The Hun Sen government's decision last week to annul Cambodian passports issued to foreigners, reportedly including self-exiled former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, has brought Thai-Cambodian relations into focus once again. As has been reported in international and local media, Yingluck apparently used a Cambodian passport to register as the sole director of a Hong Kong company. The Cambodian authorities' continuing cooperation with Thailand's military government demonstrates a workable new pattern in the bilateral relationship that is a break from the past.
Since its most recent military coup in May 2014, Thailand's relatively peaceful and stable relationship with Cambodia has been counterintuitive and contrary to trends and dynamics that had prevailed over the preceding decade. When this putsch transpired, the pattern in Thailand's polarised and volatile politics so far in the 21st century had already been established.
It centred on the rise, rule, legacy, and latent political power of Yingluck's older brother Thaksin Shinawatra, whose political forces won elections in January 2001, February 2005, December 2007, and July 2011 under three different banners, namely Thai Rak Thai ("Thais Love Thais"), Palang Prachachon ("People's Power"), and Pheu Thai ("For Thais") parties.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak teaches at the Faculty of Political Science and directs the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University. A scholarly version of this article appears at Sagepub.com.
Each time the Thaksin-aligned government took office from 2005, it faced an oppositional movement led by incumbent centres of power from the military, bureaucracy and royalist circles, supported by Bangkok-based "yellow-clad" street demonstrators. These pro-establishment "yellow shirts" viewed Thaksin and what he stood for as profligate and corrupt, an upstart and a usurper bent on undermining and supplanting the status quo long dominated by the military, monarchy and bureaucracy.
Each time the anti-Thaksin yellow shirts demonstrated in Bangkok -- from August 2005 to September 2006, from May to December 2008, and from October 2013 to May 2014 -- they succeeded by enabling and legitimising two military coups and several judicial manoeuvres, resulting in the demise of Thaksin's direct and proxy governments.
In turn, when anti-Thaksin forces protested in the streets to dislodge pro-Thaksin governments, most conspicuously in 2008 through the royalist-nationalist People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) and its reincarnation in 2013-14 as the People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC), Thai-Cambodian relations became tense and adversarial.
The bone of contention in both instances was the status and ownership of the ancient Preah Vihear temple, which served as the fuel fanning domestic political considerations in both countries. When Thaksin-aligned governments were in office during these periods, led by the late Samak Sundaravej and Somchai Wongsawat in 2008 and Yingluck in 2011-14, relations between these two next-door neighbours in mainland Southeast Asia were noticeably warm and mutually accommodating.
The May 2014 military seizure of power is thus anomalous, breaking a set pattern. Its coup-making generals, led by Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha with close fraternal support from Gen Prawit Wongsuwon and Gen Anupong Paojinda, colluded with yellow-shirt protesters both in 2008 and again in 2013-14. These three generals rose to the top as army chiefs for most of the volatile period in Thai politics. Gen Prawit first took up the position in 2004-05, followed by unusually long stints under Gen Anupong (2007-10) and Gen Prayut (2010-2014).
All three hailed from the 21st Regiment (ie, "Queen's Guard") of the 2nd Infantry Division (popularly known as the "eastern tigers"), with jurisdiction over the Thai-Cambodian border. The exception in the army chief post, in 2005-2007, was Gen Sonthi Boonyaratglin, who climbed the ladder from the Special Warfare Division in Lop Buri province and subsequently led the September 2006 coup.
After initial rumblings at the Thai-Cambodian borders in view of past tensions when anti-Thaksin governments were in office, the relationship reached a new, stable plateau of relative peace and partnership. No image spoke more to the full normalisation in Thai-Cambodian relations than the hearty hug between Gen Prayut and Prime Minister Hun Sen at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh in September 2017.
Despite its vehemently anti-Thaksin posture, overthrow of Yingluck and collusion with yellow-shirted PAD and PDRC at Hun Sen's expense, Gen Prayut's junta-led government has been embraced by the Cambodian strongman. From its earlier antagonism and hostility towards the Hun Sen government, Gen Prayut and his military cohorts turned enmity into realignment, resulting in a "new normal".
That Thai-Cambodian relations are stable and peaceful after Thailand's most recent military coup in 2014 is thus counterintuitive and inconsistent with recent trends and dynamics. The conventional views attribute the volatile bilateral relationship to Thai historical forces interacting with domestic politics, underpinned by a "national humiliation" discourse dating to French imperialism. But such an informed understanding is unable to pinpoint the timing and extent of the bilateral conflict when it flared up.
In fact, the Thai military government's commitment and resolve to prevail at all costs ahead of the royal succession and the incumbent Hun Sen government's weakened political legitimacy at home have combined to situate and normalise bilateral relations on a new plateau. Hen Sen essentially changed his bet as he saw Thaksin's adversaries coming out on top time and again.
While Thai politics heats up again with both Thaksin and Yingluck more active from outside the country in view of the upcoming election, Thai-Cambodian relations are unlikely to revert back to the old pattern of tension and confrontation because Hun Sen has his hands full at home, with mounting international scrutiny and potentially debilitating sanctions against his one-party dictatorship and systematic dismantling of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, not to mention his overt campaign to line up his offspring to succeed him. On the other hand, Thailand's relatively new politics under a new reign are unlikely to forge or underpin the same kind and direction of street protests we saw in 2005-06, 2008, and 2013-14.