Thailand’s Military Lassoo Thaksin – by John Berthelsen

The decision by Thailand’s Constitutional Court earlier this week to delay hearing lèse-majesté charges against Thai political maestro Thaksin Shinawatra until July 2025 in effect places what one observer called a sword of Damocles over Thaksin’s head, keeping the Pheu Thai government on a short leash after the court on August 14 dismissed Thaksin’s handpicked prime minister Srettha Thavisin on orders of General Prawit Wongsuwan. It is difficult to not speculate whether this is a Thai version of the Chinese cliché about killing the chicken to scare the monkey.

Thaksin, who is ostensibly retired and playing with his grandchildren in Chiangmai after a royal pardon let him back into the country, has manipulated politics from overseas for 15 years, to the chagrin and frustration of the military, the royalty, and the oligarchs, who have used coups or the constitutional courts to dissolve governments that have repeatedly won at the ballot box although the latest Thaksin surrogate was bested at the ballot box 151 to 141 last year by the youth-oriented Move Forward Party – also dissolved on August 7 by the court. The court’s delay in hearing the lèse-majesté charge is clearly a way of keeping him from getting politically adventurous without having to resort to another coup.

Hanging over the Pheu Thai-led government is the Constitutional Court, which as political scientist Thitinan Pongsudhirak wrote recently, has dissolved 34 political parties since 2006, including most recently Move Forward, the biggest vote-winner in the 2023 election, and its predecessor Future Forward, adding to the disillusionment of the country’s youth, who had seen both as an escape from the corrupt and hidebound mainstream political parties. The court has also stymied Thai Rak Thai and Palang Prachachon, both surrogate parties for Thaksin, who managed them into existence from his roost in exile in Dubai.

The 76-year-old telecommunications billionaire has now anointed his 37-year-old daughter Paethongtharn to replace Srettha as prime minister, an indication of the merry-go-round of the Thai government. When the military in the past has allowed it to govern between coups, Thaksin himself, Paetongtarn’s aunt Yingluck, and Thaksin’s brother-in-law Somchai Wongsawat all previously served as premier before being deposed. Somchai was disenfranchised by the constitutional court for five years.

Paetongtarn’s success or failure hinges in large part on her ability to navigate the public appetite for change, and the more conservative inclinations of her pro-establishment coalition partners. Her most pressing job is to appoint a cabinet, over which she seemingly has broad discretion – or her father does, behind the scenes – although in practice the selection is about balancing the coalition parties and competing factions and could take several weeks. It is likely to be similar to the one the court just dissolved, although some military figures could be ousted. Particularly Prawit’s allies in retaliation for the court’s Srettha ouster.

But the next government will likely look much the same – insecure, in thrall to conservative forces, particularly the military despite the fact that the two main military parties together won only 13.88 percent of the 2023 national vote compared to 67.85 percent for the two reform parties. Although the economic boost Srettha sought to put in place has stalled, including the signature Bt500 billion (US$13.8 billion) “digital wallet handout” scheme to give Bt10,000 (US$270) to all Thais, in an August 22 speech sponsored by The Nation, Thaksin outlined economic restructuring centering on solving household debt, dismantling the underground economy to increase GDP, restructuring industry and launching mega projects such as land reclamation. The pertinent points of his speech, he said, are to be spelled out in a government policy statement to the parliament.

The lèse-majesté charge that hangs over Thaksin’s head is almost farcical, arising from a comment he made in 2015 to the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo that privy councilors – read the late privy councilor Prem Tinsulanonda, a Thaksin bete noir – supported the 2014 coup that ousted the government of his younger sister Yingluck. The interview was posted online, so he was also charged with computer crime in addition to lese majeste.

But the charge will serve as a useful tool depending on the role Thaksin takes in his daughter’s government. Policymaking continuity will persist, since Thaksin remains the pro-business power behind the scenes, if discreetly. There is some speculation that he had become too visible, particularly with the April 28 cabinet reshuffle that consolidated his power, which got Srettha sacked by the court. Thaksin’s sister Yingluck after all campaigned in 2011 on the slogan “Thaksin thinks, Pheu Thai acts.”

None of this is doing Thailand any good. Its export-led economy has long since lost its place as Southeast Asia’s biggest to Indonesia as the military has bumbled through 10 years of corrupt government and lack of economic planning, prioritizing internal security over economic growth and prosperity. Household debt is 87 percent of GDP. Its youth are deeply disaffected by the dissolution of both Future Forward and Move Forward and the disbarment of their charismatic party leaders by the court. Although violent protests greeted the dissolution of Future Forward, there has been little this time around. There is little to alleviate the disillusionment of Move Forward’s 14 million voters, most of them young.

Thailand’s economy grew at an average annual 7.5 percent in the boom years of 1960-1996 and 5 percent during 1999-2005 following the Asian Financial Crisis, according to the World Bank. “This growth created millions of jobs that helped pull millions of people out of poverty,” the bank said. “Gains along multiple dimensions of welfare have been impressive: more children are getting more years of education, and virtually everyone is now covered by health insurance while other forms of social security have expanded.”

That has come to a stop. Private investment, which played a major role in driving the economy, declined from more than 40 percent of GDP in 1997 to 16.9 percent in 2019 as investors spooked by the military pulled back, with FDI flows and participation in global value chains stagnating while Malaysia and Vietnam have been beneficiaries of the shift of supply chains out of China.

“Unless fundamental political reforms take place, Thailand will likely enter a period of low and plateaued growth with risks of grinding stagnation,” Thitinan wrote recently in the Bangkok Post. “While it faced political instability and fragility for much of the four decades preceding the 1997-98 economic crisis, characterized by military coups, elections, and constitutions, the Thai economy still managed to expand around 7 percent a year.”

In 2023, GDP growth fell to 1.9 percent, with the World Bank predicting growth at 2.4 percent in 2024, according to the World Bank’s Thailand Economic Monitor, although the bank downgraded its latest forecast by 0.4 percentage points from April, largely due to weaker-than-expected exports and public investment.

The core problem is the unending political instability in which democratically elected parties take power only to be upended periodically by a military coup, of which there have been 13 successful and nine unsuccessful ones since 1932, followed by an election, then a reset, then repeat. The Constitutional Court’s sword over Thaksin is part of the same process under a different name.