I have been watching the news from Thailand with sadness and confusion. Once again, there are protests in the streets, calling for the government to resign. The current government came to power as the result of a coup, followed by a dubious election. But most of the protestors support the object of that coup, Thaksin Shinawatra, who is notoriously corrupt and has no respect for human rights or the rule of law. There is no good side in this story.
What saddens me is that not long ago, Thailand was a success story, both economically and politically. Democratic transitions can take a very long time, and Thailand’s was certainly incremental, but by the end of the 1990s, it seemed safe to categorize Thailand as a consolidated democracy.
Thailand was an absolute monarchy until 1932, when a military coup forced the king to relinquish much of his power. Over the next sixty years, the country held regular elections, and often looked like a democracy—until the democratically elected governments got too corrupt, or threatened the power of the military. When that happened, the military would stage a coup d’état, something they did every few years, usually with little violence or popular opposition. There was no question that the generals held the real power.
This led to a strange kind of stability, which, along with pretty good economic policies, helped Thailand to develop rapidly. The benefits of development were distributed unevenly though: Absolute poverty was reduced, but the gap between rural farmers and urban middle and upper classes grew. By the 1980s, the middle class (overwhelmingly in Bangkok) had grown, more Thais were educated, and there was increasing pressure for a more accountable government. In 1991, the military overthrew an elected prime minister because his administration was viewed as unacceptably corrupt, but promised to hold elections ASAP. In fact, they did hold an election in early 1992, but somehow the general who had led the coup won, which didn’t sit well with the people. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in protest, which was violently quashed by the military, who killed hundreds. Finally, the king stepped in to negotiate a compromise—a caretaker prime minister was put in place for a few months and new elections were held in September 1992. This time, a real civilian government took power, and began work on drafting a new constitution (another favorite pastime of Thai lawmakers).
Throughout the rest of the 1990s, Thai democracy flourished. Crooks were voted in and crooks were voted out. A massive economic crisis caused in large part by a real estate bubble in Thailand spread across the whole region. Thailand’s neighbors, particularly Burma and Cambodia, became increasingly authoritarian. But the Thai military let the civilian democratic process run its course. Finally, elections and peaceful transfers of power became the norm. By then end of the 1990s, when I was in graduate school studying democratization, Thailand was a poster child for a successful democratic transition in a region still ruled mostly by one-party states (the one other exception being the Philippines). It really looked like 1991 was the last of a long series of coups.
Then in 2001, Thaksin Shinawatra was elected prime minister. One of the richest people in the country, he ran a populist campaign and won the hearts of the rural poor. He helped spread development beyond Bangkok and a few other regional centers. He introduced a national health system that made health care affordable and accessible to almost everyone. He cracked down on the drug trade. But the anti-drug campaign, while popular among many Thais, consisted mostly of extrajudicial executions of hundreds of people accused of drug trafficking. Due process was for other countries, not for Thaksin’s Thailand. At the same time, Thaksin’s companies owned many of the newspapers and TV and radio stations in the country, and if the news outlets he didn’t own criticized the government, they risked being shut down. Free speech was for other countries, not for Thaksin’s Thailand. But it was Thaksin and his family’s corruption that finally brought him down. His relatives and cronies made untold millions from insider deals with the government.
By 2006, people were in the streets again—mainly the middle class, much like in 1991. But this time they were protesting against an elected leader. And then, after 15 years without a coup (a long time by Thai standards), the military once again decided that they knew better than the people, and took over the government while Thaksin was out of the country. He was convicted of various corruption charges, and has been unable to return to Thailand for fear of being arrested.
Elections were held again in December 2007, with Thaksin supporters managing to take power in a coalition with smaller parties. In 2008, there were more protests, and eventually the prime minister was forced to resign and his party disbanded because of conflict of interest charges. The Democrat party (which had been in power on and off through the 1990s) formed the government. So now Thaksin supporters are back in the streets, and it looks as if the government will be forced out yet again.
Why this mini-lesson in the convoluted recent political history of a country on the other side of the world (aside from my personal interest because I used to live there)? I think the tendency, when one hears about street protests, and coups, and unstable governments in developing countries is to write them off as inevitable. Those “Third World” countries just can’t learn to govern themselves. But what makes this case so troubling to me is that Thailand really seemed to have become a stable democracy. Even when people were unhappy with the government, they dealt with it in the next election, or through parliamentary processes and courts, not through military intervention or popular intimidation. But then for the last three or four years, they’re back where they were fifteen years earlier. Once again, the right to govern is based on raw might, not by elections and legal systems, and that saddens me.
I don’t know whom to blame. I blame the military leaders for going back to their old tricks of taking out the government when they don’t like it. I blame the middle class protestors who called on the military to oust Thaksin. I blame Thaksin for taking a new democracy and quickly dismantling accountability and the rule of law, and for being so corrupt that a coup seemed like a better option. I blame the rest of the world for letting it all happen.
Here's the latest from the New York Times.
Here is Human Right Watch's most recent statement.
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