I have wanted to post a piece for my readers explaining some of the complexities of the current Thai political situation, but I didn't want to post something so publicly while I was still in Thailand, under martial law and the attendant uncertainties of being present for this latest of many Thai military interventions.
Trying to make sense of recent developments is also greatly complicated by issues related to the monarchy, in general, and to the question of succession to the throne in particular.
Since the September 2006 coup, which ousted the controversial yet democratically-elected prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, various Thai regimes--both military and civilian--have made liberal use of the nation's strict lese majeste laws. These measures, also known as the 112 laws for the number of the pertinent article in the Thai criminal code, have been used to stifle all national debate about Thailand's aging and ailing King Bhumiphol Adulyadej and his important role in various political crises over the years.
For that reason alone I hesitate to publish much about what I know regarding the last decade or so of Thai political development because I don't want to end up on a Thai blacklist and be barred from entering the country.
Since the bloody events of May 2010, when an army-backed civilian government led by Democrat Party leader and prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva turned its guns on so-called Red Shirts supporters of Mr Thaksin's party, killing perhaps 100 people in the process, I have read as much as I can online, in the newspapers, in news magazines, and in books, about Thailand's fragile democracy and the struggles of ordinary people to be represented by their own chosen leaders.
The story of Thaksin's rise and fall, and the roots of that story, go back 20-25 years to the period when I made Thailand my temporary home.
To simplify the story somewhat, let me backtrack to 1997. By that year Thailand had had five years of different civilian government following another major crisis, the Black May events of 1992.
Black May was a middle-class protest by Bangkok yuppies and students against the attempt by another junta chief, Suchinda Krapayoon, to appoint himself head of an unelected civilian government.
Former Bangkok governor and army major general Chamlong Srimuang was a major leader of these protests which ended when the army opened fire on the protesters, killing at least 100 people but possibly another several hundred more.
After Black May Thai politicians and leaders of the military, the bureaucracy, and the palace began a long, strenuous process of political reform which culminated in 1997 with the promulgation of the so-called "People's Constitution". Most of my friends and many others from across the spectrum of Thai society welcomed this major reform because it marked the first time in Thai history that ordinary people had some say in the writing of their nation's basic law.
Out of this development came Thaksin, a self-made billionaire telecommunications tycoon and the richest man in Thailand, who bankrolled his own party, Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais), which won the most parliamentary seats in an early 2001 election.
Thaksin became the first Thai prime minister in history to finish a full four-year term. His tenure was marked by unprecedentedly populist policies such as the One Tambon One Product (OTOP) scheme which aimed to promote one product for every provincial subdistrict in the country; and the 30-baht doctor visit scheme, effectively a universal health care program which brought affordable doctor and clinic visits to millions of rural people.
Like many Thai leaders, however, Thaksin displayed a nasty authoritarian side, too, with his murderous "war on drugs" in 2002 which unleashed police forces nation-wide who gunned down accused drug dealers in an orgy of extra-judicial killing that left two to three thousand people dead in less than three months.
Human rights groups, however, accused the police of killing many people--including innocent men, women, and children--who had nothing at all to do with the lucrative illegal drug trade. Indeed, it's no secret in Thailand that some of the biggest drug lords in the country are powerful elite figures from the police, the military, and civilian political circles.
Despite this carnage, however, Thaksin remained so popular with ordinary people--especially from the north and northeastern regions of the country--that not only did he finish his four-year term but also he and his party were re-elected in a landslide victory in early 2005.
Behind the scenes, however, Thai leaders in the army, the bureaucracy, and the palace--the traditional triumvirate of Thai power--were becoming increasingly nervous about Thaksin's popularity. Indeed, several NGOs from the 1992-1997 period who had been very active in the anti-military democracy movement of Black May and the People's Constitution were now beginning to regret what they had helped to unleash.
Those people had come to see Thaksin as an old-style Thai dictator who used vote-buying at the ballot box and populist post-election policies to maintain a monopoly on political power.
Others were also starting to fear that Thaksin, with some of his behind-the-scenes maneuvering, was planning to usurp the monarchy, establish a republic, and become something like a "president for life".
One such group, the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) led by another wealthy tycoon, Sondhi Limthongkul, began staging anti-Thaksin government protests in early 2006.
When PAD protesters, also known as the Yellow Shirts, refused to recognize Thaksin's legitimacy in the wake of his historic 2006 landslide victory, his own supporters began to rally on his behalf under the banner of the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UFDD), an umbrella group for various pro-government supporters who became known as the Red Shirts.
By the time of my August 2006 visit, Bangkok was divided down the middle by these more-or-less permanent protest camps, and one strange incident in the news caught my attention that month: an army staff sergeant was arrested while cruising through Thaksin's Bangkok neighborhood in an army vehicle which was loaded with grenades and other explosive materials.
Police--who were known generally to be an important Thaksin power base, Thaksin himself having been a former police captain--accused the army sergeant of casing Thaksin's home and taking part in an assassination plot under orders from a murky, mysterious army faction.
Just a month later, the army stepped in and ousted Thaksin in the first coup in 15 years. Many people, including the king, quickly endorsed this move. Thaksin immediately left Thailand for a lengthy self-imposed exile in Dubai and Great Britain.
In full disclosure, I was also a reluctant supporter of this coup because I was sickened by the police violence Thaksin instigated in 2002. I also believed that the main opposition party in parliament, the 60-year-old Democrat Party led by the young Oxford-educated Abhisit Vejjajiva, was the cleaner of the two major parties, Thaksin's party having been filled with some of the most corrupt politicians of the previous decade and a half.
The aftermath of the 2006 coup marked the commencement of eight years of unrelenting political divide between the Red Shirts, who broadly represented Thaksin supporters but also other groups and NGOs in favor of free speech, poverty alleviation, farmers' rights, land reform, rural "upcountry" matters, blue-collar workers, and similar causes and issues; and the Yellow Shirts, who broadly represented the Bangkok middle-class, white-collar workers, the massive Thai government bureaucracy, certain army factions, certain palace factions, and other urbanized, educated elites.
By May 2010, Abhisit's Democrats were in power, but the Red Shirts refused to recognize his government because essentially it was an unelected regime appointed and backed by certain army leaders. When Red Shirt leaders refused to stop their mass protests, Abhisit ordered (or was himself ordered to order) security forces to intervene. Another minor bloodbath ensued and martial law was declared.
Another round of elections was called, and eventually Thaksin's sister Yingluck Shinawatra became Thailand's first woman prime minister after her party, widely understood to be funded by her still-exiled brother, won the 2011 elections.
What these elections have illustrated--indeed, what all elections in Thailand since 2001 have shown--is that only Thaksin or Thaksin-backed parties and candidates can win Thai elections.
And since 2006, the only way an anti-Thaksin party or politician can gain power is through the barrel of an army-backed gun. And a vicious political cycle turns, and turns again.
The Yingluck government lasted just a little over two years. But vigorous protests by the Yellow Shirts insisted that she was only a Thaksin clone, doing Thaksin's bidding, and therefore hers was an illegitimate government, even if she and her party had been duly elected in a free and fair ballot.
The Yellow Shirts refused to end their protests until another "more legitimate", appointed government could be installed to represent "all Thai people", not just the rural poor and upcountry people from the northern and northeastern regions of the country.
The Red Shirt counter-protesters set up permanent camps in the capital, insisting that the Yellow Shirts should go home, that they only represented the urbanized Bangkok elites, and that they would always resort to making backroom deals with various army leaders in order to cling to power illegitimately.
By early 2014 these two permanent protest camps in Bangkok had brought conventional politics, the Thai parliament, and the elected government to a virtual standstill. Both sides were reportedly resorting, as they had in 2010, to low-level incidents of violence including random grenade strikes, bombings, and targeted assassinations. Fears were high in some circles that Thailand was about to descend into civil war.
In turn, the low-level violence was having a very negative effect on Thai business and the overall economy. Current estimates indicate that the economy contracted by as much as 2%-3% in the first quarter of this year.
And the economy wasn't helped by the negative perception of foreigners who began to pull money out of investments and began canceling vacation visits to the kingdom in alarming numbers. This was a very ill omen in a country that depends upon tourism for as much as 10% of its GDP.
Therefore, when the Thai army announced its declaration of martial law on May 20, just as I was preparing to board my Hanoi-bound flight from Chicago, and when just two days later they announced the formation of the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO, or Khor Sor Chor in Thai) to replace the luckless Yingluck government, I was sad for Thailand and its people, but hardly surprised.
Yet another cycle begins: the NCPO announces that elections will be held in September 2015. A Thaksin-funded party led by a Thaksin-backed surrogate will win by a landslide. The PAD and its supporters will cry foul and say the election was illegitimate. The Red Shirts and their supporters will rally behind the elected government, claiming that the PAD only represents Thailand's grimy backroom politics and is therefore illegitimate. Low-level violence will once again ensue, businesses will get nervous again, tourists will cancel their holiday trips, and plenty of educated Thai people will again call for a military leader who can break the semi-permanent political impasse and "get things done again for the further development of Thai-style democracy".
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