Our Bangkok correspondent H. Numan sends the latest on the dystopian situation in Thailand.
Thailand: It’s not going well
by H. Numan
Last week, and probably today as well, there were several riots in Bangkok. Police used maximum force to disperse the rioters: water cannons, rubber bullets and the baton. Several rioters and police officers got injured, mainly rioters. Rioters struck back by throwing bricks, bags with paint and ‘ping pong bombs’. Everything is related to the CCP virus.
I call it the CCP virus instead of COVID, as the pandemic originated in China. The original outbreak was suppressed by the Chinese Communist Party, hence the name. Perhaps I’m stating the obvious, but it needs to be said. The CCP is going to great lengths to put the blame elsewhere. With success, as the virus is usually called COVID.
Back to Bangkok. What are ping pong bombs? Take a ping pong ball. Drill a hole in it, fill it with gunpowder and put a fuse in. Light it, then throw it at the police. It’s not exactly a deadly weapon, but definitely more dangerous than heavy firecrackers.
The rioters are mainly students. There are several groups that have different and conflicting goals. All of them demand the resignation of the present government. Most of them want the constitution revoked and rewritten. Some of them demand more transparency of the king and the royal family and fewer privileges for the king.
Those demands are very difficult to meet, if not outright impossible. First of all the government: the present prime minister is general Prayuth Chan-O-Cha, rtd. He is “elected”. Yeah, he really is. Prayuth took control of the country in a coup. That’s quite normal in Thailand. Usually the military government takes control for a couple of months, appoints a civil government, then hands over control to them. Of course that civil government will do exactly what they want.
Prayuth didn’t follow the pattern. He took control, and kept it. That’s not the way military coups usually work in Thailand. He stayed in office as long as he could. Then called for civil elections, after rewriting the constitution. And announced he wouldn’t mind doing another four years. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it. He was willing to carry on the burden. Of course he was re-elected.
In those four years Thailand was under an arms embargo from the USA. That’s why you see a lot of Chinese and Russian/East European military equipment appearing in the Thai army. He would much rather have American equipment; that’s why he (and his cabinet) retired from the army. You could say that the Thai army is the world leader in camouflage: the present cabinet is exactly the same junta that committed the coup, only ‘retired’. With success, as most governments seem to believe that.
It’s pretty much standard procedure to rewrite the constitution. The current version is the 26th. In it, the military can appoint (without elections) 30 generals in parliament, with veto powers. As Prayuth sees it, he can’t solve the problems in a couple of years. That’s why he made sure the army will retain power for the next 20-30 years in the future.
Whether that artificial stability works remains to be seen. All he did was make it impossible for anybody but the army to commit a coup. That ‘anybody’ has a name: Thaksin Shinawatra. He was elected twice, each time with an absolute majority. After he was ousted in a coup, the new elected civilian government was run by his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, until she was impeached, followed by — you guessed it — another coup.
The (now) civilian government is firmly in control. They had the red shirts (supporters of Thaksin) arrested, together with the yellow shirts (middle class of Bangkok; they hated Thaksin). You could say that the red and yellow shirts were beaten by the green shirts (army), and you wouldn’t be wrong.
Under the Prayuth administration King Rama IX died, and his son now Rama X, ascended the throne. King Rama IX was dearly loved by the population. The present king, not so much. He also steers to a more absolute form of monarchy. The kind of monarchy that would make Louis XIV say: and they call me an absolute monarch!
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