The situation facing Thailand’s military rulers in polls this Sunday is one that has faced coup makers before. Like their predecessors, the current leadership seeks to legitimize their rule through elections without giving up too much power and privilege to civilian politicians.
As we noted in last week’s blog, there have been at least nine elections after military coups since 1932. Some have resulted in outright electoral defeat for the military. Some have been electoral wins but have saddled the ruler with greedy and unmanageable political partners. Three have led to further coups and the abandonment of any pretext of democracy.
The Military’s Political Strategy
Coup leader Gen. Prayut Chan-O-Cha seeks to be legitimized as prime minister after Sunday’s polls. Although not running for a seat in Parliament, Prayut is the prime ministerial candidate of the military-backed Palang Pracharat Party.
The actions of the military junta that has ruled Thailand since it seized power from an elected government on May 22, 2014, show it has studied the strategies used by past military dictators. They have decided on a two-part strategy:
· To set up a political party and campaign for the coup leader, Gen. Prayut Chan-O-Cha, to continue in power through elections
· To change laws and institutions so that even if the military-backed political parties fail in the elections, the military will still be able to dominate the government
This effort to convert a coup group into an elected government is not new. Past military coup leaders who became prime ministers of elected governments include P. Phibulsonggram (1938 to 1944 and 1948 to 1957), Sarit Thanarat (1957 and 1958 to 1963), Thanom Kittikachorn (1957 and 1963 to 1973). The 1991 coup leader, Suchinda Kraprayoon, also became prime minister, but he lasted for only 47 days before being forced to resign after large-scale public protests – history that the current junta does not want to repeat. Except for Suchinda, all of these military men clung to power for a considerable time, but none of them was able to hold on to both power and democracy for very long. That is the challenge facing the military this coming Sunday.
Tactics from the Past
To implement the first part of the strategy, the junta has used the tactics of past coup leaders:
· Like both the Sarit and Thanom regimes, the junta repeatedly (at least five times) promised and then postponed elections, giving itself time to solidify its hold on power after the coup.
· Following virtually every coup group, the junta scrapped the constitution and wrote a new one with provisions tailored to its advantage.
· Imitating past coup groups, the junta created appointed bodies that it could fill with loyalists.
· Similar to previous coup groups, the junta has tightened control over the mass media. It banned some opposition media at times. Prayut dominated the airwaves for his weekly lectures throughout the years when other politicians were barred from ‘campaigning.’
· As in 2006, the court dissolved one of the main opposition political parties, this time on the grounds that it violated a rule against abusing the royal family by nominating a former princess as a candidate.
· Continuing on from past elections, the military’s Internal Security Operations Command, which has committees overseeing each of Thailand’s 72 provinces, has acted as a political intelligence gathering and covert action arm of the military.
· Taking a leaf from the playbook of the prime minister ousted in 2006, the military party, called the Palang Pracharat Party, has recruited influential local politicians to stand for it in the polls.
No Guarantees
The problem for the junta is that these tactics have rarely led to enduring democratic victories for the military. Adding to the uncertainty is that these elections will bring to the polls some seven million new voters – young people who have grown up with a more liberal and international mindset than the senior leaders in the junta. How will these young voters respond to the old military election tactics?
Thai opinion polls have often been unreliable and recent polls differ widely. Since local elections have not been held since the coup and political discussion has been kept under wraps for five years, the strength of anti-military feeling is difficult to assess. It may be deep enough to overwhelm the military party and its allies despite their advantages.
One indication that the military is not very confident is a last minute PR effort that included photographs of a sweetly smiling Prayut in fashionable clothes – laughably different from the gruff, no-nonsense image he projected for more than four years.
Doing More than Before
Clearly the military’s political strategists realized early on that they would have to do more than past coup groups to avoid making their 2014 coup another “khong sia – wasted thing” as some called the 2006 coup. Conservatives considered the coup “wasted” because Pheua Thai, a party supporting ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, won two elections despite the efforts of the coup group. Rarely in Thailand’s long history of coups have elections been delayed for nearly five years before elections. Part of this time was used to make extensive legal and institutional changes designed to implement the second part of the strategy – entrenching military political power.
Chadchart Sittipunt (l) is the candidate for prime minister and Sudarat Keyuraphan is the chief strategist of the Pheu Thai Party that won the last elections and has a strong following in the populous north and northeastern parts of the country.
The delay allowed the junta to appoint senior bureaucrats in positions such as provincial governor, the Counter Corruption Commission, the Ombudsman, the Election Commission, the National Broadcast Commission and the judiciary. These organizations have responded with a variety of actions favorable to Prayut’s election.
The junta initiated important changes in the constitution. Among other measures, it provided for a prime minister who does not have to be an elected member of Parliament – opening the way for current Prime Minister Prayut to stay in office. A temporary five-year provision of the constitution gave the Senate a role in the selection of the prime minister. That means that if Prayut gets the votes of 250 non-elected senators appointed by the junta, he will need only 126 votes from the 500 elected MPs to become prime minister again.
The Senate, required to include the top military and police commanders, also gained the power to oversee the elected government’s implementation of a “20-year national strategy” mandated by the constitution. The junta produced the 72-page strategy paper that is supposed to bind any elected government. The elected government must announce a policy statement and budget allocations in compliance with the strategy. If the Senate deems it has failed to do that, it can bring the case to the National Anti-Corruption Commission. If the government is found guilty of violating the strategy, its officers could face dismissal and a jail term.
Thanathorn Juangroonruangkit, leader of the new Future Forward Party, hopes to appeal to Thailand’s 7 million new voters with calls to reduce the budget and importance of the military
The rapid rise of social media in Thailand created a problem no other coup group had to deal with before. How could it be brought under control? The Election Commission banned social media posts that contained anything other than candidates’ names, pictures and biographies, and the party name, logo policies and slogans. The rules struck at the new progressive parties, such as the Future Forward Party, that sought to use social media to spread their message. This came on top of an already draconian computer crimes law that makes it a crime to share information considered damaging by the authorities.
Possible Outcomes
So, does all of this guarantee a victory for Prayut and the military? Not necessarily. Here are three possibilities.
Former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajivat leads the Democrat Party that appears likely to be in opposition after the elections, unwilling to back either the Palang Pracharat or Pheu Thai parties.
1. Thai voters have proven stubbornly independent in the past. The last three elections have all been won by parties influenced by former Prime Minister Thaksin and opposed by the military and the bureaucracy. Military-backed parties might get so little support that the civilian parties could form a government despite the Senate. Even Abhisit Vejjajivat, the leader of the Democrat Party, the country’s oldest party, has announced he will not support Prayut. The civilian parties, however, would have to overcome deep differences that sparked violence in 2008, 2010 and 2014. Even if that occurs, the military, the appointed Senate and the conservative bureaucracy have entrenched power that will allow them to exert considerable influence from behind the scenes, no matter what happens at the polls.
2. All of the tactics of the junta could bear fruit and the military party could win enough votes to propel Prayut to a stable majority. With the backing of the Senate, the courts and the bureaucracy, Prayut and the military would be secure in power for what could be a long time.
3. If Prayut wins just enough support to be elected prime minister, but not enough to form a stable government, Thailand could be in for a rocky ride. Prayut would need political skills like those of Gen. Prem Tinsulanonda, who presided over civilian governments for eight years in the 1980s, to survive. There would be problems passing legislation and dangers from no confidence motions. There could be public protests stirred by political parties aggrieved by winning the polls but blocked by the Senate from leading the government. That would create a situation similar to those faced by military rulers Thanom, Sarit and Phibul in the 1950s and 60s. In each case, the way out for the military ruler was another coup.
Sunday’s polls will test the Thai people’s willingness to resist authoritarian power. The formation of a new government will test Thai abilities to resolve political differences without violence. The elections could mean a step forward towards more effective representative government, a slide into electoral authoritarianism or a fall back into the old cycle of political conflict and military coups. Much is at stake.
