What does a nation do when its civilian political leadership is popular but wrong?
In Thailand, they have a time-tested mechanism for dealing with that problem: the military steps in, cleans up the system, instructs the politicians on good behavior, rewrites the constitution, and hands power back to civilians until they mess things up all over again.
In 80 years of Thai constitutionalism, there have been 18 coup attempts with 12 of them pulled off successfully. The Thai military, the first modernized institution in that country and often the last functional agency, is generally accepted as the final pillar of nationhood.
Unlike the Filipino military that sees itself as the final protector of the people, the Thai military sees itself as the final guarantor of nationhood. It is the hard core of the state that strikes hard when the civilian political system becomes dysfunctional.
There is only one authority higher than the Thai military: the monarchy. The Thai king is seen as some sort of divinity, standing scrupulously above the political fray. When the military oversteps, as when they once attempted an unwarranted coup, the generals are summoned by the king and they report to him on their knees.
The uniqueness of last Thursday’s coup, however, is that the military establishment appears most reluctant to take power. For six months, there has been turmoil in Bangkok’s streets, but the generals tried their best to stay away from partisan dispute.
Last Tuesday, the Army chief declared martial rule after people were shot and killed in rival demonstrations going on at the Thai capital. Politicians from the contending factions were summoned to a conference by the generals. For two days, the generals tried to forge a consensus among the politicians. When none could be reached, a coup was announced and the political leaders were hauled off to detention.
Even if the generals were reluctant to take power, this coup is outstanding for its exemplary orchestration.
Past coups involved factions of the military rolling their tanks into Bangkok to scuttle a dysfunctional government. This time, there appears to be a high level of consensus among military leaders. The entire Thai military, in clockwork maneuvers, quickly deployed to quash any resistance — particularly in the volatile Thai provinces of the north and the northeast where the Shinawatra siblings (Thaksin and Yingluck) enjoy solid popular support.
A “Peace and Order Maintaining Council†was established, composed of the heads of all the military services and the police force. That Council has not yet set a timeline for political changes and an eventual election. If it sticks by tradition, it eventually will — even if it is impossible to calculate when the political class might be rehabilitated.
The early signs suggest that this time the military might hold power for a longer period, even if it was merely pushed by events to do what it did. Any elections into the foreseeable future will likely see the Shinawatras capture the popular vote.
The previous military coup in 2006 was launched to oust Thaksin Shinawatra. Before the military intervened, Thaksin enjoyed vast popular support outside the Greater Bangkok area, especially from farming communities that most benefitted from his populist policies. The urban population, however, vehemently disagreed with Thaksin’s policies and accused him of amassing vast personal wealth by leveraging political power to benefit his family conglomerate.
An unremarkable prime minister was installed soon after under the military’s sponsorship. In the subsequent free elections, however, the large pro-Thaksin electorate voted in his younger sister and her Thaksin-inspired party.
A couple of weeks ago, in what was seen by partisans as a judicial coup, the constitutional court dislodged Yingluck for what seems to be an inconsequential infraction. That event regurgitated the street demonstrations and deepened the polarization of Thai political opinion. The rival demonstrations tended towards rising partisan violence.
All of Thai politics was consumed by this polarization. The air is poisoned and dialogue became impossible. Everyone expected the political confrontations to spiral — until the Thai military stepped in this week by imposing martial rule.
Because Thailand operates on a parliamentary tradition, the ouster of governments rarely interrupts the operation of the state bureaucracy. Unlike here where bureaucratic appointments are highly politicized, the Thai bureaucracy is quite autonomous of the politicians. Coups are rarely as disruptive of the operations of the state as the sight of tanks in the streets might suggest.
The impasse that evolved between the rival political factions did not make the coup inevitable. It made the coup necessary. The generals simply bowed to that necessity. It is now the turn of the monarch to indicate where things would go and at what pace.
While the coup might not be as disruptive as it might seem, it still creates such uncertainty that the dramatic developments will negatively impact the economy. That is the cost to pay here.
As news of the coup in Thailand spread last Thursday, people in Manila asked: will a coup happen here too?
In Thailand, the coup of 2006 and then this one was caused by the divisive politics of the Shinawatras. That caused the political system to become dysfunctional.
In the Philippines, in the midst of a corruption scandal on a scale we never saw before, affecting nearly the entire political class, the constitutional order might be moving inexorably towards a complete collapse of legitimacy. People hold the politicians with great disdain and look at state agencies with great dismay.
We, too, are teetering on the brink of a breakdown of the constitutional order.