New analysis: Coup turns democracy on its head

BANGKOK It is an ugly anachronism and a loaded phrase - tanks in the streets. It calls up a string of menacing association: naked power grab, military adventurism, power-hungry generals, anti-democratic putsch.
 
But the coup Tuesday that ousted the popularly elected prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, has been welcomed by many Thais who saw Thaksin stripping away their democratic rights and institutions.
 
In the face of widespread condemnation from abroad, the reaction of the public raises the question: Can a military coup against an elected government be justified?
 
If, as they promise, the generals appoint a caretaker civilian prime minister soon and step aside, people here argue, the coup may turn out to have been the most democratic event in Thailand since Thaksin took office five years ago.
 
Yes, they say, Thaksin has won landslide elections with his popularity among the rural poor. But elections are only part of the process; democracy also means a system of government.
 
"What is a democracy when its leader is actually a despot in disguise?" wrote Veenarat Laohapakakul, a commentator for the newspaper The Nation. "And what is a military coup if the military pledges its allegiance to democracy?"
 
At the moment, the junta is acting like a junta, and Thais are hoping for the best. On Sunday, it tightened restrictions on all political activity. It has declared martial law and banned gatherings of more than five people. It has closed hundreds of independent radio stations, primarily in areas that support Thaksin, and has warned the press to be "responsible." It has required local officials to report to military commanders and has detained some of Thaksin's top aides.
 
As The Bangkok Post put it in a hopeful headline, "A step back so as to move forward." In the editorial that followed, it said, "No person in Thai history has let down the nation like Mr. Thaksin."
 
He took office in 2001 with the first outright majority any prime minister had enjoyed. Almost immediately, he began to gather power into his own hands. At one point he said he intended to remain in office for 15 years.
 
By engineering the appointments of his supporters and family members, he took control of the institutions that were meant to check his power: the Senate, the courts, and commissions to oversee elections and curb corruption.
 
Using financial and legal pressure he took over the TV stations and intimidated the press. He worked to silence civic groups and critical academics.
 
At the moment he was deposed he was attempting to manipulate an annual military shuffle to place his supporters and relatives in command positions.
 
Some newspapers here are reporting that he planned - as early as last week - to engineer a clash with pro-democracy demonstrators and to seize total power through a state of emergency.
 
With constitutional avenues of opposition closed off, Thai political analysts almost unanimously say, the democratic opposition had no choice but to resort to extra-constitutional means.
 
But all the garlands that people handed to soldiers and draped over the gun barrels of tanks cannot disguise the fact that this was regime change by force, not by ballot or political pressure or even "people power" rallies in the streets.
 
This is a country where coups were once a habit. There have been 18 of them in the past 72 years. After a 15-year hiatus of elected governments, the military was reverting to a maneuver in which it had more practice than most armies.
 
Even in the most benign of outcomes, a dangerous precedent has been set, the analysts said. Indeed, the more gentle the current coup appears to be - troops on the streets have been ordered to smile - the more acceptable military intervention may seem in the future.
 
It may be that the public's impatience with the challenges of its young democracy and its calm acceptance of military intervention were a result of the familiarity of precedent. Now that it has acted, and with such popular acclaim, will the military take on the role of arbiter of civilian governments, stepping in when it deems appropriate?
 
This is the Philippine model of repeated coup threats and coup attempts, and it has resulted in a government that is constantly maneuvering to stay on the good side of the generals.
 
Thailand may have to hold its breath for another 15 years to learn whether the military has really gone back to its barracks this time.
 
The optimistic spin is that Thaksin interrupted a democratizing trend that had only begun to take root after the adoption of a liberal Constitution in 1997 and that the trend can now resume.
 
Nevertheless, Thailand has presented a dangerous model not only for itself, but also for its neighbors.
 
The dangers were summed up last week in an editorial in The Korea Herald. "We are concerned that the 'success' of the Thai military could have a ripple effect across Asia," it said. "Could it put into reverse the democratic changes we have seen in the region since the late 1980s?"
 
Across the region, it said, democracy is still fragile.
 
"We have seen democratically elected leaders fighting uphill battles in the Philippines and Indonesia," it said, "the legacy of authoritarian politics persisting in Malaysia and Singapore, political darkness in Myanmar and once-popular presidents struggling in Taiwan and in our own country."
 
Thailand's democratizing trend, though, was diverted not by men with guns but by the elected prime minister himself.
 
The young Constitution had attempted to create a strong executive and end a continuing rotation of weak coalition governments. Thaksin exploited its loopholes, and a central task of the interim government will be to redraw parts of the charter.
 
The junta has laid out a program for returning to democracy that it said would take at least a year: installation of a civilian interim government, creation of a new Constitution, adopting the Constitution through a national referendum and finally electing a new Parliament.
 
Given the political context of the coup, political scientists and international lawyers found themselves struggling a bit to decide whether there might be circumstances in which those menacing tanks in the street could be justified.
 
"My sense is that a coup cannot be justified in democratic politics," said Muthiah Alagappa, director of the East- West Center in Washington, a private policy group, who has written a book on the declining role of the military in Asia. "But there are two caveats," he said. "First, Thai democracy is still in transition. The second is that if you have a situation in which a democracy would actually be undermined by the players within the system, then one can make a case for extralegal intervention."
 
Steve Golub, who teaches democracy and law at the University of California at Berkeley, said the answer must boil down to: "Time will tell."
 
Almost always, he said, "military coups are very bad things in terms of democracy, human rights, economic progress - you name it."
 
Still, "A lot of this gets back to the big question of, What is democracy? If it's more than just elections, if it involves some minimal level of honesty, accountability and commitment above all to continue democracy, the picture becomes cloudier."

Article by Seth Mydans International Herald Tribune - Published: September 24, 2006