THE MILITARY COUP in Thailand a week ago marked the second high profile
collapse of a democracy in the developing world in the last seven years.
The first was the coup in Pakistan in October 1999 that brought General
Pervez Musharraf to power. Like the coup in Thailand, that coup was
popular with the middle class. As in Thailand, the military was
expected to vacate power soon after it ousted Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif. Six years later, Musharaff and the army are still in power.

It is now said in some quarters that Thaksin Shinawatra undermined the
democratic regime that came into being after the people’s power uprising
in May 1992. This is true, but Thai democracy was in bad shape before
Thaksin came to power in January 2001. The first Chuan Leek-Pai
government from 1992 to 1995 was marked by the absence of even the
slightest effort at social reform. The government of former provincial
businessman Barnharn Silipa-Archa, from 1995 to 1996, was described by
one observer "a semi-kleptocratic administration where coalition
partners were paid to stay sweet, just like he used to buy public works
contracts." Then from 1996 to 1997 came the government of Yongchaiyudh
Chavalit, a former general, which was based on an alliance among big
business elites, provincial bosses, and local gangsters. True,
elections were held, but elections were used cynically by competing
elites mainly as a mechanism to determine which new coalition of elites
would have their turn at using government patronage as a mechanism of
private capital accumulation.

Not surprisingly, the massive corruption, especially under Barnharn and
Chavalit, repelled the Bangkok middle class, and the urban and rural
poor did not see the advent of democracy marking a change in their
lives.

Democracy suffered a further blow in 1997-2001 following the Asian
financial crisis. This time it was not the local elites that were the
culprit. It was the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which forced
first the Chavalit government, then the second Chuan government to adopt
a very severe reform program that consisted of radically cutting
expenditures, decreeing many corporations bankrupt, liberalizing foreign
investment laws, and privatizing state enterprises. The IMF assembled a
$72 billion rescue fund, but it was money that was spent not to save the
local economy but to allow the government to pay off the foreign
creditors of the country. When the Chavalit government hesitated to
adopt these measures, the IMF pressed for a change in government. The
second Chuan government complied fully with the Fund, but lost its
credibility as the country plunged into recession and one million Thais
fell under the poverty line. Meanwhile the US Trade Representative told
the US Congress that “the Thai government’s”commitments to restructure
public enterprises and accelerate privatization of certain key
sectors-including energy, transportation, utilities, and
communications-[are expected] to create new business opportunities for
US firms."

The IMF, in short, contributed greatly to sapping the legitimacy of
Thailand’s fledgling democracy, and this was not the only instance where
the Fund contributed to eroding the credibility of a government,
especially among the poor. If there is today a pattern reversing
so-called “Third Wave” of democratization that took off as a trend in
the developing world since the mid-seventies, the IMF-supported of
course by the US government-is part of the answer. An IMF program
requiring steep rises in transport costs destroyed the last ounce of
legitimacy of Venezuelan democracy in 1989 and plunged the country into
the spontaneous rising known as the “Caracazo.” The IMF forced the new
democratic Aquino government to adopt a national economic program
prioritizing debt repayment over development, pushing the Philippines
into a period of stagnation, rising poverty, and rising inequality that
saw, among other things, the squandering of much of the legitimacy of
the democracy that succeeded Marcos. And a key contributor to the
unravelling of Pakistan’s democracy were the structural adjustment
programs that the IMF and the World Bank saw to it would be imposed by
both the Benazir Bhutto government and the Nawaz Sharif government that
succeeded it. As one Pakistani economist warned, "The almost obsessive
concern with short-term macroeconomic stabilization has with the
danger...that some of our basic social programs might be affected, and
this would have inter-generational consequences on development in
Pakistan." Since parliamentary democracy became associated with a rise
in poverty and economic stagnation, it is not surprising that the
Musahrraf coup was viewed with relief by most Pakistanis, from both the
middle classes and the working masses."

But back to Thailand. It was into this gravely weakened state of Thai
democracy that Thaksin stepped into in 2001 after running and winning on
an anti-IMF platform. In his first year in office, Thaksin inaugurated
three heavy spending programs that directly contradicted the IMF: a
moratorium on farmers’ debt and credit promotion , medical treatment for
all at only 30 baht per illness or less than a dollar, and a one million
baht fund for every district to invest as it saw fit. These policies
did not bring on the crisis that many conservative economists expected.
Instead they buoyed the economy and cemented Thaksin’s massive support
among the rural and urban poor.

This was the good side of Thaksin. The problem was that, having secured
the majority with these programs as well as what analysts Alec and
Chanida Bamford called “neofeudal patronage,” he began to subvert
freedom of the press, use control of government to add to his wealth or
ease restrictions on his businesses and those of his cronies, buy
allies, and buy off opponents. His war on drugs, using his favorite
agency, the police, resulted in the loss of over 2,000 lives, which
bothered human rights activists, but it was popular with the majority.
He also assumed a hardline, purely punitive, policy toward Muslim
insurgents in the three southern provinces, but again, despite the fact
that it worsened the situation, this policy enjoyed the support of the
country’s Buddhist majority.

Thaksin appeared to have created the formula for a long stay in power,
supported by an electoral majority, when he overreached. In January,
his family sold their controlling stake in telecoms conglomerate Shin
Corp. for $1.87 billion to a Singapore government front called Temasek
Holdings. Before the sale, Thaksin had made sure Parliament would
change the rules to exempt him from paying taxes. This brought the
Bangkok middle class to the streets to demand his ouster via a people
power uprising like the January EDSA I movement that overthrew Joseph
Estrada.

To resolve the polarization, Thaksin dissolved Parliament and called for
elections, knowing that he would win elections handily, as his coalition
had in 2001 and in 2005. The April 2 elections were held, Thaksin’s
coalition won 57 per cent of the vote, but they were boycotted by the
Opposition, leading to an Opposition-less Parliament. After a veiled
not-too-veiled suggestion by the revered King Bhumibol, the Supreme
Court found the elections in violation of the Constitution and ordered
them held once more. Thaksin resigned as Prime Minister and said he
would be a caretaker PM till after new elections were held.

It is important to pause here and note certain dimensions of the Thai
conflict:

– It pitted the urban and rural classes-the majority-against
the middle classes, meaning mainly the Bangkok middle class.

– It pitted representative democracy via elections as the
principle of electoral succession against the direct democracy of the
streets.

– It involved the split in the two principles that are united
in the system of liberal democracy-liberalism and democracy. The people
in the streets sought to remove Thaksin for his violations of human and
civil rights and his arbitrary rule, while Thaksin’s supporters sought
to keep him in power by appealing to the basic principle of a
democracy—that is, the rule of the majority. The anti-Thaksin forces,
however, claimed that Thaksin’s majority rule fit into what John Stuart
Mill called the “tyranny of the majority.”

It is critical to point out that prior to the coup, the country was not
in gridlock. Certainly, it was far from descending into civil war.
More important, the moral tide had turned against Thaksin, and his
resigning as prime minister was a recognition of this. He had lost
control, criticism of him was widespread in a media that was once tame,
and the pressure was on for him to resign before the next elections,
originally scheduled for October 15, but which were rescheduled for a
later date. On Thursday, the day after the coup, the People’s Alliance
for Democracy had called for a mass rally to begin the final push
against Thaksin from the streets.

This was democracy in action, with all its rough and tumble, and efforts
to resolve conflicting principles. Of course, the outcome was not
guaranteed, but indeterminacy and prolonged resolution of disputes are
part and parcel of the risks that come with democracy. Thais were
wrestling to resolve the question of political succession through
democratic, civilian methods. The seeming chaos of it all was a part of
the growing pains of a democracy. And it seemed like People Power or
the democracy of the streets would successfully determine political
succession, creating an important precedent in democratic practice.
Direct democracy not only had relevance not only for political
succession; it was reinvigorating and renewing the democratic practice
and democratic spirit.

That is the vibrant democratic process that the military coup cut short.
This move, everybody agrees, was unconstitutional, illegal, and
undemocratic. Many say, however, that yes, it is all this, but it is
popular because it ended a crisis.

I question this. This coup may have temporarily ended the crisis but at
the pain of provoking a much deeper one, for several reasons:

– Thaksin’s mass base, that is the poor and underprivileged,
will be deeply alienated from successor regimes, viewing these post-coup
regimes as possessing little democratic legitimacy.

– The military has reasserted its traditional self-defined role
as the arbiter of Thai politics, and this coup had as much to do with
reasserting this role-which had been seen as illegitimate over the last
14 years-as with the political crisis.

– There has emerged a dangerous informal institutional axis
that would subvert future democratic arrangements between the military
and the Privy Council, one of the few national political institutions
that was not eliminated by military decree. This is, not surprisingly,
headed by a retired military ruler, Gen. Prem. Indeed, there is strong
suspicion that Gen. Prem had more than just a neutral role in the affair
as he had days before the coup told the military that their loyalty was
principally “to the Nation and the King.”

– The one really popularly drawn up constitution, the 1997
Constitution, has been abolished by military fiat, and this was done
deliberately, not out of ignorance, because it placed many controls on
the exercise of parliamentary and executive power and on the behavior of
professional politicians.

Some people say that coup leader Army Chief Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin
is sanguine about stepping aside. But we are talking about
institutional interests here, not personal predilections. More than any
other military in Southeast Asia, the Thai military has had a
predilection for intervening in the political process, having launched
some 18 military coups since 1932. Thai military men have an ingrained
institutional contempt for civilian politicians, regarding them as
blundering fools. The generals have often promised to return to
civilian rule after a coup, but proceeded to rule directly or indirectly
through military-appointed civilians.

Most civilian prime ministers appointed by the military have been weak
politicians, who tenures were marked by responsiveness to their military
bosses. Anand Panyarachun who was appointed Prime Minister after a
military coup in 1991 was a notable exception in this regard. The man
appointed by Gen. Sondhi to head the interim government before elections
in October 2007 is most likely to fit the mold of a pliable tool rather
than an independent leader like Anand. Supachai Panitchpakdi was seen
as a weak Director General of the World Trade Organization, and one
moreover who was overly responsive to the developed country agenda
rather than to the interests of developing countries. More directly
relevant is the fact that he was deputy premier in the Second Chuan
Government in 1997-1998 that followed to a “t” the IMF program that
proved so devastating for the country. He is not one to stand up to the
military and other power centers in the country.

Let me then sum up: even before Thaksin, Thai democracy was already in
severe crisis owing to a succession of elected but do nothing or
exceedingly corrupt regimes since 1992. Its legitimacy was eroded even
further by the IMF, which for all intents and purposes ran the country,
with no accountability, for four years, from 1997 to 2001, and imposed a
program that brought great hardship to the majority. Thaksin used this
disaffection with the IMF and the political system to create a majority
coalition that allowed him to violate constitutional constraints and
infringe on democratic freedoms, while enabling him to use the state as
a mechanism of private capital accumulation in an unparalleled fashion.
This led to the middle-class based, politically diverse opposition that
sought to oust him by relying not on electoral democracy but on people
power, the democracy of the street. The tide turned against Thaksin,
and in the last few months, he not only lost moral legitimacy but a
great deal of political power. Thai politics was not in gridlock, and
the democracy movement was about to launch the final phase to drive
Thaksin out when the military intervened. Though it is now popular
among Bangkokians, the coup will eventually prove to be a cure worse
than the disease.

As a final point, let me return to my first remark, that the Thai coup
is an expression of a larger trend-a deep crisis of legitimacy among
elite democracies that came into being in the 1980s and 1990s as part of
what Samuel Huntington called the “Third Wave of Democratization.” The
Thai coup is the second high profile collapse of an elite democracy in
the last seven years, the first being the collapse of Pakistan’s
democracy in October 1999. It may not be the last. Is there now a
reverse wave leading democracies back to authoritarian or
semi-authoritarian regimes.