Much was made last week of a couple of opinion polls that showed the coup authorities in general, no pun intended, and the head of the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) in particular are pretty popular guys right now. "Guys" because a glass ceiling is part of the new administration.
In other words, memories are pretty short. The political honeymoon is a universal event. Almost four years ago, you were reading in this newspaper about how Yingluck Shinawatra had a 73% approval rating after a month in office. In 2006, the coup leader Sonthi Boonyaratglin piled up a popularity rating of 84%, and was so embarrassed he promptly banned the publication of political polls.
A week ago, the Suan Dusit Poll reported that 72.7% of those it questioned nationwide thought that because of the coup "the country has a better atmosphere". A second survey by the Nida Poll gave Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha 41.3% of a mythical vote for prime minister, with no other person in the country getting 10%. That’s better than Ms Yingluck polled, and almost as high as Thaksin when he swept the country in 2005 - an election that now causes people to literally weep in buyer's remorse.
Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha (Photo by Apichart Jinakul)
The high ratings of the coup council and its leader are standard. They will drop as some people adjust their expectations. But for the moment, people, groups, activists and associations are flooding the streets in front of army headquarters with written petitions for the NCPO to "do something" about their problem.
It's Gen Prayuth, however, who has the biggest problem in all this praise. He has to make real accomplishments that meet realistic expectations, and he must do it in a way that at least seems to leave the country better off than the day he stepped in and said, "Enough!"
No one has suggested publicly, yet, that Gen Prayuth is the reincarnated FM Sarit Thanarat. And no one knows just where the NCPO is going, exactly, although broad outlines of Gen Prayuth's policies are starting to peek through the feel-good campaign to Return Happiness to the Thai People.
Sarit was, and still remains, an interesting study in honeymoons. While his military junta ousted a police-oriented government on New Year's Day in 1958, little thought was given in those times to public opinion. And in the Cold War days, Thailand’s developing ties with the United States, Europe and the Seato states could never be set back by something so trivial as a military coup.
But Sarit rode a very long wave of popularity with popular, populist programmes that surpassed anything the country had seen before. Sarit seized the issue of arson for insurance, and made an example of those involved. With no trial, he personally took them to Sanam Luang and oversaw public executions.
You could look it up, as they say. Front page headline, The Bangkok Post, Nov 7, 1958, for example: "Man who hired arsonist executed"; "Chinese shot on Pramane as example" And a sub-headline: "Tied to post".
Sarit's summary justice was wildly popular. Biographers claim the public executions put a stop to businessmen burning down buildings for the insurance money, but this is demonstrably false. The practice was still rampant in the 1970s and well into the 1980s. Not only did failing businessmen torch their own buildings for the payout, they used fire as a terrorist tactic against slum dwellers and squatters, almost routinely burning out entire small villages, even in Bangkok’s city centre.
But the illusion that Sarit was "doing something" about the crime boosted his popularity. (The "Chinese" reference was part of it. At the time, the Chinese community was the target of medium public displeasure over perceived market cheating and refusal to adapt to Thai ways.)
The Sarit honeymoon waned, of course, but even by the time he died in 1963 - assuring up-and-coming tyrant Thanom Kittikachorn a long and happy dictatorship — Sarit was not unpopular in the way other dictators totally lost their honeymoon.
Sarit, curiously, has created an important type of nostalgia. Older Thais are still heard reminiscing about Sarit like he was some sort of kindly ruler, along the lines of, "Yes, Sarit had his faults, but he got things done. He was a man of action."
Which is true. But the public's memories of Sarit’s victory over the arsonists via public executions at Sanam Luang are at odds to almost everything Sarit really did. He presided over one of the blackest periods of government repression, not just content to intimidate in the 21st century fashion. He didn’t just muzzle the media, but stomped on the very notion of freedom of the press.
He was responsible for some of the most vile attacks on proud and patriotic Thais, who were, for example, declared “communists” and tossed quietly but brutally into prison if they went to China for a few days. In some cases, including against Pridi Banomyong, he whipped up rumours tying democrats and the loyal opposition directly to the death of the king in 1946. It is not recorded if he made the trains run on time.
Honeymoons are the most natural and predictable event in politics, including coup politics. We're still not sure what destination Gen Prayuth has chosen for us on this honeymoon trip. The danger for the country has always come when a military regime has tried to extend its honeymoon through unnatural and murderous ways.