Thai military junta shows its true colours
Last week’s military coup in Thailand was no surprise to pro-democracy activists on the ground, coming after two days of martial law and eight years of political crisis and resistance. Upon formally seizing power the junta immediately shut down all TV and radio broadcasts, banned political meetings and protests, and declared it illegal for anyone to criticise the coup.
But less than 24 hours later, hundreds of courageous Bangkok residents staged a snap anti-coup protest in the central city called by networks of pro-democracy activists, and drawing in ordinary students and workers.
The protestors pushed back a squad of heavily armed soldiers, and continued their furious protest into the evening before the army was finally able to disperse them. This first act of defiance sparked a tinder box. At the time of writing, each day since the coup has brought increasing mass resistance both in Bangkok and the northern city of Chiang Mai.
The junta has meanwhile shown its true colours. In a purely cynical gesture, they declared themselves a neutral third-party and initially arrested the leaders of both the pro-democracy red-shirt (UDD) and the anti-democracy yellow-shirt (PDRC) movements. In fact the military are allied with the PDRC, and the PDRC protesters who wrecked the national elections earlier this year were demanding this very move [see: “Reactionary protests in Thailand call for suspension of democracy”]. Needless to say, the military quickly released the yellow-shirt figures from their brief detention.
By contrast, the red-shirt aligned forces have found themselves the target of extreme repression. On the first night, soldiers in face-masks and brandishing assault rifles raided the homes of prominent red-shirt activists. The next morning the junta detained the leadership of the Pheu Thai party, including Prime Minister Yingluck Shiniwatra and her entire family. In subsequent days many red-shirt activists, along with critical academics and others deemed problematic for the regime, have been ordered to present themselves to the military for detention. But inspired by the mass resistance, many are publicly refusing to do so.
This coup comes after years of relentless, and deadly, efforts by the ruling class to smash all traces of democracy. It is the second military coup since 2006, when Thaksin Shinawatra’s “Thai Rak Thai” government was ousted. Thaksin himself was a Telco billionaire, and a notorious human rights abuser, but his party had legitimate mass support through policies like cheap universal healthcare that dramatically improved living standards for workers and the poor. Despite his own status as a key capitalist figure, Thaksin’s party posed a threat to the old order partly because it had drawn millions of workers and the poor into the previously policy-free sideshow of Thai electoral politics.
Following the 2006 coup, the military exiled Thaksin, banned his party and rewrote the electoral rules to favour the Democrat Party. But the Shinawatra party, reborn as the People’s Power Party, still managed to win the 2007 election. Hence, in 2008 the courts intervened and removed the government on corruption charges. Once again the party was banned. In its place, the court installed a Democrat Party government, with Abhisit Vejjajiva as the unelected Prime Minister.
For the next three years, hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy red-shirts fought for the re-institution of popularly-elected government. Their struggle culminated in April-May 2010 with mass protests and occupations in Ratchaprasong intersection central Bangkok. Notoriously, the military put down this protest with a brutal assault and the slaughter of almost 100 activists. In the aftermath, new elections were conceded, sweeping to power Yingluck Shinawatra’s red-shirt aligned Pheu Thai party in June 2011.
All too predictably, Pheu Thai in office betrayed the martyrs of Ratchaprasong and all but destroyed the mass democracy movement. They quickly signed a deal with the military to guarantee stability, offering amnesty to the murderous army generals who had flooded the city in blood. And to prove their credentials as loyal ruling class figures they escalated the use of the lèse-majesté laws to persecute and jail dissidents. Hundreds of pro-democracy activists were left to rot in some of the worst prisons on earth at the hands of the Pheu Thai government. Meanwhile, in 2013 the yellow-shirt PDRC protestors re-surfaced, aiming to bring down the government and foment a coup.
Alongside their gaggle of billionaire media-darlings, the PDRC’s real base is among middle-class professionals and small business people. Scandalously, they also have control over some trade unions, most notably the white-collar public sector and airline industries. The red-shirt UDD by contrast have much less influence in unions, though those unions focused on class struggle rather than class collaboration do tend to support the red-shirts.
A key example is the textiles and garment workers union. Nonetheless, this lack of red-shirt influence reflects one of the key failures of the red-shirt leadership. They never sought to really build a base among organised workers or to relate to them as a class rather than simply voters, marchers or street fighters. The red-shirt union leaders are said to cower before the yellow-shirt leaders in union conferences and forums. Red-shirt union leaders also reportedly make little effort to politically educate their union membership or harden them up against the anti-democratic forces.
More generally, the UDD leadership refused to mobilise the masses of red-shirts to defend the Pheu Thai government when PDRC thugs were shutting down polling booths and bashing voters earlier this year. Pheu Thai and the UDD leadership were not just being timid or cowardly; they were fundamentally acting in their own class interests. Now we can see the consequences, with the military again forcing its way into power.
From here the regime will seek to remove the last traces of democracy from Thailand. It has no other path available to it, even if it sought one.
Resistance like we’ve seen in recent days is crucial. We can only hope the pro-democracy movement will spread and might overcome the key political weaknesses that plague the red-shirts through reaching out to the organised working class.
