THE new military dictatorship in Thailand has begun to set a darker tone, as if to indicate much worse to come. It has detained members of the political class, shut down the media and put men in uniforms in charge of government ministries. The borders have been closed, on an off-and-on basis. At least 155 people, including politicians and activists, have been banned from leaving the country. On May 24th, the junta dissolved the senate (the parliament’s upper house) and assumed total control. For the time being all powers lie with the National Peace and Order Maintaining Council (NPOMC) headed by a general, Prayuth Chan-ocha. Next up looks likely to be a government stuffed with more men in green, or people licking their boots. 

On the third day of the new regime the royal palace made public a letter in which it acknowledged another letter, signed by Mr Prayuth, in which he had informed the king of the coup. Historically, the palace has endorsed most coups. Those that did not get the royal nod, including an April Fool’s Day coup in 1978, failed. It has not yet become clear how enthusiastic King Bhumibol Aduljadej feels about this one, the twelfth coup d’état to mark his 64-year reign.

Dozens of politicians and leaders are detained at army 
camps. The most prominent hostage is Yingluck Shinawatra, till recently the prime minister and the youngest sister of Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister who was ousted in the previous coup, in 2006. An army spokesperson has said that they do not intend to keep Ms Yingluck, who is being held at a camp outside Bangkok, for more than a week. 

Ms Yingluck and her family have become the junta’s main bargaining chip in a bold bid to expunge the Shinawatras from politics, once and for all. The family’s homes have been raided. Mr Thaksin’s son was arrested on May 24th, held overnight and released the next morning. Mr Thaksin, a telecoms-tycoon-turned-politician, awoke an electoral giant with populist policies he introduced in 2001. In three incarnations, his party has won every election it has been allowed to contest. It was banned in name, only to be formed again under another. There appeared to be no real threat to the party’s dominance over the polls, unless it were to be destroyed by force, or democracy itself were brought down. Robert Amsterdam, Mr Thaksin’s lawyer, has said that Ms Yingluck and other leaders are going to establish a government in exile. 

The NPOMC has issued summons for 35 intellectuals and activists, calling on them to report to the army. The junta has set up a special unit to monitor social media. It issued a separate summons for Pravit Rojanaphruk, a prominent journalist and commentator. Mr Pravit, who is also a harsh critic of Mr Thaksin, wrote a line on Twitter before making his way to an army base in Bangkok: “On my way to see the new dictator of #Thailand. Hopefully the last. #freethailand #Thailand #ป #รปห”. The Thai media have been summoned to report to the army at 2pm on May 25th, to discuss their post-coup coverage. Some foreign sites have been blocked too: the BBC, CNN and Human Rights Watch for a start. And junta has torn up Thailand’s constitution, a document which its predecessor had written after the most recent coup. The only section still in force is the one that relates to the monarchy. 

In most respects then it looks like an old-fashioned coup. If that is any indication, the generals in charge are likely to fail catastrophically. Both in achieving their own objectives, which are still fuzzy, and in charting a course for the country to wend its way out of economic stagnation and social failure. The hope that a democratic majority of the Thai people will get to choose their own government any time soon now looks ludicrous. 

Civilians find Thailand to be nearly ungovernable in the best of times. Even then rule of law is more honoured in the breach. People are even more unlikely to put up with the new rules, which are woefully lacking in legitimacy. Some have responded to the orders with derision. Pavin Chachavalpongpun, an academic who is on the army’s summons list, has said that he plans to send his pet Chihuahua to report to the junta in his stead.

Small groups of anti-coup demonstrators have been gathering in the capital, holding up placards that say “Democracy has always been aborted. When will it be born?” and, less politely, “Fuck the coup”. There have been protests elsewhere in the country too. At Bangkok’s Victory Monument, an obelisk dedicated to the victors of the minor Franco-Thai war of 1941, a rally against the coup ended in ugly scuffles between protesters and military police. At the monument the protesters were mainly students, not the Shinawatras’ usual red-shirted supporters. By Sunday morning, the 25th, troops were seen moving into Bangkok’s central shopping area, presumably in anticipation of further protests against their coup. [Taking a page from Hun Xen Kingdoom's democrazy tactics.]

The generals are likely to notice two things soon. First, that they cannot rule the country unless they are prepared to use force. Secondly, beyond the walls of the barracks, Thailand has undergone a dramatic transformation, even since 2006. It has moved away even further from being the kind of rural agricultural society with its social relations defined by hierarchical, paternalistic relations. More each year, it resembles a modern state whose individual citizens and social groups look out for their own interests. Social changes that took hundreds of years to emerge in European history have taken just half a century in Thailand. That is less time than the average age of the generals who are trying to revive for Thailand a brand of authoritarianism that was derided as being reserved for the kingdom’s poor neighbours, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

When Thailand’s traditional elites made it plain that they did not know how to run the country in 1997—the year the Asian financial crisis cut short Thailand’s economic miracle—the public began to seek greater power and influence for itself. Mr Thaksin happened to be in a position to serve as their vehicle. A thriving oligarch when he came to power in 2001, he built a political machine that ran on a simple principle: find out what people want, and give it to them. He was wily and absolutely ruthless, and he knew to jump on the train that was already rolling. 

This is the underlying force that the generals have to contend with: not Thaksin, but the dramatically changed society that stubbornly brought him to power. 

General Prayuth does not look like a strongman to reorder Thai politics and society. Rather, he looks like a soldier who got fed up dealing with hopeless politicians, and then pushed by his arch-royalist superiors into doing their dirty work and binning electoral democracy. 

There are any number of competing explanations for Thailand’s current conflict and how it came to the point of yet another military regime. Different analysts point in turn to the next royal succession, to personal rivalries, major business deals; corruption, the abuse of power, or to the emergence of “urban villagers” as an electoral base.

Every one of these explanations leaves us with the same stark question about the immediate future. Are the historical elites going to continue to be in charge of the country? This leads to another question, about the Thai army. Ask not whether it will quit ousting governments and installing their replacements, but how: cruelly, unleashing the sort of horrors that would set the country back many more years; or by compromise and deal-making?

(Picture credit: AFP)