts to yet another call for his buddies in the military brass to warm up their tanks.
Update: On the alleged corruption of the current regime, which seems to be partly driven by the new Transparency International rankings, and which Anand should know about, being a card carrying member of TI, almost all mainstream newspapers have now reported that Thailand’s ranking has dropped and so looks worse than the year before. So the current government is harangued as “more corrupt” than the previous one. The problem is, as pointed out days ago by Bangkok Pundit, that no such comparison is even possible. Here is the screenshot from what TI states, very clearly:
Did any editor, sub-editor or reporter even look at the word “cannot”? Yet when political bias is the aim, most in the media don’t let facts get in the way. And nor do the old men of the royalist elite.
Several days ago PPT promised to look at the Truth for Reconciliation Commission report on the monarchy. We now have the time to do that. In this post we look at its recommendations on the monarchy and on lese majeste.
On the “The Monarchy under the Constitution,” the TRC has three recommendations:
Urgent: All parties stop referring to the Monarchy for the purpose of obtaining political benefit and venerate the institution as being above political wrangling.
Mid-Term: The political sector should establish a method for ensuring that the Monarchy is held above political conflict. Such method should be in accordance with the development of our system of democracy.
Long-Term: The state should support learning and understanding about the Monarchy and the role of the Monarchy in the democratic system. Also, promote creative and peaceful forums for the exchange of opinions.
PPT comments: The TRC adopts a perspective that sees the monarchy as approximating the claims made for it over the period of this reign in the periods where there has been a constitution and the elite decision to develop a political system that describes itself as “a democratic regime of government with the King as Head of State.” This may seem innocuous, but the terminology is deeply embedded in several constitutions and notably, as we have seen in recent months, in Section 68 of the 2007 constitution, which states:
No person shall exercise the rights and liberties prescribed in the Constitution to overthrow the democratic regime of government with the King as Head of State under this Constitution or to acquire the power to rule the country by any means which is not in accordance with the modes provided in this Constitution.
In other words, it is illegal and unconstitutional to oppose the current political regime which demands the monarchy be in place. There is no alternative. The TRC is unlikely to challenge such a stipulation, so this is the conservative starting point. Interestingly, however, the TRC implicitly acknowledges the challenge to the monarchy following its very public involvement in the 2006 coup and all the political conflict that followed. In response, it demands that the monarchy be “venerated.” In other words, it is time to reconstruct the myths associated with the monarchy and politics. This is further emphasized in the recommendation that the “state should support learning and understanding about the Monarchy and the role of the Monarchy in the democratic system.” In other words, government of whatever party or group has to work to re-establish the monarchy’s mythic position. Part of that, it seem, is creating a space where people can discus the monarchy without being charged and jailed as republicans under the lese majeste law.
On the lese majeste law, the recommendations are set out in the same manner:
Urgent: The agencies of the justice [system] should avoid enforcing the lèse majesté law by using broader interpretation than the law itself stipulates. Further, that they do not use criminal prosecution in an overly strict way with lack of direction, and not taking into account the sensitive nature of these cases. The state should promote the use of discretion by agencies in the justice system involved in the proceedings of lèse majesté in a way appropriate to the nature of the offence.
Mid-Term: The state should arrange for the process of public participation that allows a variety of opinions to find the appropriate way to the amendment of lèse majesté law.
Long-Term: The state should amend the current lese majeste laws by first studying the criminal policies of other countries that have the monarchy so as to find the appropriate approach to the amendment. The state proceeds for the integration of work of the agencies that enforce the lèse majesté law so that they can categorize and screen relevant cases to proceed.
PPT comments: The TRC implicitly acknowledges that the lese majeste law has been used for political purposes; no big news there. It calls for both less strict enforcement (which was the norm prior to the coup) and attention to the sensitive nature of the charge. In fact, the “sensitivity” of the law and monarchy is one of the reasons those charged are seldom given bail and with remarkable pressure to plead guilty so that no evidence is ever discussed in court. The suggestion that the law be amended based on experience in other countries really doesn’t move the debate anywhere, as the problem is the very existence of the law that restricts free speech and thinking. There is no serious consideration of abolishing the law.
In the end, the TRC presents a kind of “thinking royalist” – if that is not an oxymoron – approach. Amend the law, keep the law and ensure that it remains available for the protection of the monarchy and the system of government that maintains the monarchy. There’s nothing particularly new in anything the TRC says, with the older generation of royalists like Anand Panyarachun, Prawase Wasi and others have made in the past.
It is six years since the yellow-tagged military rolled its tanks into Bangkok’s streets to oust Thaksin Shinawatra and his Thai Rak Thai Party government. Thaksin had many faults and made many mistakes. Paramount amongst them was his development as a popular leader – in February 2005 his party had won the biggest ever landslide in Thailand’s electoral history – and the threat this apparently posed to Thailand’s royalist elite.
Behind government administrations lurked the real power holders in the military brass, the palace and the upper echelons of the bureaucracy who together comprised the royalist state. Thaksin’s reliance on votes and the fact that he accumulated them as never before was an existential threat to the powers that be. Their final response after destabilizing the elected government was to get the military to chuck it out.
Six years later, with Thaksin’s youngest sister in the prime minister’s chair, the political struggle continues. PPT felt that our best way of observing the anniversary of the military-palace power grab is to re-link to the Wikileaks cables that reflect most directly on that coup. Here they are:
There are more cables on the figures circling around the coup and the events immediately before and after the coup, giving a pretty good picture of how the royalist elite behaved and what they wanted the embassy to know.
As regular readers well know, PPT has little time with academic-for-hire Panitan Wattanayagorn. In this Wikileaks cable dated 6 January 2006and referring to a meeting on 28 December 2005, the U.S. Embassy details discussions with Panitan on events in the south under the Thaksin Shinawatra administration.
Panitan and army buddy working on a “story.”
The cable introduces Panitan as “a well-regarded academic.” We are not sure who held Panitan in high regard at this time. For a start, his academic work was (and is) thin, so he has little of the usual credibility that comes with being an academic. Perhaps it was only in “the military and the palace,” with whom the cable says Panitan has “close ties to.”
The cable states that a coterie of political counselors and political officers from the Embassy met with Chulalongkorn University’s Panitan “to discuss the South.”
Panitan, who is described as “a longtime Embassy contact” is also said to be an “adviser to both the military and the palace.” Moreover, he is introduced as having landed a “a visiting fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies in Washington,” usually reserved for those considered somehow “influential” in Thailand and/or with whom the U.S. government wants to curry favor.
Panitan began by criticizing the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) set up by Thaksin Shinawatra and chaired by Anand Panyarachun. He reckoned that “its members remain overly fixated on a ‘utopian’ solution, and need to develop alternatives grounded in the ‘reality’ of the South.”
Of the Thaksin government, it was said to be “bedeviled by overly intense and erratic attention from the leadership in Bangkok. Efforts by the PM and his top advisers to micro-manage government operations in the South lead to new, big overarching plans to solve the violence but there is rarely any follow-through.” The problem seemed to be not with the government, although it was undoubtedly “erratic,” but with the fact that Panitan’s buddies in the military didn’t trust the government.
Of course, Panitan big-noted the then military boss (and future coup leader General Sonthi Boonyaratglin for political acumen. That’s not something usually associated with the rather dull-witted Sonthi.
Much of the strategic and tactical stuff that Panitan advocates is all water under the bridge now, but it is interesting to see a junior “academic” being so knowledgeable (or at least claiming to be) about military operations. One point he makes is revealing:
Panitan believes that the military also needs to undertake more aggressive jungle operations against the separatists, but such operations require more trust between officers and enlisted personnel. Many junior officers do not have the experience yet to inspire their men to take the needed tactical risks.
Panitan also commented on the “suspicion and lack of trust between the army and police on the ground.” Interestingly, while many had criticized Thaksin’s decision to “give the police the lead role in the South,” he “admitted that local police are more effective than sometimes given credit for…”.
The Embassy’s final comment is that “Panitan is one of our most thoughtful and well-connected interlocutors on the South. That said, his influence lies with the army and palace–two institutions which do not always see eye-to-eye with Thaksin’s southern policy.” The links between Panitan and the U.S. Embassy deserve more scrutiny.
In the case of Ah Kong, all sides in Thai society have shown a lack of moral courage to do what is right. They have been concerned with their own status, positions and politics, and have done nothing. Ultimately, an ordinary old man has fallen victim, having to die away from his family….
This is an important point made by Somsak and reported in a post at Prachatai that has photos and videos of Ampol Tangnopakul’s funeral on Sunday. Ampol succumbed to cancer in prison while those without a shred of moral courage had him locked up on lese majeste charges.
Somsak adds:
The court must have been aware that the repeated denial of bail and the guilty verdict were not right. Academics and members of the elite, like Anan Panyarachun, Bowornsak Uwanno and Khanit Na Nakhon, who have come out to say that the lèse majesté law is problematic, have been silent in this case. Why have they not come out to say that the verdict was wrong? Where is their moral courage, he asked?
Our answer is that these people and those all the way up to the very top of the royalist elite are not just morally bankrupt but frightened. Frightened that they might do or say something that their liberal and conservative friends might object or call them out, but are even more frightened that the structures and institutions that make them privileged and keep them privileged may come tumbling down.
This post refers to events a few days ago that were reported in the Bangkok Post. PPT wanted to get back to it for the light it projects on the way lese majeste cases are handled by the courts.
During the third day of the now suspended trial of Akechai Hongkangwarn, accused of selling CDs and WikiLeaks documents that are allegedly insulting of the royal family, the judges halted the day’s trial “multiple times as judges asked whether the evidence should be presented in the courtroom.”
In other words, the judges want to have a trial where evidence is censored by the court. The reason for this is quite clear: all of the evidence is produced by persons close to the royal family and is damning of them, and most especially of the crown prince.
The Criminal Court “had to break the session on a few occasions to seek clarifications on the defence approach and a push by prosecutors to show the evidence in court.” The trial was said to have “been interspersed with informal discussions on how to proceed.” Further, as the “trial proceeded, the judges could be heard at one point telling the defence and prosecutors that this is a delicate and sensitive lawsuit in which ‘no one wanted to proceed recklessly’.”
Clearly, the royalist judges were in a twilight zone, between legal and constitutional rights and their need to “protect” the monarchy. Their response was to tutor the defense team, saying the “best approach should be to focus on intent.”
This dilemma is why the royalist legal system seeks guilty pleas from those charged with lese majeste; they do not want truths about the monarchy aired in any public forum.
The report states that: “So far the court has not allowed the evidence to be shown, but it is still kept in the list of exhibits.” In other words, the censorship remains in place.
The “horror” facing the judges include the defense team’s intention to call Privy Council President General Prem Tinsulanonda, Privy Counselor Siddhi Savetsila, and royalist ideologue Anand Panyarachun to testify in relation to a Wikileaks cable. In the face of the judges claiming that this approach was an error, the legal defense team agreed to postpone this. In return, the defense got the court to agree to forward its claim that the lese majeste law “breached freedom of expression and civil liberties and so violated the constitution.”
The conduct of the trial – tutoring the defense and prosecution, keeping evidence secret and so on – are revealing of the inability of the judiciary to function lawfully and logically where the monarchy is concerned. The monarchy is an impediment to rule of law.
While Joe Gordon’s release made international headlines for a day or so, two new lese majeste cases have hit the local headlines. They are telling for the light they throw on not just the political nature of lese majeste but also the extremism of ultra-royalists.
The first case involves the beginning of the lese majeste trial of เอกชัย หงส์กังวาน/Akechai Hongkangwarn, accused of selling copies of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s documentary on the future of the Thai monarchy and the lese majeste. He was arrested in March 2011. For PPT’s material on the case and the documentary, see here. At the time of his arrest, he was also accused of having Wikileaks documents that were considered damaging to the monarchy and especially the crown prince (see here, here, here, here and here on Wikileaks and the linking of the ABC and Wikileaks here).
Akechai is hoping “to establish the fact that the video, along with two manuscripts of WikiLeaks cables he is being charged for under the lese majeste law were factual and did not constitute defamation of the monarchy.”
The Australian Broadcasting Commission has been totally hopeless, refusing to assist Akechai’s defense in any way. They appear to lack any spine.
Interestingly and tellingly, the
presiding judges wanted to hold the trial in camera but The Nation objected, saying it was [un]constitutional and that holding a trial in secret was contrary to standard legal procedure in democratic countries. The judges eventually allowed observers to remain but the video was not shown.
The report states that:
Police Lieut Major Somyot Udomraksasab, who ordered the arrest of Ekachai, stood as one of two prosecution witnesses yesterday. He said he believed the ABC report, which contains video footage involving HRH the Crown Prince, was defamatory. Somyot also testified that he believed that WikiLeaks texts claiming to refer to words by leading Thai politicians such as the late prime minister Samak Sundaravej, former premier Anand Panyarachun and Privy Council President Prem Tinsulanond also contained defamatory remarks about the monarchy.
The defamation of the price seems to refer to the leaked video showing his current wife nude at a birthday party for their dog Fu Fu.
The alleged defamatory words by Prem and Anand are in the cables and suggest that these two may also be at risk of charge. We realize that this is unlikely, but the facts are there, in the cables.
The defense, that the information is true, has already been rejected by the court.
The second case relates to a Bangkok Post story where it is reported that a gang of ultra-royalist vigilantes stormed the airport to prevent a “New Zealand-resident Thai woman accused of a lese majeste offence” from leaving on a “flight to Auckland yesterday…”.
Some 200 extremists “turned up at Suvarnabhumi airport to protest against her possible departure.” They “picketed outside the airport after learning that Thitinant Kaewchantranont, 63, was due to check in for a Thai Airways International (THAI) flight to Auckland.” Who told them?
A Bangkok Post photo
Thitinant, who is said to have “a history of mental illness” did not leave because the police “who have lodged a lese majeste complaint against her, referred her to Srithanya Hospital in Nonthaburi to see if she is genuinely mentally ill.”
The report claims the lese majeste complaint relates to her “allegedly making an improper gesture towards an image of His Majesty the King outside the Constitution Court…”.
Police said they “would have prevented her from boarding, as they believed she was unfit to leave the country.” The Thai Aiways company said that the “plane’s captain had pledged to refuse to pilot the aircraft if Ms Thitinant was on board, arguing the woman could pose a security risk.”
It is difficult to work out who, exactly, is deranged. The mad monarchists, the police or the pilot. Certainly, the mad monarchists, believing the king is god (see the sign on “blasphemy” should probably be seeking mental assessments.
More on this as we hear of it.
Update: A reader makes the good point that as the police are claimed to have lodged a complaint, this may become the first lese majeste case to begin under the Yingluck Shinawatra government. That is, the events of the case are all within the tenure of this government rather than emanating under the previous royalist administration.
Yesterday PPT posted on recent shenanigans in Thailand’s military. Coincidentally, in Rupert Murdoch‘s national newspaper The Australian, John Blaxland, a senior fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University has an op-ed of some interest.
At his university web page, Blaxland has this important background information, which seems to have been left out of his moniker as a scholar:
Blaxland spent nearly 30 years in the Australian Army…. [H]e served as Australia’s Defence Attaché to Thailand and Burma from 2008-2010. In 2006-7 he was the Chief Staff Officer for Joint Intelligence Operations (J2) … with responsibility for intelligence support to Australian military operations world-wide. Prior to that he held a number of operations and intelligence-related postings including to Australia’s Defence Intelligence Organisation, the Defence Signals Directorate and as Intelligence Officer for the deployment to East Timor…. He also served with the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Washington, DC,….
In other words, Blaxland is a soldier who has spent most of his working life working in what is euphemistically termed “intelligence.” The original version of his op-ed is here.
In his op-ed, Blaxland washes the dirt and blood from the hands of the Thai military.
He begins with a statement of a “popular perception” that “in the West” that “characterises the Thai military as being a totally self-serving and coup-prone organisation.” He seems to think this is wrong, for he tells readers that “Western observers tend to follow the classic Western liberal tendency of painting complex situations in black-and-white terms.” He argues for shades of grey.
Of course, in making this judgement, Blaxland is simplistically painting “Western liberalism” in black-and-white terms. At the same time, he makes himself responsible for explaining that the Thai military is not a “totally self-serving and coup-prone organisation.” In this, he’d need to dismiss a whole lot of academic work, over several decades, that has come from “the West” and that does not take a totalizing perspective on the military. Think of debates over different military classes, Young Turks, Democratic Soldiers, and even, more recently, watermelon soldiers.
Just in recent years, there has been the complex discussions of military classes and cliques by Paul Chambers, while Desmond Ball, one of Blaxland’s colleagues, has told a quite a bit about various military outfits in Thailand. We might also mention work by Aurel Croissant and all of the scholars writing on the southern region’s troubles. “Western” scholarship (and even some journalists) has evidenced many shade of gray.
So after throwing that scholarship overboard, what does Blaxland tell us?
He tells us that the Thai armed forces are not “looking for an excuse to seek more power…” and that they are different from the past.
Given that various factions in the military have been inveterate coup makers and that persons with military rank have been prime minister for 55 of the 80 years since the absolute monarchy was overthrown in 1932, then readers might be forgiven for doubting Blaxland’s claim. His evidence is:
Following the disastrous and bloody events in the streets of Bangkok in May 1992, the military studiously avoided staging another coup for 14 years – a remarkably long period of time for Thailand.
Blaxland doesn’t tell his readers that it was the military and police who shot down civilian demonstrators who were opposing a bid by the military’s leadership to grab hold of the prime ministership.
Putting that washing of blood from the military’s hands aside, it is true that while there was much putsch talk, there was no actual coup between 1991 and September 2006. Indeed, a long period, leaving aside the long periods when the military did held power and organized authoritarian regimes.
Blaxland also neglects to mention that the 2006 coup was an illegal act based on a military-palace plot to overthrow an elected government that had, just a year before, won more votes than any other party, ever. He also skips opposition to the coup and says that:
General Sonthi Boonyaratklin … and his colleagues suddenly realised why the army had avoided staging such coups for so long…. Running the country was a lot harder in 2006 than it had been in the good old days of the Cold War.
We wonder who those days were good for? Probably for the military brass that became fabulously rich on corrupt activities, but certainly not for the thousands of average people who were murdered with impunity by the military.
Did the military learn that running the country was “a lot harder?” Back in 1991 the military claimed success in running the country with Anand Punyarachun as premier, and that wasn’t the “good old Cold Wardays.” Yes, the 2006 junta and its appointed government of old duffers under a former military commander and privy councilor failed abysmally. But there’s no evidence that the next set of military brass won’t simply perceive a failure of the “old guard.”
Blaxland does point out that the world has changed: “Governing the country [in 2006-7] … required experts in international finance and regulations.” Of course, this realization simply speaks to a failure of the military to educate itself, for the idea is not new: back in 1958, General Sarit Thanarat recognized it and engaged civilian experts.
Blaxland claims other evidence: “oneformer senior military commander explained, after the 2006-07 experience the army recognised it was not best placed to govern.” That’s just one anonymous military commander who is not a serving officer. We’ll skip this.
The author provides reasons for the 2006 coup. The list is well-known, although he leaves out several cited by the junta itself, including that Thaksin Shinawatra bringing down the monarchy.
Blaxland has a revealing excursion into Thailand’s recent politics. Interesting more for what it leaves out that what he says. Neglecting to mention judicial interventions, a military-tutored constitution, street demonstrations, airport occupations, and electoral victories by pro-Thaksin parties, Blaxland feels a need to defend the rise of Abhisit Vejjajiva’s government in late 2008:
Numerous commentators have described the subsequent events of late 2008 as a silent coup, when Abhisit … cobbled together a coalition including a breakaway group from Thaksin’s party bloc. But to be fair, the government that emerged maintained a parliamentary majority….
If the writer was reallybeing fair, he would have mentioned not just street demonstrations, airport occupations, and judicial interventions, but that the military brass cobbled together the Abhisit coalition and then to maintain the government, even using old-style counterinsurgency tactics to limit opposition to its government.
Tellingly, Blaxland says nothing of corruption in the military. Likewise, he hurdles the whole period when the military violently suppressed anti-Abhisit demonstrators. Blaxland washes away protesters’ blood. He also neglects the current Army chief’s deep involvement in politics, bringing highly political lese majeste charges against opponents and demanding that voters elect Abhisit’s party in 2011. He also forgets to mention the fact that the military boss lost face when voters ignore him.
Interestingly, Blaxland sees the military as having:
arrived at a point of recognition – that it has to maintain stability, particularly until the royal succession is completed. That means it may have to compromise a little….
Naturally, PPT would point out that “maintaining stability” has always been the military’s excuse for being involved in politics. And, if “compromise” is described as “a little,” what has changed? Further, if succession is going to be at all messy, then it is going to portend instability for some time. Hence, nothing changes for the military as their excuse for intervention remains.
Blaxland’s conclusion is rather Australian, but has broader implications: Thailand is a friend and ally, and “remember this when it [Australia or its academics] next thinks of huffing and puffing at some apparent infraction of its sensibilities.” That is a person now claiming to be an academic demanding self-censorship. Forget the blood and dirt and accept the illegal acts of the Thai military.
