I've been very busy these past couple of weeks because school term has started. I don't really have time to write a new blog but I would like to share a short essay I wrote back in November last year for class on Politics of Southeast Asia. What has happened in Thailand since then has further confirmed my thesis in the essay.

“I would say that nothing is worse than what Thaksin has done… Thaksin has already carried out what I would call a silent coup, because he called the country as a dictatorship by using money in a corrupt way… Nothing is worse than the Thaksin regime.” - Former Thai senator Chirmsak Pinthong, in response to the 2006 military coup

Non-electoral participation of mass and civil society groups is considered by many scholars of democratization as an essential force for fostering democratic progress. With this in mind, many observers of Thai politics might have observed in the 1990s that “the defeat of the coup junta, movement for constitutional reform, growing confidence of NGOs and assertiveness of the press were taken as evidence that Thai society had experienced… the development of ‘civil society’”. 

However, in 2006, the country witnessed yet another military coup  - an event that would bring us to the question of why “the trends that point to the positive shift in perception of power away from the traditional sources of power such as the monarch and the military to representatives of democratic institutions ” has failed to produce long-lasting democracy.

This paper explores and draws meaningful insights from political behavior of civil society groups in the series of political events leading to and in response to the 2006 military coup. This paper asserts that there were growing forces of civil society and increasing political participation of the urban upper- and middle-class in the immediate years prior to the coup. However, these forces fail to facilitate the course of democratic progress largely because many members of this politically active civil society do not adhere to the principles of popular democracy.  

Prinat Apirat emphasizes non-electoral participation as an important element in successful development of democracy and argues that “it requires civic participation to sustain the democratic process as well as constrain government activities. ” That is, the presence of “democratic citizens ” who actively participate in elections and non-election political activities is crucial to democracy.

In this respect, the pre-coup anti-Thaksin movements offered encouraging signs of progress. Many civil society groups, such as the academia, the press, the NGOs and professional associations, were consistently critical of the government on various grounds . Thaksin-related issues became hot topics of discussions among members of the general public and within the active online community .

Loosely organized associations representing people from diverse fields – doctors, architects, engineers, taxi drivers and many others – publicly expressed their protest against Thaksin. The People Alliance for Democracy (PAD) was formed in 2005 as a coalition of protesters and was very active in organizing large protest rallies in which prominent public figures as well as ordinary urban citizens participated. With these active non-electoral participations, Thai democratic progress looked promising.

The anti-Thaksin movement, concentrated in Bangkok, reflects high political awareness, active political participation and high demand for good governance among the urban middle-class . The anti-Thaksin movement also resembles the May 1992 demonstrations in the sense that both events could be portrayed as “the emergence of the middle class in leading the mass movement. ” These upper- and middle-class people are “free individuals released from patronage ties, the bureaucratic polity, and the tyrannies of tradition ” who formed a loosely structured network with the common goal of removing Thaksin. It should be noted that civic participation comprised pro-Thaksin movements as well.

If urban-based civil society groups and mass participation were so active in its criticisms of the government, why has the Thai society witnessed yet another military coup? Shouldn’t the growing civic forces be consolidating democracy? The answer to this question lies in the very characteristic of the urban upper- and middle-class “democratic citizens”: the lack of faith in popular democracy principles.

The claim that these “democratic citizens” do not always adhere to democratic principles is evident in many occasions. Turning back to 1991, many “democratic citizens” initially supported the coup against the notoriously corrupt Chatchai government. In 2006, after Thaksin had dissolved the parliament and called for a snap election to be held in April, the three main opposition parties announced that they would boycott the election.

Then, upon learning that Thaksin’s party had won more than 16 million votes in the April election, Chamlong Srimuang, a PAD leader, declared that the PAD would not accept the election results because Thaksin “has no legitimacy to rule” and that it would “go on rallying until Thaksin resigns and Thailand gets a royally-appointed prime minister. ” This movement for royal intervention started in March 2006 when a group of nearly 100 prominent citizens submitted a petition to the King, requesting for a royally appointed prime minister to ensure fair and free election. 

The idea of royal intervention was also supported by many civil society groups, including the PAD, the Press Council of Thailand, and the Democrat Party leader, all of whom saw royal intervention as the only way for Thailand to resolve its political crisis. Although the request failed to materialize as the King dismissed it as “undemocratic” and “irrational” , it suggested to the military elites that many of these “democratic citizens” were willing to accept undemocratic solution to the political problem. A coup might have been regarded as impossible before, but not any more.

As such, it was by no means surprising that the strongest evidence of the lack of faith in popular democracy among the urban “democratic citizens” was to be found in their response to the coup. Not all members of the anti-Thaksin forces welcomed the coup, but a large portion of them certainly did. The general public also seemed to accept the coup as a public opinion poll conducted one day after the coup showed that 84% of the respondents “agreed with” the coup and 75% believed that it would “improve Thai politics ”.

To many senators, professors, members of the press, politicians and others who backed the coup, any means, albeit an unconstitutional one, was justified as long as it could bring down Thaksin and his corrupt regime. To them, democratic elections do not matter if the outcome goes against what they would like it to be. After all, many of them claim that the millions of votes Thaksin has received in elections could be disregarded because these votes are considered to have been “bought”, either through outright vote-buying or populist policies.

All the above observations clearly illustrate the following paradox: the politically active, urban-based “democratic citizens” in Thailand do not adhere to popular democracy principles. While their enthusiastic criticisms of the government and strong demand for good governance are positive factors for democratic progress, their acceptance of unconstitutional means as a solution to political problems and their rejection of popular democracy hinder the development of a strong democracy.

Members of this kind of urban-based, higher-class-centric civil society are merely critical of their government and the way democracy functions; they do not believe in or practice democratic ideals. Thus, the growth of civil society per se is insufficient to develop and sustain democracy; the root and the attitudes of its members matter significantly as well.

As long as civil society development in Thailand is still dominated by the urban upper- and middle-class people who do not truly believe in democratic principles, a military coup against a democratically elected government will always remain a highly likely possibility.