Snap election unlikely to cure Thailand’s ills

The decision yesterday by Yingluck Shinawatra, Thailand’s embattled prime minister, to dissolve parliament and call a snap general election seems unlikely to cure the latest violent spasm gripping the Bangkok body politic, stemming from more than a decade of indigestible north-south, rich-poor social divisions and visceral personality politics.

Despite the PM’s ostensibly placatory announcement, protest leaders and opposition parties vowed to continue mass anti-government demonstrations, suggesting the proposed February 2nd poll amounted to a trick to perpetuate the rule of the Shinawatra “regime”. But so far they have failed to come up with a viable alternative plan for running the country.

Military coups

The standoff threatens further to undermine democratic governance in a country where military coups have been commonplace and where parties defeated in elections have rarely accepted their fate with grace or dignity. Some Thai political scientists, in the style of America’s Tea Party, are now claiming that winning the most votes is not necessarily the most important qualification for legitimately holding political office.

Suthep Thaugsuban, a former deputy PM who is leading the protests, said early elections would make no difference. "The dissolving of parliament is not our aim," he said.

He has instead been calling for a new prime minister to be chosen by King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Thailand's ageing monarch. He has also floated a proposal for an appointed "people's council" comprising "decent men" whose main task would appear to be the reconfiguring of the electoral system to ensure Yingluck, and her exiled elder brother and former PM, Thaksin Shinawatra, never again hold political power.

Suthep suggests his Platonic wise-men oligarchy would eventually give way to an elected government, but has not said how long this would take. Opportunistic opposition parties, who also abhor Thaksin and his kin, have shown a similar lack of responsibility. In 2010, then prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, leader of an unelected government installed by Thaksin's opponents, survived a similar wave of street protests by pro-Thaksin "red shirts". He had the army to thank for his rescue; about 90 people died during the unrest.

Abhisit, leader of the main Democratic party opposition, is also refusing to say whether he will participate in the proposed February election. Most opposition MPs resigned from parliament on Sunday.

Effective referendum
Yingluck's decision to allow Thailand's 66 million-strong population what is effectively a referendum on her Puea Thai government, which won in a landslide result in 2011, looks statesmanlike on the face of it, but is not quite what it seems.

“The government does not want any loss of life . . . At this stage, when there are many people opposed to the government from many groups, the best way is to give back the power to the Thai people and hold an election. So the Thai people will decide,” she said.

Yet the near-certainty that Puea Thai will win again accounts for Suthep’s and Abhisit’s reluctance to go down the electoral route. While the opposition can count on support from middle-class Thais in Bangkok and the non-Muslim areas of the south and from pro-establishment royalists, they have been permanently outnumbered, electorally speaking, since Thaksin first won office in 2001 backed by the poorer, rural masses of the north and east.

– (Guardian service)