April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire
– the opening lines of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land
In Thailand, it is October that is the cruelest month, with a mix of memory and desire – desire for power and memories of cruelty.
In October 1973 the military regime arrested activists calling for a long-delayed democratic constitution. When growing crowds protested the arrests, violence erupted. The generals ordered police and army troops to fire on the crowds, killing at least 77 people and injuring nearly 900 others. King Bhumibol Adulyadej stepped in, appealing for an end to the violence. The military dictators fled the country.
In October 1976, after two years of right-wing propaganda and violence, a mob including police was whipped into a frenzy by anti-communist and pro-royalist propaganda. It attacked students protesting the return of one of the dictators. According to the military, 46 people died in the killings, with 167 wounded and 3,000 arrested. As much as the murders, fear and loathing arose from the mob’s shocking abuse of the corpses of the dead.
Mob violence against a student demonstrator on October 6, 1976
In total there have been 10 coups or military rebellions in the months of September, October and November since 1933, but most have been in October. The month’s sad history may be due to the annual military re-shuffle and voting on the national budget that typically take place in October.
Fortunately, this October has so far been free of violence or rebellion, but tensions are mounting.
Budget hurdle
The government of Gen. Prayut Chan-o-cha faces a difficult vote on the budget this month because it has a slim and unstable majority in the recently-elected lower house of Parliament. The ruling multi-party coalition will need coherence and discipline to get the budget approved. The first reading of the budget bill passed this week, but it faces committee scrutiny and two more votes before it becomes law.
The opposition parties are calling for cuts to the defense budget. The first draft of the budget provided for a modest increase in military spending, but the opposition says Thailand faces no serious military threats so tax income would be better spent on investment, decentralized projects and human resource development.
The government coalition appears to have enough votes to pass the budget. The problem will be keeping all its members, including several tiny parties, in line. This is a common problem for complex government coalitions with little ideology in common.
In 1971, for example, the October difficulties getting the budget approved frustrated the military-led government. The army staged a coup against its own government the following month to shut down the annoying Parliament. But that government lasted only two years before it was ousted by popular protests and a split in the army leadership in October 1973.
Military unity
Unlike in 1973, the current military leadership appears to have the usual jostling for position among army factions under control. The October military re-shuffle went smoothly. Army Commander, Gen. Apirat Kongsompong maintained his position, but then threw gasoline on the political fires by reviving memories of the bloody antagonisms of past Octobers.
Speaking before a huge picture of fighting against the Communist insurgency in the ‘70s, he claimed that politicians, academics and "old communist elements" were using "hybrid warfare" to undermine the country and the high institution.
Army chief Gen Apirat Kongsompong speaks at the Royal Thai Army headquarters.
CHANAT KATANYU, The Bangkok Post
Perhaps he should read our book Radical Thought, Thai Mind, which explains how the radicals driven to the communist party by right-wing violence in the 1970s, defected from the party because they disagreed with communist policies and practices. The party itself collapsed in the 1980s and its former members long ago moved on. But Apirat has not.
Earlier this year, he said the anti-communist anthem that encouraged violence against student demonstrators in October 1976 would again be played on army radio stations. Fortunately, his order was later revoked.
Back to the past
This return to the past may be a sign that the army believes raising fears of a return to Thailand by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is no longer enough to rouse support for the Gen. Prayut’s government. Apirat’s attacks also signaled that the military now sees the youth-oriented Future Forward Party (FFP) as its main foe, more dangerous even than the Thaksin-backed Pua Thai Party (PTP), the party with the largest number of seats in Parliament.
Future Forward Party leader Thanathorn Jungroongruangkit and a poster that may explain the military’s antipathy to the party that became immediately popular among young Thai voters.
Going back to the tactics of 1970s (when there actually was a threat to the monarchy), Apirat brought the royal institution into his attack. Anti-government “propaganda comes mainly from communist elements who have refused to turn over a new leaf and still have ideas to overthrow the monarchy, to turn Thailand to communism,'' he said. “Most anti-royalists are mentally unstable, and the ones who don’t aren’t just have bizarre ways of thinking.”
Although Apirat did not name anyone, he showed a picture of a Hong Kong protest leader with FFP leader Thanathorn Jungroongruangkit. It did not appear to bother the army commander that the protests in Hong Kong are aimed at reducing the influence of the Communist Party of China. The army, despite its anti-communist rhetoric, has supported the government’s recent moves to grow closer to Communist China through joint exercises, weapons purchases and infrastructure development.
It may turn out that the army commander’s comments were like the “dry sterile thunder” of Eliot’s poem. The general’s lecture triggered the Parliament’s national security committee to issue a summons for him to explain himself. At the same time, an online petition to remove Gen. Apirat gained nearly 40,000 signatures in a single day.
This shows that although the recent elections allowed the military-backed parties to cobble together a coalition, Parliament offers some avenues for eventual change.
Weapons
The military and the government of Prime Minister Prayut, however, are in a strong position. In addition to the ability to launch another military takeover, they have legal weapons they routinely use to intimidate the opposition. Laws on elections, sedition, computer use and lese majeste have often worked to stifle opposition voices.
On October 4, the army’s Internal Security Operations Command, the political arm of the military, filed a sedition complaint with police in Pattani province against 12 people who discussed possible amendments to the constitution. Earlier this year, the government charged Thanathorn with sedition for giving a lift in his car to a protest leader after a protest in 2015. Thanathorn is also under fire for allegedly owning shares in a media company – something forbidden to politicians under the election law. Due to the allegation, Thanathorn was barred from Parliament pending a court decision on his case. Some 30 other politicians facing similar allegations, including several from the prime minister’s party, however, have been allowed to take their seats in Parliament.
The military has struggled to deal with the social media abilities that enabled the FFP to campaign online to garner more than 8 million votes in the elections despite its lack of experienced traditional politicians.
Problems of tradition and transition
While Eliot’s poem can be seen as a conservative lament for the loss of traditional values, the problem in Thailand appears due to the persistence of values from Thailand’s long history of class privilege and authoritarian tradition. Those values are still held by many in the urban population, especially in the civil service and armed forces. Among farmers and the young, however, there is a rising demand for more equitable treatment of the poor and more emphasis on freedom, human rights and democracy.
Prayut’s government will likely survive this October’s budget problems, but it may find greater challenges from the opposition and from its own internal factionalism in October next year when Apirat is scheduled to retire.
The question over the next year is whether the military’s legal and verbal attacks will intimidate the opposition or create sympathy for it. In either case, Thailand faces difficult days ahead as it tries to transition to a modern democracy and emerge from a waste land of conflict and authoritarianism.