Thai protests: a very mild-mannered coup?
Traffic is at a standstill, buildings occupied and an arrest warrant has been issued for the protest leader. But no-one seems in any hurry to detain him, writes John Sparks in Bangkok.
Political coups, by their very nature, are steely, confrontational acts.
In Thailand however, the current campaign to unseat Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s government looks and sounds like boisterous and reasonably good-natured rally.
For the fourth day in a row, tens of thousands of protestors have taken to the streets of Bangkok, brandishing multi-coloured flags, tooting on whistles and backing up traffic for miles around. The participants aren’t simply stretching their legs. Instead, they are trying to shut the government down, by surrounding ministry buildings and in some cases, taking up residence inside.
The protests are led by former members of Thailand’s oldest political party, the Democrats, who have abandoned parliament and conventional politics and taken their arguments to the streets.
As I write, the provocateur-in-chief, Suthep Thaugsuban has led a large group of protestors to a government complex on the city’s outskirts, forcing the evacuation of thousands of civil servants, including those working for the police department’s special investigations unit.
Mr Suthep, a silver-haired 64 year-old, resigned his seat in Parliament in order to lead what he now calls a “popular uprising”. It is not clear whether this uprising represents a democratic, consensus-based movement though.
Yesterday, the career-politician said his goal was to replace the current government with a non-elected council. The change was necessary he said, to rid the country of the “political machine” of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Thaksin is Yingluck’s older brother – a billionaire Chinese-Thai businessman – whose populist policies and slick campaigns made him wildly popular among the rural poor. However, he was deposed in a coup and fled the country after the courts imposed a two year prison sentence for corruption – charges Thaksin says were political motivated.
Many people here in Bangkok detest him, accusing him of graft and arrogance and disloyalty toward the country’s royal family – and there is a widespread belief that Thaksin continues to run the government from his base in Dubai. Mr Suthep and other Democrats claim he instructs ministers and formulates policy over Skype, WeChat and a phalanx of mobile phones.
Still, Yingluck Shinawatra’s government appear to have a stronger hand in this political tug-of-war.
Mr Suthep may have set himself up as a new-found people’s champion but he knows he does not speak for everyone – his core constituency – urban, middle-class voters based in Bangkok – represent the minority here.
Some are uncomfortable with his background – Mr Suthep is no stranger to corruption charges – and a leading figure in the Democrat Party, the Oxford-educated deputy leader Korn Chatikavanij, said he did not quite understand what Suthep’s “people’s government” would really be like.
Tonight, the protestors’ seizure of government institutions continues apace – we’ve learnt that the electricity supply at the department of Special Investigation has just been cut. But it remains a mild-mannered attempt at a coup.
An arrest warrant has been issued against Mr Suthep for invading public buildings – but no one seems in any particular hurry to detain him. Meanwhile, the prime minister said today that she had instructed her officials to “protect government facilities” – but also refrain “from using weapons or violent measures against the people.”
So, a relatively well-behaved crisis rolls on with no end in sight.
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