Democracy in Thailand

Democracy in Thailand

THE EDITORIAL BOARD / International New York Times | December 23, 2013

Protesters are again threatening the fragile political stability of Thailand. The government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has called early elections, which have been scheduled for Feb. 2, but demonstrators aligned with the opposition Democrat Party are not satisfied. They want the elected Parliament to be replaced with a people’s council of appointed technocrats and say they will do everything they can to block the election.

The latest protests started when Ms. Yingluck, who was elected in 2011, tried to push through an ill-conceived amnesty law that would have pardoned people involved in the country’s often violent political conflicts of the last decade, including her controversial brother Thaksin Shinawatra, who lives in exile in Dubai because he was found guilty of corruption by a Thai court. The Senate voted down the law, but Suthep Thaugsuban, the protest leader and a former leader of the opposition Democrat Party, says he and his followers won’t give up until Ms. Yingluck steps down and her family is permanently barred from the country’s political system. 

The protesters have been trying to persuade the military, which has a history of deposing elected governments, to declare support for their demands. Thankfully, the generals have declined to intervene and have offered help in holding a “fair and clean” election. Thailand, a constitutional monarchy, can ill afford another military government or a technocratic autocracy. 

Mr. Suthep and his followers — who are mostly from the capital, Bangkok, and represent the middle class and economic elite of the country — are playing a cynical and dangerous game. They have concluded that there is no way the Democrat Party, which has lost every election since 1992, can win against Ms. Yingluck’s Pheu Thai Party, whose populist policies like free health care and subsidies for rice farmers has earned it the loyalty of many voters, especially those in northern and northeastern Thailand. If they manage to depose the Ms. Yingluck’s government, the supporters of Pheu Thai will likely take to the streets as they did in 2010. 

Mr. Suthep has said that no elections should take place until the country enacts political reforms, but he has refused to specify those reforms. Instead of undermining democracy by trying to prevent the election, Mr. Suthep and Democrat Party leaders should participate in the election and offer proposals for the changes they think the country needs. 

Ms. Yingluck should stop further efforts to bring her brother back and turn her attention to the weakening economy. The International Monetary Fund recently recommended that the country invest in infrastructure and education to boost its growth rate. Once considered one of Asia’s “tiger” economies, Thailand has struggled in recent years partly because of its political turmoil. The current chaos could become another major setback.