[P2P-F] Fwd: FW: [aepf] Class War: Thailand’s Military Coup

Wed May 28 06:03:11 CEST 2014

thanks Francois for this excellent analysis of the dark tidings from
Thailand, completely agree with it,

Michel

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Francois Houtart <houtart at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, May 27, 2014 at 7:09 PM
Subject: FW: [aepf] Class War: Thailand’s Military Coup
To: Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>

François Houtart

houtart at hotmail.com

Fundación Pueblo Indio del Ecuador

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170520 - Quito ECUADOR

Tel. (593) (2) 32.12.100 (593) 09.69.55.06.40

Rue Kelle, 192/6 - B-1150 Bruxelles

Tel. (32) 476.31.50.53

------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 May 2014 08:02:33 +0800
From: josephp at focusweb.org
To: eu-asean-fta-philippines-campaign-network at googlegroups.com;
stopthenewround-philippines at yahoogroups.com; pmcj at googlegroups.com;
aepf at lists.riseup.net
Subject: [aepf] Class War: Thailand’s Military Coup

Class War: Thailand’s Military
Coup<http://www.thenation.com/blog/180023/class-war-thailands-military-coup>
Walden Bello <http://www.thenation.com/authors/walden-bello> and Foreign
Policy In Focus <http://www.thenation.com/authors/foreign-policy-focus> on
May 27, 2014 - 5:00 PM ET

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[image: Thai coup]<http://www.thenation.com/sites/default/files/thai_coup_ap_img.jpg>

*A Thai police officer detains an anti-coup protester in Bangkok, May 24,
2014. (AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn)*

This article is a joint publication of TheNation.com and Foreign Policy In
Focus <http://fpif.org/class-war-thailands-military-coup/>.

After declaring martial law on Tuesday, May 20, the Thai military announced
a full-fledged coup two days later. The putsch followed seven months of
massive street protests against the ruling Pheu Thai government identified
with former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The power grab by army chief
Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha came two weeks after Thaksin’s sister, Yingluck, was
ousted as caretaker prime minister by the country’s Constitutional Court
for “abuse of power” on May 7.

The Thai military portrayed its seizure of power as an effort to impose
order after two rounds of talks between the country’s rival factions failed
to produce a compromise that would provide Thailand with a functioning
government.

*Deftly Managed Script*

The military’s narrative produced few takers. Indeed, many analysts saw the
military’s move as a *coup de grâce* to Thailand’s elected government,
following what they saw as the judicial coup of May 7.

It is indeed difficult not to see the putsch as the final step in a script
deftly managed by the conservative “royalist” establishment to thwart the
right to govern of a populist political bloc that has won every election
since 2001. Utilizing anti-corruption discourse to inflame the middle class
into civil protest, the aim of key forces in the anti-government coalition
has been, from the start, to create the kind of instability that would
provoke the military to step in and provide the muscle for a new political
order.

Using what analyst Marc Saxer calls “middle class rage” as the battering
ram, these elite elements forced the resignation of the Yingluck government
in December; disrupted elections in February, thus providing the
justification for the conservative Constitutional Court to nullify them;
and instigated that same court’s decision to oust Yingluck as caretaker
prime minister on May 7 on flimsy charges of “abuse of power.” Civil
protest was orchestrated with judicial initiatives to pave the way for a
military takeover.

The military says that it will set up a “reform council” and a “national
assembly” that will lay the institutional basis of a new government. This
plan sounds very much like the plan announced in late November by the
protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, which would place the country for a year
under an unelected, unaccountable reform panel.

The military’s move has largely elicited the approval of Suthep’s base of
middle-class supporters. Indeed, it has been middle-class support that has
provided cover for the calculated moves of the political elites. Many of
those that provided the backbone of the street protests now anticipate the
drafting of an elitist new order that will institutionalize political
inequality <http://www.thenation.com/section/inequality?lc=int_mb_1001> in
favor of Bangkok and the country’s urban middle class.

*The Thai Middle Class: From Paragons to Enemies of Democracy*

The sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset once celebrated the Thai middle class
as paragons of democracy. But in recent years, middle-class Thais have
transmogrified into supporters of an elitist, frankly antidemocratic
agenda. Today’s middle class is no longer the pro-democracy middle class
that overthrew the dictatorship of Gen. Suchinda Krapayoon in 1992. What
happened?

Worth quoting in full is an insightful analysis of this transformation
provided by Marc
Saxer<http://www.social-europe.eu/2014/01/thailands-middle-class/>
:

The Bangkok middle class called for democratization and specifically the
liberalization of the state with the political rights to protect themselves
from the abuse of power by the elites. However, once democracy was
institutionalized, they found themselves to be the structural minority.
Mobilized by clever political entrepreneurs, it was now the periphery who
handily won every election. Ignorant of the rise of a rural middle class
demanding full participation in social and political life, the middle class
in the center interpreted demands for equal rights and public goods as ‘the
poor getting greedy’… [M]ajority rule was equated with unsustainable
welfare expenses, which would eventually lead to bankruptcy.

From the perspective of the middle class, Saxer continues, majority rule

overlooks the political basis of the social contract: a social compromise
between all stakeholders. Never has any social contract been signed which
obligates the middle class to foot the tax bill, in exchange for quality
public services, political stability and social peace. This is why middle
classes feel like they are “being robbed” by corrupt politicians, who use
their tax revenues to “buy votes” from the “greedy poor.” Or, in a more
subtle language, the “uneducated rural masses are easy prey for politicians
who promise them everything in an effort to get a hold of power.”

Thus, Saxer concludes, from the viewpoint of the urban middle class,

policies delivering to local constituencies are nothing but “populism,” or
another form of “vote buying” by power hungry politicians. The Thai
Constitutional Court, in a seminal ruling, thus equated the very principle
of elections with corruption. Consequently, time and again, the “yellow”
alliance of feudal elites along with the Bangkok middle class called for
the disenfranchisement of the “uneducated poor,” or even more bluntly the
suspension of electoral democracy.

*Impossible Dream*

However, the elite-middle class alliance is deceiving itself if it thinks
the adoption of a Constitution institutionalizing minority rule will be
possible. For Thailand is no longer the Thailand of twenty years ago, where
political conflicts were still largely conflicts among elites, with the
vast lower classes being either onlookers or passive followers of warring
elite factions.

What is now the driving force of Thai politics is class conflict with Thai
characteristics, to borrow from Mao. The central figure that has
transformed the Thai political landscape is the exiled Thaksin Shinawatra,
a charismatic, if corrupt, billionaire who managed through a combination of
populism, patronage and the skillful deployment of cash to create a massive
electoral majority. While for Thaksin the aim of this coalition might be
the cornering or monopolization of elite power, for the social sectors he
has mobilized, the goal is the redistribution of wealth and power from the
elites to the masses and—equally important—extracting respect for people
that had been scorned as “country bumpkins” or “buffaloes.” However much
Thaksin’s “Redshirt” movement may be derided as a coalition between corrupt
politicians and the “greedy poor,” it has become the vehicle for the
acquisition of full citizenship rights by Thailand’s marginalized classes.

The elite-middle class alliance is dreaming if it thinks that the Redshirts
will stand aside and allow them to dictate the terms of surrender, much
less institutionalize these in a new Constitution. But neither do the
Redshirts at present possess the necessary coercive power to alter the
political balance in the short and medium term. It is now their turn to
wage civil resistance.

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Since the coup, about 150 people have been reported detained—including Pravit
Rojanaphruk <http://www.trust.org/item/20140526191229-egnah/>, a prominent
reporter for Thailand’s *Nation* newspaper known for his criticism of the
anti-government protest movement that precipitated the military’s
intervention.

What now seems likely is that, with violent and nonviolent civil protest by
the Redshirts, Thailand will experience a prolonged and bitter descent into
virtual civil war, with the Pheu Thai regional strongholds—the North,
Northeast and parts of the central region of the country—becoming
increasingly ungovernable from imperial Bangkok. It is a tragic denouement
to which an anti-democratic opposition disdaining all political compromise
has plunged this once promising Southeast Asian nation.

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