For the next 18 months or so, the centre of efforts to bring to Thailand a more beneficial political system will be the government installed by the military. But while the government may hold most of the face cards in the deck of Thailand's political options, critical wild cards are still held by the Democrat Party.
A file photo of a gathering of Democrat Party supporters in Bangkok shows they are mostly southerners. The party needs to extend its base to other regions to become a majority party. Sarot Meksophawannakul
Being Thailand's oldest and, in my view, the most honourable political party, the Democrats can either make constitutional political reform successful this time or condemn Thailand to another round of failed hopes and resumed street protests.
Why should this be?
Of Thailand's major political actors on stage today, I think only the Democrats can deliver what the country needs to be a successful constitutional democracy — a majority party which depends neither on money power nor on repression of its opponents.
The military can preside over a process to draft a constitution and can hold elections under the law. But it cannot become a majority political party.
Money politicians and the red-shirt movement can again form a majority coalition after new national elections but they have yet to prove they can govern with transparency and respect to opposing views.
In my view, the Democrats have been the party of probity and good sense; not crassly self-seeking but committed to the common good. They have good core values and competent members. They are the cultural party of the middle class, which is always the social basis for just and functional constitutionalism.
But they have time and again come up short against military rulers and money politicians, and against the Thaksin government-funded populism, a metastasised form of money politics. They have been not successful as a diversified, grass-roots, people's party either.
Democrat shortcomings seem to be 1) risk-aversion to building strong patron-client networks in the Northeast, the Central Plains, and the North; 2) a preference for slow and steady performance without engaging excitement; 3) seeing themselves as a parliamentary party, not one energised by grass-roots activism; 4) a limited rhetoric of seriousness and elitist panache; and 5) a disdain for the religious and folk symbolisms which animate most ordinary Thai voters.
To become Thailand's majority party, the Democrats need to overcome these weaknesses.
This I am convinced they can do without much difficulty. They face mostly the challenge of setting forth the right vision and mission for their party.
First, a senior Democrat recently told me that the party gets about 20% of the vote across the country. Thus it is already something of a national party. It is not that difficult to work with local activists to build that share of the vote to 30% nationally, which would make the party a player in putting together any national coalition government.
And, in any system of proportionate representation in the parliament, winning 30% of the vote would produce a substantial number of representatives.
Second, to win a majority in the lower house, the party needs to pick up only some 15 to 20 seats outside of its geographical base. This can be done in selected provinces in the Northeast and Central Plains by concentrating resources and building patron-client relationships where their current outreach network is strongest.
Third, the party should shape a governing coalition before the general election in the American style, not afterwards in European parliamentary style.
I suggest first picking up the support of disaffected red shirts of goodwill, those who have awoken to the fact that they have been used as political tools. Then the party should recruit military leaders of rectitude and dedication.
Next, the party needs to work out an alliance with business leaders on an economic programme of growth.
Fourth, the party needs a vision for the country — where does it propose to take Thailand?
What will it do to improve education, get credit to farmers, clean up the environment, introduce new and improved infrastructure, attract tourists, promote social enterprises, compete in the AEC, etc.
The party's natural allies, but ones it seems to have ignored to date, are the respected monks who stand for ethics and mindfulness.
Such monks can transfer to party leaders some of their personal charisma — their baramee — accumulated from years of dedicated discipline and which has wide appeal among northeastern voters.
It's time for the Democrats to step up and exert a new level of national leadership. The country deserves nothing less than their success in this historic challenge. However, if the Democrats prove unable to build the centrist popular party that Thailand needs to move ahead in its national development, then a new party should be formed.
That party should have the characteristics of a moderate majority party.
First, a Bangkok cross-sector leadership of experience and education.
Second, chapters and a membership in every province.
Third, a social philosophy rooted in Thai values of mindfulness and moderation, which already embrace fair constitutionalism and the rule of law.
Fourth a political philosophy of inclusion and coalition building based on the premise that everyone has a karma with some good fortune and so has individual dignity.
Fifth, an economic programme of opportunity and business development with protection for the environment and culture.
Stephen B Young is global executive director of Caux Round Table.