As it approaches its four-month mark after seizing power on May 22, Thailand’s military regime has boldly taken over the entire apparatus of governance and policy-making processes. Not since the 1950s and 1960s have the top brass been so directly and personally engaged in running the country. What it must do now is to avoid the fatal mistakes of past military-authoritarian governments and to prevent good intentions from rotting into ill outcomes.
The most instructive lesson for the supreme rulers of Thailand in 2014-15 comes from 1991-92. What began then as a military overthrow of a corrupt civilian government turned into a blatant hijacking of Thai democracy. We did not want to see it then, but it became inevitable once the coup logic and power dynamics were set in motion.
Top brass who overthrew the Chatichai Choonhavan government in 1991. Gen Suchinda Kraprayoon, centre, who became prime minister is flanked by NPKC chairman Gen Sunthorn Kongsompong, right, and NPKC secretary-general Gen Issarapong Noonpakdee. BANGKOK POST
This time, we have no choice in view of continuing martial law and unaccountable absolute rule but to hope that all will turn out well and better than before, against the odds of recent history.
The junta leaders under the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) should take a cautionary tale from more than 22 years ago when they were just majors and colonels while their four-star bosses, who staged a coup in February 1991 under the National Peacekeeping Council (NPKC), lorded over Thailand.
Getting rid of corrupt elected politicians was one thing, but institutionalising post-coup power was another.
Back then, the NPKC delegated and shared power with a civilian caretaker government under prime minister Anand Panyarachun whose administration delivered policy results, provided a buffer, and yielded credulity for the NPKC. That the NCPO has basically kept power concentrated within its inner sanctum poses more challenges as we are likely to see in the coming months.
Thus goes the story from 1992 that we can only hope will not be repeated in 2015 and beyond.
The formation of the Thai government in April 1992 unmasked the ulterior motives of a military clique that took power in a February 1991 coup — disrupting 14 years of democratic rule.
When the Thai military decided to undertake the coup, a fraternal group of generals invoked five justifications for commandeering the plane of then-prime minister Chatichai Choonhavan and seizing authority from elected representatives. Throughout the interim period until the election on March 22, 1992, one justification after another was invalidated.
The appointment on April 7, 1992, of Gen Suchinda Kraprayoon as the country’s 19th prime minister finally confirmed what had all along been the military’s hijack of Thai democracy.
After the February 1991 coup, the Thai military leadership — especially the generals who graduated from the national military academy in 1958 — shrewdly unfolded a grand design to institutionalise their power. Their first acts included the establishment of a panel to investigate the assets of previous cabinet members and the appointment of a committee to draft a new constitution.
The assets investigation revealed that many politicians could not explain the origins of their wealth, often millions of dollars. Yet a squad of those very same politicians was allowed to manipulate its way back into parliament through vote-buying and became part of Gen Suchinda’s cabinet.
To attain legitimacy, the NPKC organised and co-opted two major political parties, full of ousted politicians including a political party leader with alleged links to drug trafficking who eventually got a deputy prime minister slot.
The dubious wealth of these unscrupulous politicians was used to buy votes in Thailand’s poorer regions. Consequently, the Chart Thai and the Samakki Tham parties colluded to form the core of Gen Suchinda’s five-party governing coalition.
More deviously, the junta doctored the constitution-drafting process to ensure post-election power. Its chairman, Gen Sunthorn Kongsompong, empowered himself to appoint the 270 senators who, on crucial budget bills and no-confidence motions, were bestowed equal powers with the 360 elected lower house members. Gen Sunthorn was concurrently the sole nominator of the prime minister.
Meanwhile, an assembly handpicked by the junta oversaw the revision and approval of the constitution, which allowed an unelected person to assume the premiership.
When Gen Suchinda became prime minister — and thereby reneged on his promise to steer clear of politics — his class of ‘58 cohorts filled the posts he vacated. His brother-in-law and classmate Gen Issarapong Noonpakdee became the army commander, while the air force’s Air Chief Marshal Kaset Rojananin additionally became the supreme armed forces commander. With another classmate as head of the navy, Gen Suchinda embraced other military school pals to join the cabinet, including an academic and Bangkok’s police commissioner.
Typically at the time, the Thai military leaders boasted of their power. But their overconfidence became fatal. While Thais put up with military dictators in the 1950s and 60s, the political ambience in the early 1990s was vastly different. With a vibrant and sustained economic growth rate of more than 7% annually throughout the previous three decades, a robust and growing middle class had taken firm root in Bangkok. This new generation of Thais did not tolerate abuse.
In addition, unlike the past, Thai people at that time had alternative leaders to look to for stewardship. The March 22 election, for instance, gave an unmistakable indication of Bangkok constituents’ political aspirations. Of the contested parliamentary seats in the capital, former Bangkok governor Chamlong Srimuang’s Palang Dharma Party garnered 32 out of 35 MP seats, a startling feat which reflected his popularity and image as a “clean” politician.
In 1992, the Thai military ruling clique should not have underestimated the political will and sophistication of Bangkok’s population, which extirpated a military dictator in a bloody upheaval in October 1973 — giving birth to modern Thai democracy.
Demonstrations in the capital already were more frequent by early 1992. It became a tragic irony in May 1992 when Thailand had to endure a repeat of that fateful October when the Thai population retook their country and extirpated military rule.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak is associate professor and director of the Institute of Security and International Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University. This article was updated and adapted from an opinion item which was published in The Christian Science Monitor on April 30, 1992, titled 'The Hijacking of Thai Democracy'.