Thailand's Relapse: The Implications of the May 2014 coup
by Claudio Sopranzetti
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(Excerpt)
At first, the coup looked like a tired script that had played out in the 2006 coup. This would entail a short-lived military junta followed by the appointment of an interim government run by either a general or a highly respected figure. The next step would be a new constitution giving more power to independent institutions that would operate as checks and balances and limit the power of elected governments. Finally, elections would be held in a year or so. Following this script, the discussion could quickly move to whom the interim prime minister would be, what the next constitution may look like and, behind closed doors, what the role of the monarchy had been in this coup and how this new phase would affect the looming royal succession.
At first, the coup looked like a tired script that had played out in the 2006 coup. This would entail a short-lived military junta followed by the appointment of an interim government run by either a general or a highly respected figure. The next step would be a new constitution giving more power to independent institutions that would operate as checks and balances and limit the power of elected governments. Finally, elections would be held in a year or so. Following this script, the discussion could quickly move to whom the interim prime minister would be, what the next constitution may look like and, behind closed doors, what the role of the monarchy had been in this coup and how this new phase would affect the looming royal succession.
The sensation of déjà vu, however, was short lived. Soon after the coup, Prayuth’s actions instigated a series of events that diverged from the previous decades of cyclical elections, political turmoil, popular mobilizations, and military or judiciary interventions. Heavy repression, centralization of power, royal silence, and a restructuring of the relation between the rule of law and military actions— all of these aspects represented a radical diversion from themonths after the 2006 coup and the Thai army’s behavior in the former decades.
In this article, I focus on these diversions and see them as symptomatic of a larger plan to demolish democratic achievements and initiate a swing of the pendulum between dictatorial conservatisms and democratic rule that has framed Thai politics since the deposition of the absolute monarch in 1932.
In this article, I focus on these diversions and see them as symptomatic of a larger plan to demolish democratic achievements and initiate a swing of the pendulum between dictatorial conservatisms and democratic rule that has framed Thai politics since the deposition of the absolute monarch in 1932.
While the two poles have remained, each swing takes new forms. I explore the current configuration as revolving around three main elements:
firstly, a new administrative structure directed by military officers rather than elected politicians;
secondly, the promulgation of an ideological apparatus that remystifies the Thai polity around the monarchy and gives prominence to anti-corruption over democratization;
and thirdly, the establishment of a new class alliance between traditional elites, military forces, and urban middle classes.
These transformations, when seen as a coherent plan, have broken the alignment between electoral systems, democratic ideology, and electoral majorities that has dominated Thai politics over the last two decades. In this sense, I conclude, the effects of the 2014 coup reveal symptoms of the Thai body politics’ relapse into dictatorial administrative structures, political attitudes, and military-led class alliances that seemed to have been forever surpassed by the 1990s.
