BANGKOK (AP) — The question to Thailand’s army chief was a
basic one: After he declared martial law this week, would he be
consulting the government? His response encapsulated the increasingly
surreal nature of this Southeast Asian country’s political crisis.
"Where
is the government right now? Where are they now? I don’t know," Gen.
Prayuth Chan-ocha snapped before adding awkwardly: "I’m not interfering
with the government, or anybody."
But where, actually, is the elected leadership of Thailand? Few people here believe it is still running
the country.
Six
months of protests have forced its severely weakened Cabinet to shift
offices constantly to avoid being harassed by demonstrators. By the time
the army intervened Tuesday, a government that had been in firm power
in November found itself caught off guard, its leaders meeting at an
undisclosed location that one aide described as "a safe house."
As
Thailand tries to make sense of a move that the army denies was a coup,
one thing, at least, is certain: The nation’s caretaker government has
been rendered virtually powerless even as the rest of the country
largely functions normally.
"Thailand is like a car driving on
cruise control right now," said Sunai Phasuk, a senior researcher for
Human Rights Watch in Bangkok. "But nobody is at the wheel, and it’s
probably going to crash."
Yet the crash, if it is coming, is happening in slow motion.
Glass-encased
shopping malls and ornate temples are open as always. Bangkok’s
red-light districts still throb with activity. Civil servants still
dutifully review passport applications and oversee driver’s license
exams. And for almost all of the country, no military is in sight.
On
Wednesday, Prayuth assumed the role of mediator by summoning the
country’s key political rivals for face-to-face talks. The meeting ended
without resolution, underscoring the immense challenges the army will
face in trying to broker an end to the conflict, and more talks are due
Thursday.
Thailand has been plagued by major bouts of political
turmoil since 2006, when the army toppled Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra, unleashing a deeper societal schism that continues to this
day.
On one side: the members of Thailand’s conservative
establishment, who along with staunch royalists and the largely urban
upper and middle classes see Thaksin’s family as a corrupt threat to
traditional structures of power.
On the other: a poorer rural
majority in the north and northeast that was politically awakened by
Thaksin’s populist policies, which brought them everything from
electricity to nearly free health-care for the first time.
When
Thaksin’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, was named prime minister after
the ruling Pheu Thai party won a 2011 ballot in a landslide, she managed
a fragile detente with the military.
And for a time, her government appeared to be firmly in charge.
In
November, the ruling party made a disastrous attempt to ram a
controversial amnesty bill through Parliament that would have allowed
Thaksin to return from self-imposed exile from Dubai, where he lives to
avoid a corruption conviction he says was politically motivated.
Protesters
took to the streets, and when Yingluck dissolved the lower house in
December and called new elections to defuse tensions, things only got
worse. The dissolution limited her administration’s powers so severely
it had to seek approval from the Election Commission even to allocate
funds to support state projects.
The country’s courts and
oversight agencies have also steadily chipped away the government’s
authority in rulings critics say show political bias. After
demonstrators boldly stormed government ministries, attacked the prime
minister’s office with homemade rockets and threatened to "capture"
Yingluck, courts quashed arrest warrants for protest leaders, arguing
they had the right to demonstrate peacefully.
The Constitutional
Court then annulled February elections that Yingluck’s party would
likely have won, citing the fact the ballot could not be held in all
constituencies on a single day, even though that was because
demonstrators — none was ever prosecuted — had openly obstructed the
poll.
Now — two weeks after the Constitutional Court ousted
Yingluck and nine Cabinet ministers for abuse of power for transferring a
senior civil servant two years earlier — the army has imposed martial
law. The army intervention dealt another severe blow to what’s left of
Thailand’s increasingly cornered civilian leadership, now led by acting
Prime Minister Niwattumrong Boonsongpaisan.
On Tuesday,
Niwattumrong insisted "the government will continue its job in running
the country" and would work with the army to peacefully resolve the
crisis, which has killed 28 people and injured more than 800.
It can do little else.
"The
only thing the caretaker government has left is electoral legitimacy,
the fact that it came into power by elections," Sunai said. "But
otherwise it has no power. Only the day-to-day bureaucracy is still
functioning. No policy level decisions are being made."
Despite
the imposition of martial law, protesters led by former lawmaker Suthep
Thaugsuban say they will not give up. Since last week, they have pressed
the army, the Senate and the nation’s courts to install a "neutral"
prime minister — something the government says is a threat to the
nation’s democratic system and would be tantamount to a judicial coup.
There
are fears that if that happens, the government’s Red Shirt supporters,
who are now massing on the edge of Bangkok under the watchful eye of the
army, will rise up and there will be more bloodshed.
Pavin
Chachavalpongpun, an associate professor at Kyoto University’s Center
for Southeast Asian Studies, said that although the government’s
ultimate fate is uncertain, Thai history could be a guide.
"The
traditional elites always tried to keep civilian administrations weak
and vulnerable," Pavin said. "The only governments that survived were
those who worked with the conservative establishment, rather than
challenge it."