By TODD PTIMAN
Wednesday, Dec 11, 2013 01:46 AM +0700
BANGKOK (AP) _ Protesters waging
a surreal political fight to oust Thailand’s elected prime minister are trying
to establish what amounts to a parallel government — one complete with
“volunteer peacekeepers” to replace the police, a foreign policy of their own
and a central committee that has already begun issuing audacious orders.
Among the most brazen, Tuesday: a
demand that caretaker premier Yingluck Shinawatra be prosecuted for
“insurrection,” and another calling on the public to “monitor” her family’s
movements.
Leading academics have slammed
the scheme as undemocratic and unconstitutional. Critics have called its
leader, Suthep Thaugsuban, delusional. But the ex-lawmaker’s bid to seize
power could become reality if the military or the judiciary intervenes, as
they have in the past. Either way, analysts say this Southeast Asian nation is
at a dangerous new crossroads that could drag on, and end with more bloodshed.
“This is a combustible situation.
We cannot have two governments in Bangkok running Thailand,” said Thitinan
Pongsudhirak, director of Chulalongkorn’s Institute of Security and
International Studies. “Something will have to give.”
Yingluck is desperate to end
weeks of political unrest that has killed five people and wounded nearly 300
more. On Monday, she dissolved the lower house of Parliament and called for
elections, now set for Feb. 2. But neither move defused the crisis, and a
150,000-strong crowd pressed on with a massive march against her in Bangkok.
Yingluck said Tuesday she would
not resign despite a nighttime deadline issued by Suthep. But there was no
hiding the nation’s precarious state. Asked how she was holding up, tears
welled in Yingluck’s eyes.
“I have retreated as far as I
can,” she said, just before turning and walking quickly away.
The protesters accuse Yingluck of
serving as a proxy for her billionaire brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra, who lives in self-imposed exile to avoid jail time for a
corruption conviction but still wields immense influence in the country.
Thaksin was deposed in a 2006
army coup that laid bare a deeper societal conflict. On one side are
Thailand’s elite, its largely urban middle class and staunch royalists who say
he abused his power. On the other, Thaksin’s power base in the countryside,
particularly in the northeast, and others who benefited from his populist
policies designed to win over the rural poor.
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The coup triggered years of
political upheaval that have proven the power of Bangkok’s elite.
Controversial judicial rulings
removed two pro-Thaksin prime ministers in 2008, one of whom never set foot in
his Government House office: He worked for 10 weeks out of the VIP lounge of
the capital’s old airport until protesters evicted him from there, too. The
same year, army-backed parliamentary maneuvering allowed the opposition
Democrat Party — a minority that has not won an election for more than two
decades — to take power for several years.
Yingluck led the ruling Pheu Thai
Party to victory in 2011 elections. But anger against her government swelled
after the lower house passed an amnesty bill that would have allowed Thaksin
to return without going to jail. The measure was rejected in the upper house,
and Yingluck has said it will not be revived.
Protesters say Pheu Thai lost its
right to rule because of its support of the amnesty bill and other legislation
they oppose. Yingluck and other members of her party say the constitution does
not allow her to resign before elections are held — a ballot both sides know
Pheu Thai would win.
Suthep, the protest leader, said
late Tuesday that as of now, “there is no government.” He said his People’s
Democratic Reform Committee would nominate a new prime minister to fill the
vacuum, although it has no legal authority to do so.
Suthep also ordered the head of
police to order all his forces to withdraw from their posts within 12 hours
and said soldiers should take responsibility for protecting government
offices.
The bespectacled 64-year-old
career politician had laid out other details of his plan Monday. Citing a
clause in the constitution stating that “the highest power is the sovereign
power of the people,” he claimed his movement was assuming some government
functions and called on civil servants to report to it.
He said a new constitution would
be written that would ban populist policies, bar corruption convictions from
being pardoned and ensure that “a single party cannot control things.” He also
urged supporters to establish neighborhood “peacekeeping forces” to replace
the nation’s police, who are seen as allied to Yingluck and her brother.
The reality, for now, is that no
parallel government exists, and that protesters hold less ground than they did
at the weekend. Ahead of Monday’s march, they withdrew from the Finance
Ministry and part of a vast government complex they had occupied for a week.
Still, Thitinan said, the
momentum is on the side of Suthep, whose uprising has already triggered the
legislature’s dissolution and reduced Yingluck’s power.
The government is “at a
disadvantage because they’re not backed by the establishment and the powerful
people in Bangkok,” Thitinan said. The army has vowed neutrality, but when
push comes to shove, they will side with the protesters, he said.
Thitinan said Suthep is “a front
man for larger forces behind him, for the powers that be” among the elite. He
said they want to “seize the reins of government because they want to preside
over the transition … we’re talking about the monarchy, the succession, the
constitution, the entire future of Thailand.”
King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 86, has
suffered health problems for years, and anxiety over his health has grown in
tandem with the country’s deepening political divide. Thaksin, the ousted
premier, was accused of disrespecting the king, in part by trying to curry
favor with Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, the heir to the throne.
Thitinan added, however, that if
Yingluck is deposed, her supporters “will come back to the streets” just as
they did in 2010, when pro-Thaksin “red shirt” protesters erected bamboo
barricades around a vast swath of the capital’s glitziest shopping district
and occupied it for two months.
A brutal army crackdown
eventually dispersed the crowds, but not before more than 90 people were killed
and the city’s skyline was engulfed in flames. Suthep, who was deputy premier
at the time, ordered the crackdown and is facing murder charges for his role
in it. He also faces an arrest warrant — for insurrection.
The army and the courts have had
opportunities to dislodge Yingluck’s government but have not taken them. Army
chief Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha has said he will not intervene, despite pleas
from anti-government protesters. And in a key Constitutional Court ruling last
month, judges stopped short of dissolving the ruling party.
If Yingluck can hold on until
elections are held in two months, the question remains whether Democrats will
boycott — a distinct possibility given its bleak prospects. The last time the
Democrats staged a boycott, in 2006, the army staged a coup five months later.
The conflict is likely to “go on
and on until all sides sit down and negotiate a compromise,” said Siripan
Nogsuan Sawasdee, a political science professor in Bangkok.
“That’s going to take a long,
long time,” she said. “There is no easy way out.”
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