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Thai Opposition Losing its Gamble?
TUE,04 MARCH 2014
Asia Sentinel |
| Lady cops at Ratchaprasong |
Feeling in Bangkok is that the courts may rule to preserve PM Yingluck in power
It is starting to appear that the gamble by forces
backing Thai opposition leader Suthep Thaugsuban to use the courts to
drive Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her fugitive brother
Thaksin from political dominance may fail.
That coincides with a fading campaign to attempt to
bring down the government through three months of demonstrations that
closed government offices, choked Bangkok intersections, damaged tourism
and cut into gross domestic product. As one of the omens that things
may be making a turn for the better, the country’s stock market has
again begun to rise, slowly but steadily, from 1304.62 on Feb. 26 to
1345 on March 4. Another omen is a report that the Election Commission
has approved US$22 million from the central budget to pay rice farmers
who pledged their rice under the rice-pledging scheme.
Suthep announced Sunday that the opposition forces,
backed surreptitiously by some of the country’s biggest businesses and
banks, would abandon the Ratchaprasong intersection that was the center
of the campaign and other venues in Bangkok and consolidate in Lumpini
Park. In reality, Suthep, who advocates a non-elected People's
Democratic Reform Committee to run the government while enacting
reforms, has only been able to rally a few hundred demonstrators at
successively weakening rallies.
That doesn’t mean the political chaos that has plagued
the city for three months is over. Some 53 leaders of Suthep’s PDRC have
been issued summons for insurrection and instigating people to break
the law, which they have ignored. Thugs armed with automatic rifles
continue to patrol the streets. There are still significant dangers on
all sides, including the very real threat of all-out civil war –
especially if Thailand’s Anti-Corruption Court rules to force Yingluck
to step down.
From the start, the elites, aligned with the Democrat
Party, have been counting on the courts to oust Yingluck, as the courts
have ousted Thaksin surrogate governments from power going back to 2007.
From the start, sources say in Bangkok, the demonstrations have largely
been largely a sideshow to the greater strategy of forcing a decision
from traditionally Democrat-friendly courts.
The current action is in the Anti-Corruption Court,
where Yingluck faces impeachment over her role as head of a wasteful and
largely corrupt rice-pledging scheme that had a devastating impact on
the treasury, roiled the global rice market and has left unpaid farmers
furious. The prime minster was charged with negligence on Feb. 26. If
found guilty, she could be removed from office and would face a
five-year ban from politics.
The charges, however, have energized the Red Shirt
forces who dominate the north and northeast of the country and led to
the looming threat of violence. Army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha warned last
week that the country could face collapse unless the political crisis
is addressed.
“The actual legal grounds are for impeachment are shaky
in the extreme, to say the least,” a western banker told Asia Sentinel.
“The Red Shirts are now emboldened and mobilized, then maybe the
judicial court will decide she is not guilty? I think the consequences
of a judicial coup might be very bloody.”
That possibility of violence, according to other
sources, may be weighing on the court, along with rising irritation at
the courts’ tactics. On Feb. 19, a civil court, although upholding a
60-day state of emergency called by the government, ruled that police
couldn’t use force to clear protesters from government buildings and
voided a ban on gatherings of five or more people, saying it violated
their constitutional rights to rally.
That decision was met with widespread anger and dismay
on the part of the general public, leaving critics asking how the
government could get access to its own offices without clearing out the
protesters. It has been impossible to renew a driver’s license or take
care of other mundane tasks for weeks, causing pubic irritation while
the government has played a careful role, avoiding violence as much as
possible at all costs.
“Tactically Yingluck has played this street battle
well,” the western banker said. “Police are back on duty at
Ratchaprasong intersection for the first time in weeks, sanitation
workers are cleaning the streets. Now the government will start to
return to work. And the red forces will be primed, ready for action.”
If Suthep’s forces are in danger of losing the campaign
to oust the government, however, political analysts say in Bangkok,
Yingluck’s Pheu Thai Party has fared little better. Both sides have
suffered almost irreparable damage with the public, making it
questionable how Thailand can be governed.
Pheu Thai started the mess by attempting to force
through a blanket amnesty bill that would have allowed her fugitive
brother to return from exile without having to face prison time on
charges of corruption that drove him from the country in 2008. It would
also have exempted both Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva and
Suthep, then a deputy leader, from charges of murder for the brutal 2010
crackdown that left 90 people dead, most of them protesters, when the
army attacked Red Shirt forces to end their own occupation of the
Ratchaprasong intersection.
Certainly the events have shown a spotlight again on
the long list of concerns over Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai government which
led to his ouster, including allegations of widespread corruption,
enriching his family, authoritarianism, muzzling the press and human
rights violations over his “war on drugs” in which the police went on a
murderous spree, killing 2,500 people, about half of whom were said not
to be involved in drugs at all.
The Democrats have been irrevocably stained by the
tactics they used subsequently to drive the democratically elected Pheu
Thai government from power, however, and to force a Feb. 3 snap
election, which they then attempted to block. They have deliberately
courted police action in the hope that a crackdown would stain the
government, as the 2010 crackdown stained the Democrats..
Considerable violence has been directed at
anti-government protesters as well, although it is difficult to say
where it has been coming from. Pheu Thai leaders have repeatedly asked
their followers to refrain from violence but with millions of
disaffected Red Shirt followers primed for action, it is impossible to
rule out.
At least 21 people have been killed so far, including
four children hit by stray bullets or thrown grenades. A further 720 are
said by authorities to have been injured. The damage to Thai political
institutions has been severe, creating a leadership vacuum that will
probably take months if not years to resolve.
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