The Travails of Thailand

Thailand has just suffered its third judicial coup in six years. This week the Constitutional Court ordered the removal of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and nine of her cabinet ministers for replacing a national security adviser held over from a previous administration. In so ruling, the judges read into the Constitution constraints on the government’s powers that have little basis in the document.

Ms. Yingluck’s ouster may seem like one more spasm in Thailand’s protracted political crisis. But it is far more ominous than that. The judicial removal of an elected prime minister on political grounds is emblematic of the no-holds-barred approach of her opponents, not only in the political arena but also at nominally independent institutions.

The Constitutional Court’s ruling came as little surprise. In short succession in 2008, it ousted Samak Sundaravej and Somchai Wongsawat, two prime ministers loyal to Yingluck’s brother, Thaksin, also a former prime minister. And for the past six months Mr. Thaksin’s enemies have been trying to destroy Ms. Yingluck’s government.

Last fall, the self-proclaimed People’s Democratic Reform Committee fronted by the veteran Democrat Party politician Suthep Thaugsuban started street protests in reaction to an amnesty bill that would have allowed Mr. Thaksin to return from self-imposed exile abroad. These protests were backed by funding from powerful business interests and crowds drawn from Bangkok’s largely ethnic-Chinese middle-class. In response, Ms. Yingluck dissolved Parliament and called for early elections in February. Her Pheu Thai Party won those, after the Democrats refused to take part. In March, the Constitutional Court ruled those elections invalid.

Ms. Yingluck’s departure does not affect her party’s status as caretaker government. But the government’s plans to hold another election in July are now uncertain. The People’s Democratic Reform Committee and the Democrats claim that thorough political reform is needed before any more voting can take place. What they seek, really, is to topple Pheu Thai and install an unelected government to manage the reform process. In other words, the bitter conflict continues between the so-called red shirts of the Thaksin camp, with its base in the rural north and northeast of the country, and the urban and royalist yellow shirts.

This conflict will end eventually. And the Constitutional Court’s latest ruling against Ms. Yingluck matters most for what it portends for the political order that will emerge when that happens. Thailand’s yellow shirts, frustrated by their repeated losses at the ballot box, have adopted a mantra stressing that democracy is about more than elections. They are calling for strong independent institutions to check corruption among politicians and tame the electorate’s whims.

Their demands center mainly on strengthening the courts, the electoral commission and the anti-corruption agency. Yet as the Constitutional Court’s removal of Ms. Yingluck makes clear, these institutions often act on behalf of the yellow shirts’ interests, striking at their political enemies. Thailand’s electoral commission resisted cooperating with the government to organize voting in February. Now it is saying the July election may need to be postponed, on grounds it has not bothered to make clear. The anti-corruption agency charges that Ms. Yingluck mismanaged a rice subsidy program. Despite any specific evidence, it is calling for her impeachment.

In effect, the yellow shirts are gambling that they can politicize these institutions to serve their own ends, only to build them back up after they defeat the red shirts. This is reckless.

The state of Thailand’s other traditional institutional pillars makes this gambit all the more dangerous. The Thai monarchy, whose prominence was restored during the Cold War by King Bhumibol Adulyadej and his partners in the military and the bureaucracy, has a much less sharply defined role today.

Then there is the military. No one in or outside Thailand wants to see the armed forces dominate the country’s politics once again. Yet the latest crisis suggests that, even after decades of the country becoming more open and more wealthy, the military remains its most robust institution.

One measure of the army’s robustness has been its refusal in recent months to intervene directly to end the political crisis. It staged a coup to oust Mr. Thaksin in 2006, only to watch the failure of the government that came next and then the victory of a pro-Thaksin party in the 2007 election. This time around, the military leadership is committed to protecting the army’s integrity; after all, many troops come from the red-shirt heartland.

The prospects for Thai democracy in the post-Bhumibol, post-Shinawatra era will hinge on the independence of the country’s institutions and people’s faith in them. But the partisanship displayed by the Constitutional Court this week undermines the legitimacy of such bodies in a way that will be felt long after the present crisis is over.

Michael J. Montesano is co-coordinator of the Thailand Studies Program at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.

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