What has ruling junta learnt from 2006 “wasted” coup?

Forming political alliance, securing military influence, creating extra-parliamentary mechanism and establishing dominant ideology are what the ruling junta has learnt from the 2006 wasted coup, said an academic.

 

 

 

On 19 September 2006, the Council for National Security (CNS) stated a coup against Thaksin Shinawatra civilian government. The CNS remained in power for year and a half and wrote the 2007 Constitution with a goal to prevent Thailand from “elective dictatorship” -- in other words, Thaksin’s influence on Thai politics. 

 

However, the CNS attempt was failed after Thaksin’s People Power Party won the 2007 election in a landslide. Although the party was later dissolved and all crucial politicians were banned from politics, Thaksin still made a stunning comeback after Pheu Thai Party won an election in 2011.  

 

This is the reason people call the 2006 coup as a “wasted” coup since the military government had achieved almost nothing but drafting a new charter during its regime. However, someone got a lesson learnt. 

 

On 22 May 2014, The National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) staged a coup against Thaksin’s younger sister Yingluck Shinawatra. Ever since, the NCPO has tried to establish political mechanism to ensure this coup will not be wasted like the previous one.

 

The NCPO has learnt that one mistake of the CNS is that the military totally left the politics immediately after the junta stepped down. This allows political parties to easily gain popularity and grow stronger without interruption during the civilian government regime. 

 

The NCPO, therefore, has institutionalised military influence in the 2017 Charter through various entities. According to Section 269 of the 2017 Constitution, the first 250 senators of the parliament will be appointed by the ruling junta to serve for five years after the first general election. 

 

Though the list of these appointed senators has not yet been finalised, six seats has already been reserved for the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, the Supreme Commander, the chiefs of the Army, Navy and the Air Force, and the Police Commissioner.  

 

The senators also have a right to the right to approve the PM jointly with the lower house in the event that the lower house cannot reach a consensus on who should be PM. In addition, Paiboon Nititawan, a former junta-appointed charter drafter, has also committed to run a political party with a goal to support the current junta head Gen Prayut Chan-ocha as an ‘outsider’ PM.

 

There is still a very slim chance to prevent these senators from jointly voting for the PM. First, elected officials have to propose only their party members as Prime Ministerial candidates. Second, a candidate must be approved by at least 376 votes from 500 MPs. If politicians can achieve this, Thailand will immediately have an elected PM. 

 

In the case that MPs cannot fulfill the two previous conditions, at least 251 MPs must object to the activation of Article 272 which will allow the junta’s senate to approve the outsider PM. However, the objection of Article 272 will lead the country to a political deadlock since no other parliamentary solution is provided in the constitution. 

 

In this case, there is still Article 5 to make an outsider PM possible as it stated that when a political deadlock occurs, the Constitutional Court’s Chairman will host a meeting between the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the opposition party’s leader, Speaker of the House of Lord, Prime Minister, President of the Supreme Court, President of the Supreme Administrative Court, Constitutional Court’s Chairman, and Presidents of Constitutional Independent Organizations.

 

The meeting will find a solution for the political deadlock and that might -- or might not -- also pave the way for Thailand’s outsider PM.

 

Another lesson the NCPO  has learny from the CNS is that election is unpredictable. The CNS’s 2007 Charter created an electoral system with an attempt to minimise the chance of having a single dominant party. Such attempt included adding more representatives into Bangkok and southern constituencies where Thaksin popularity was low. Still, this cannot prevent the overwhelming victory of People's Power Party.

 

Therefore, the NCPO has invented a complex electoral system called Mixed Member Apportionment (MMA). This system is even more difficult for Thailand to have a single dominant party than the CNS’s invention. 

 

In MMA system, people will cast only one ballot to vote their district representatives, on one man one vote basis. After the district election finalises, the defeated party in the district election will get their representatives in the partylist system based on the proportion of the lost ballots from all over the country. 

 

The NCPO argued that this system aims at balancing the popular and the less popular parties in the lower house.

 

According to Siripan Nogsuan Sawasdee, a political scientist from Chulalongkorn University, this electoral system is very problematic because, firstly, the rights to choose PM will not be in the hand of the party that get the most voters. 

 

“Political parties will have less incentive to develop their policy to persuade voters and this might lead to the unstable political regime.” Siripan concluded.

 

Secondly, it favors a medium size party and discourages smaller one to get into politics because it is very difficult to win the district election and even more difficult the get a seat in the party list system. To win the district election, a party need to rely on local godfathers which will increase vote buying at the end, she added. 

 

Given that a party can win the election, dominate the parliament and approve the PM without influence from the the junta-appointed senators, Thailand still cannot escape the military influence. The NCPO has created a so-called National Strategic Plan as a guideline that civilian governments have to follow for the next two decade as stated in the 2017 Charter. 

 

The first draft of this plan was published last week on the websites of the National Economic and Social Development Board. The draft does not clearly state what kind of policy civilian governments have to follow, but rather discusses the challenges and opportunities that Thailand will experience in the future.

 

The junta also established the National Strategic Committee (NSC) which will “take care of” civilian governments in the future. 

 

Out of 28 NSC members, 11 come from the security branch and five of them head Thailand’s security forces including the supreme commander, the commanders of the Army, Navy and Air Force and the commissioner-general of the Royal Thai Police. The permanent secretary of the Defence Ministry also has a seat while other ministries do not. 

 

These seats can certainly ensure that security branch still have a crucial role in Thai politics even in the post-NCPO era. 

 

The list of NSC members also reflects another lesson learnt of the ruling junta -- to form a political coalition for the military. The military realised that it cannot compete against political parties for public popularity. Therefore, it has to seek popularity from bureaucrats and big corporations.

 

Apart from the security officers, the NSC comprised civilians who are either representatives from big companies or bureaucrats. The big companies representatives in the NSC include Kan Trakulhoon, Chairman of the Board of Advance Info Service; Chartsiri Sophonpanich, President and Director of the Bangkok Bank; and Pridi Daochai Managing Director of Kasikornbank and President of Thai Bankers Association.

 

The bureaucrat representatives comprise Paron Isarasena Na Ayudhaya, Chairman of the National Economics and Social Development Board; Prapat Panya-chatrak, President of National Farmers Council; and Banthoon Lamsam, members of State Enterprise Policy Committee. 

 

The last, but arguably the most crucial, lesson learnt of the NCPO is that the CNS forget to make people buy into authoritarian ideology. Pitch Pongsawat, a political science lecturer from Chulalongkorn University, have investigated into how the NCPO has attempted to establish a dominant ideology during the past three years. 

 

Unlike previous military governments who just came into power temporarily, the NCPO is trying to transform the country into a new permanent regime which need to be supported by certain ideologies. According to Pitch, the NCPO has proposed two ideologies which are “Pracharat (People State)” and “99.99% democracy.”

 

The word Pracharat is in the second verse of the National Anthem, singing “Thailand embraces in its bosom all people of Thai blood, being people state. Every inch of Thailand belongs to the Thais.”

 

But the NCPO refers to it as a policy strategy that connects people, private sectors and government together. The basic concept of Pracharat, according to the junta, is to strengthen local economy by following the late King Bhumibol’s Philosophy of Sufficiency Economy. According to the junta head Gen Prayut Chan-ocha, Pracharat policy is an opposition of politicians’ populist policy which has ruined Thai politics for decades.

 

“In the National Anthem, there is a word Pracharat, not Prachaniyom (populism). Today, we try to change populism into Pracharat. I’m not fighting anybody, just trying to make people receive benefits equally by our own hands,” Prayut said in the launching ceremony of Pracharat project.

 

However, Pitch argued that Pracharat is just an old whisky in new bottles. Various Pracharat policies are very similar to the so-called populism, for example, public housing, free wifi, TV dramas, village funds and agricultural subsidy. The difference is that national resources for Pracharat policies have been distributed through government agencies, not directly to the people. 

 

“I have talked to government officials in rural provinces. They said that the word Pracharat has become a part of government projects. [It] is put into every single project and has become a signature of this government,” Pitch stated. “Pracharat comprises state, private sectors and civil society. It has various goals, like improving exports and agricultural sector. It’s corporatism in the new era”

 

Pracharat has distributed a great amount of resources to government agencies who act as a policy implementer, with private sectors as a supervisor. However, there is no space for politicians and election in Pracharat. 

 

“In Pracharat projects, there is no place for politicians and election. It’s a forming of a new world without politicians. Thailand can survive by just having the state, kind private sectors and people living together.”

 

The second ideology the NCPO has tried to establish is “99.99 per cent democracy”. This term was firstly coined by the junta head.

 

“Our country nowadays is 99.99 per cent democratic. I never prohibit anybody from criticizing me, just don’t oppose me. If you were in other countries, you would be probably in jail or executed by shooting,” said Gen Prayut. 

 

So what is the missing 0.01 per cent? The answer that Pitch has found is “freedom.” The junta is trying to convince Thais into believing that ‘too much’ freedom will only lead to chaos and disorder.

 

“I think it’s a keyword of the coup. Freedom leads to instability, disunity and crisis. [Freedom] is evil. Therefore, oppressing us with the law, guns and military courts is counted as law enforcement in order to create order and peace,” Pitch explained. “The military, therefore, perceives itself as a peacekeeper and peace is unity. Thus, whatever leading to disunity can justifies the military to step into politics.”

 

Pitch suggests that democratic forces in Thailand should develop an ideology that integrates both freedom and unity together as a counter-narrative to the NCPO’s 99.99 per cent democracy. Because if the military successfully established this ideology, it can disunity as an excuse to interrupt politics again in the future.