About 30,000 protesters launched a ‘people’s coup’ on Thailand’s government on Sunday, swarming state agencies in violent clashes, taking control of a state broadcaster, and forcing the prime minister to flee a police compound…
It is the latest dramatic turn in a conflict pitting Bangkok’s urban middle class and royalist elite against the mostly poor, rural supporters of [Prime Minister] Yingluck and her billionaire brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister ousted in a 2006 military coup.
(Reuters, December 1, 2013)
Frankly, this latest eruption only confirms what I’ve been warning for years: Thailand is stuck in a vicious cycle of coups and counter-coups that mocks democracy more than it protects it.
I first sounded the alarm in “Thailand’s Benign Military Coup Juxtaposed with Hungary’s People Revolution” (2006), arguing that even a “benign” coup is inherently undemocratic. And I echoed it in “Update—Thailand Suffers Another Coup, This Time By an Angry Mob” (2008), after protesters shut down airports and toppled governments in Thaksin’s shadow.
So when Yingluck Shinawatra became Thailand’s first female prime minister in 2011, iPINIONS warned she was little more than her brother’s puppet, destined to reignite unrest. Two years later, that prophecy has come true. Protesters now demand she “return power to the people,” even as they accuse her of fronting for Thaksin from exile.
In short, it’s political Groundhog Day in Bangkok. Another coup, another protest, another prime minister undone. What passes for democracy in Thailand is little more than repetition masquerading as renewal.
NOTE: Ukraine seems caught in a similar vicious cycle — as the hundreds of thousands of protesters rampaging through Kiev today will attest. I first commented on its oxymoronic march toward democracy in 2005, and I’ll publish a fresh update tomorrow.
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