In 2006, the Thai military carried out a coup against the Thai Rak Thai party government of Thaksin Shinawatra, a government that had won two landslide elections within a two-year period, an unprecedented achievement in Thai history. Since that time, the military has governed Thailand for a year, it has exerted its influence to break up one coalition government and create an alternative coalition more to its liking, designed a new internal security law giving it wide-ranging domestic powers, and forcibly cracked down on large-scale demonstrations in Bangkok, with many lives lost in the suppression. Certainly this indicates the military has tremendous political power. Yet, the military as an institution today is broken. As a military institution it is at a nadir, politicized, internally divided, unprofessional, and therefore weak. In this chapter, it will be argued that, while seemingly powerful, the Thai military contains all the divisions and conflicts inherent in Thai society. It will be argued further that, if the military wishes to be institutionally strong, rather than politically strong, the only way out of this internal weakness is to leave politics behind, and embrace merit-based promotion and professionalism in its place.

MILITARIES AND SOCIETIES

In analysing the collapse of the 1991 attempted coup in the Soviet Union, Stephen Meyer set out to explain why the Soviet military did not unite behind the coup plotters, when it had much to gain in the event of success. The 1991 coup, which would spell the end of the Soviet Union, failed, according to Meyer, because the military was so divided by its involvement in politics, both as an institution and individually, that it could not unite, even under such circumstances. Under Glasnost, the military had been the focus of much criticism, and as the political system opened up, ambitious officers began to seek political office. The military was also divided by factionalism, particularly between junior and senior officers.

In the evening of 19 September 2006, the military staged the eighteenth coup since the abolition of absolute monarchy in 1932, overthrowing the elected government of Thaksin Shinawatra. Although Thailand adopted a democratic model of governance to replace the ancien régime, the military has imposingly dominated the Thai political space throughout the past eighty years. It has worked intimately with the monarchy in cultivating a particular kind of politics whereby civilian governments are kept vulnerable, or face the possibility of being toppled should they pose a menace to the power position of the traditional elite. Under these conditions, coups were therefore not uncommon, especially as a tool to undermine a strong civilian government. The military's political intervention has become part of Thai political culture. Often, there have been attempts on the part of the military to legitimize the coups as a moral instrument in the riddance of immoral civilian regimes. From 2001 to 2006, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra enjoyed electoral popularity, and thus managed to firmly consolidate his grip on power. He won two landslide elections, in 2001 and 2005, becoming the only prime minister who had ever served a full four-year term in Thai history. But his intensifying political strength gravely worried the traditional elite. They perceived him as a threat to their long-held political influence. With political interests in jeopardy, and in exercising the old trick, the traditional elite removed the Thaksin regime with the bluntest of tools; a military coup. They accused Thaksin of displaying disrespect for the King and committing corruption, among other things. These accusations served to justify the unlawful coup as a necessity to punish the fraudulent government of Thaksin. A large number of middle-class Bangkok residents came out to lend their support for the coup; they were seen offering food and flowers to Thai soldiers who seized power on that ill-fated night.

INTRODUCTION

Just over an hour after announcing on television that the military had seized power on the evening of 19 September 2006, Army Commander-in-Chief Sonthi Boonyaratglin was photographed on his knees at Chitralada Palace, seeking the blessing of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. By then, the generals' every move had been painstakingly choreographed to impress upon the public the idea that the coup had been staged in the King's name. Yellow ribbons and flowers adorned tanks, uniforms, and assault rifles. Giant portraits of the King and Queen served as the background for major announcements. Royal Commands were read before ornate shrines to their Majesties. The junta's studiously verbose name, the “Council for Democratic Reform under the King as Head of State”, was officially changed more than ten days after the coup, but not before making sure that the people had heard the message loud and clear. Thailand, to be sure, had seen “royalist coups” before, but none as awash in royal symbolism. Then again, the military had never removed a prime minister as popular as Thaksin Shinawatra. As life quickly returned to normal, it was evident that only the appearance of royal sanction could have muted public opposition to the coup, or staved off the possibility that the deposed prime minister might put up any resistance.

The argument made by royalists in support of the legitimacy of the illegal seizure of power springs from a conception of the nation fundamentally at odds with that common to modern constitutional monarchies. Nowhere in particular was the fight against Thaksin defined in more memorable terms than in a speech delivered by General Prem Tinsulanonda — a former prime minister (1980–88) and current president of the Privy Council — at the Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy two months before the coup. Prem famously likened the military to a “horse”, and hastened to add that governments, unlike the horse's actual “owner”, come and go like mere “jockeys”.

Since the elections of 6 January 2001 that brought Thaksin Shinawatra into power, conflicting assessments of his actions and goals have shaped much of Thai politics. The establishment's (aphichon) key concern with Thaksin (later complemented by supporting issues such as corruption, doubtful loyalty to the monarchy, and human rights violations) was put forward as early as October 2001 when a most respected aphichon member, former Prime Minister Anand Panyarachun warned, “Danger caused by people with dictatorial inclinations has not disappeared from Thailand”. One decade later, after the electoral triumph of Thaksin's youngest sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, The Nation reported a very similar statement, again by Anand. He had “called on all Thais to fight against any move to bring the government, court and legislature under the control of one person or group” since this might lead to “tyranny”. Both statements aimed at awakening the public to the assumed (not without reason) dangers posed by Thaksin, and spurring concomitant counter-measures.

Seen from this angle, the political struggles of the years 2001 to 2011 were largely about averting a potential “tyrant” Thaksin. In order to destroy its arch-enemy, various components of the establishment made use of political, military, and judicial (but significantly not electoral) opportunities that opened up at certain times. Measures taken included the protests by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) in 2006 and 2008, the election boycott by the Democrat and Chart Thai Parties in April 2006, the military coup in September 2006 (which came after a royal decree had announced fresh elections for October 2006), the dissolution of two Thaksin parties (Thai Rak Thai in 2007 and People's Power in 2008), the drafting of the supposedly anti-Thaksin constitution of 2007, the sentencing of Thaksin to two years in prison without probation in October 2008, Democrat Abhisit Vejjajiva becoming prime minister in December 2008, the court-ordered confiscation of the bigger part of Thaksin's assets in February 2010, and the appointment of seventy-three senators in April 2011.

In early November 2006, some six weeks after Thailand's coup, the juntaappointed interim Prime Minister, Surayud Chulanont, travelled to the embattled southern border provinces to address officials and community leaders. His speech on 8 November in Pattani Province was made famous by his so-called “apology” to southern Muslims for the State's previous mistakes in combating the violence. Surayud's presentation is notable for another reason. He began by speaking of two crises that faced his administration, namely: the national crisis of discord that had purportedly justified the coup against former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra (though he was not named in the speech), and the southern strife. But Surayud made no attempt to link these national problems in “causal” terms. Was there any relationship between Thailand's coup of September 2006 and the southern unrest, whether in terms of cause or effects? Though by 2006 the insurgent-driven violence in Thailand's southern border provinces had become a serious national issue demanding a comprehensive government-led resolution, the “Southern Fire” actually played no role in provoking the military coup. The coup was an act staged by leading military factions supported by a conservative power elite and an urban middle class dedicated to removing Thaksin from power and eliminating his party's control over the Thai state apparatus. It was an issue of the “centre”, and the south was conspicuously “marginal” to the key motivations and legitimating claims of the coup makers. The anti-Thaksin coup saw a reconfiguration in (and a reassertion of) the balance of power between key centres of conservative political influence in the country. It elevated to leadership the military elite and unelected representatives of the monarchy, who from 2006 to 2007 proceeded to sponsor a range of allied anti-Thaksin groups in an effort to re-engineer the country's legal framework to ensure the election of an anti-Thaksin post-coup parliament (a project which failed).

This chapter asks a simple question: Is peasant politics in Thailand civil? The answer is straightforward: No. Peasant politics in Thailand is not civil if it is judged by many of the established standards which define contemporary civil society, especially its institutionalization and relative autonomy from the state. Rather, I prefer to describe Thailand's modern peasantry as being involved in an active “political society” in which the primary desire is to draw state power into local circuits of exchange by means of diverse, informal and pragmatic relationships. The coup of September 2006 attempted to negate the influence of this non-civil rural politics. It was a failed attempt because it was impossible to reverse powerful economic, social and political developments that have been unfolding over the past fifty years. In order to understand Thailand's tumultuous politics over the past five years, it is necessary to understand the new politics of Thailand's new peasantry.

A BRIEF SKETCH OF RURAL CIVIL SOCIETY AND DEMOCRACY IN THAILAND

Observers of modern political systems often emphasize the role of civil society in supporting democratic consolidation. Civil society is regarded as a “realm of organized social life” that is located between the private sphere and the state. Civil society's organized associations draw citizens out of their individual preoccupations and focus their attention on public undertakings, including policy advocacy, welfare improvement, education and environmental protection. This network of associations limits the power of the state, subjecting it to scrutiny, holding it accountable and sometimes providing an organizational framework for opposition to the illegitimate exercise of power. As citizens become involved in civil society organizations, they learn many of the skills that are essential for the smooth functioning of democracy: the ability to engage in debate, to respect the views of others and to develop organizational rules. Associations can also play a practical role in delivering services, disseminating information about rights and responsibilities, exposing corruption and assisting with the conduct or elections.

Even at the best of times Thai politics has not been easy to understand, and now, late in the reign of a revered and activist monarch, it is even more difficult to comprehend. Constitutions, sometimes written by the winning side that has taken power by extra-constitutional means, come and go with astonishing frequency. Since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932 military coups have intervened so frequently (eighteen times) that regime change by force seems to be an integral part of the political process. Bloodshed often attends Thailand's political struggles. In the past four decades, the military has taken its arms into the streets several times, and national elections see a fair number of vote canvassers and journalists murdered. Little wonder that turbulence, polarization and violence describe Thai politics all too well.

The motivation for the army to cut short the electoral cycle is its self appointed responsibility to protect the monarchy if it deems the supreme institution to be threatened. The army is jealous of its prerogatives especially with regard to promotions in the upper echelon of the officer corps. Wary of the slightest political interference, it insists on control over its own line management. Thai governments that have attempted to reform the military's relationship with the parliamentary system have been promptly dispatched, as happened in 1991 and 2006. As a result of the violent crackdown and arson attacks in Bangkok in April-May 2010, the army's reputation briefly plummeted, but this was reversed by its civic activism in offering a helping hand to communities affected by the floods in late 2011. Once again, the army proved its ability to adapt and respond to changed circumstances in a popular way.

The 1997 constitution, which was abrogated in 2006, may have been as flawed as its critics have charged, but it held promise.

During the 2010 crackdown of the red-shirt demonstration in Bangkok, many observers wondered aloud why the King had not intervened to stop the killing as he did during the bloodshed of 1973 and 1992 that helped end the carnage. The absence of his intervention in 2010 became conspicuous. Why did these observers have such a false hope that the King might have intervened in political killings? He did not intervene to stop the killing in the 1976 massacre either. In fact, the roles of the palace in each of those bloodbaths remain a mystery. It is naïve to assume that the King is the peace-maker amidst political polarization. In Thailand, sadly, such a naïve assumption is perpetuated widely.

Until recently the scholarship on Thai politics and the state rarely discusses the monarchy, taking for granted that the monarchy is nonpolitical. Contrary to such view, this chapter offers a history of the active monarchy in Thai politics, creating the royalist democracy whose legitimacy is based on the monarch's moral authority and his popularity. King Bhumibol Adulyadej in particular has been a major political actor but observers usually do not see it. The monarchy is an elephant in the room of Thai politics, thanks not only to suppressive measures but probably due to the royalist ideology that puts the elephant under a cloak. On the other hand, criticism of the monarchy usually is non-existent in the country. Suppression of critics, this chapter will show, has been constant since the late 1970s with the rise of hyper-royalism. The royal-nationalist logic that a Thai must naturally be a royalist, therefore a non-royalist must not be a Thai, is not absurd in Thailand. As this ideology is widespread, it generates the climate of fear in which the non-conformist individuals must learn to live in silence and anonymity. Critics and sceptics of royalism are therefore the other elephant in the room of Thai politics.

At first glance, one of the clearest indicators of the changes wrought by the 19 September 2006 coup in Thailand is the sharp decline in freedom of expression. In the five years since the coup, the number of lèse-majesté prosecutions has skyrocketed to heretofore unimaginable highs while the post-coup cyber control legislation — the Computer Crimes Act — has allowed the Thai government to erect a firewall almost as thick as that of China. By all international indices, freedom of expression and political freedom in general have declined in Thailand to such an extent that any claims by the Thai state of being democratic at all ring hollow indeed. While there is no question that the post-coup conditions in Thailand have further eroded constitutional or other legal protections of the right to freedom of expression, it might make more sense from a historical perspective to speak of the post-2006 Thai regimes as the culmination of a six-decade-long process that ironically has made Thailand into something more akin to absolute monarchies of the past or to the few more-or-less absolute monarchies of the present.

In this study, we will use “absolutism” as a jumping-off point for examining the results of the remarkable confluence of historical legacies stretching back the late 1940s with the partial restoration of the monarchy. This process was judicially legitimated by Supreme Court decisions of the 1950s, crystallized ideologically and resacralized under Sarit Thanarat in the early 1960s, and legally secured after 1976 with a toughened lèsemajesté law. For the next three decades, Thailand swayed to and fro, between democracy and authoritarianism, but lurching sharply towards the latter with the 2006 coup. Figure 5.1 gives some idea how the “normal” progression from absolute monarchy to democratic constitutional monarchy was arrested in 1958. In the last five years, this shift toward neo-absolutism culminated, transforming the appearance if not the essence of Thailand into a formation sharing more features with an absolute monarchy than with democratic constitutional monarchies.

The continuing political conflict between forces in favour and against then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra that became visible in late 2005 has led to fundamental changes in Thai politics and society. When Sondhi Limthongkul started his protests against the Thaksin government, which were followed by the founding of the ultra-royalist People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) in early 2006, and their mass protests over the following months, very few observers could have imagined that the supporters of Thaksin would transform themselves from passive voters into possibly the biggest social mass movement Thailand has ever seen — the redshirt movement, born out of the 19 September 2006 military coup. This transformation took place in four distinct phases of development, which were closely connected to developments at the street level. While most commentators view the turmoil as an elite conflict, especially between Thaksin/new money and the military/bureaucracy/palace conglomerate, this article argues that the driving force of the socio-political turmoil is indeed at the street level. Even though the elite level conflict may have initiated this crisis, it had over time become more reactive to ground level developments, based on the collective experience of ordinary protesters and the increase in their political awareness. This also means that the ongoing conflict is not just a power conflict between two opposing elite factions, but has developed into a historical identity crisis over two opposing philosophies represented by the colour codes of yellow — the old style Thai system of semi-or managed democracy with the role of ordinary people as subjects, and red — the demand to be citizens in a modern democratic system.

While unsolved political conflicts of the past — the 1932 abolition of the absolute monarchy and in particular the turmoil of the 1970s — can be seen as the root causes of the present conflict, also as many leading figures of the different sides then in the 1970s still play large roles today, the focus of this article is primarily on the effects of the 2006 military coup, and especially on how it altered the perceptions of the red shirts and their view of society.