While Thailand’s government has come under fire for its handling of the floods crisis, the Thai military’s relief efforts have restored its reputation, analysts say — and boosted its political clout.
The army has dedicated huge resources to helping Thais cope with the country’s worst floods in decades: 55,000 soldiers on the ground, 5,000 vehicles clearing paths through flooded roads and 3,000 boats.
In so doing, the soldiers have quietly repaired an image battered by a crackdown on political protests in Bangkok last year that ended in bloodshed.
Thai Army Commander-in-Chief General Prayut Chan-o-Cha has even spoken in notably conciliatory language in recent weeks in what — after years of sometimes violent political struggles — remains a deeply divided country.
“In the current situation everyone must unify to fight,” he said this week.
While the government of new Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra is now being openly criticized for its management of the floods, the army is on the receiving end of an avalanche of compliments.
On a Facebook page set up a month ago to say “thank you” to the army, more than 70,000 followers have posted photos and heaped praise on the military for its help.
“I think there is a lot of propaganda around and somehow the propaganda is quite effective, people begin to see a better side of the military,” said Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a Thailand expert at the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, agreed the army chief had played a clever hand.
“He knew that this crisis would weaken Yingluck’s government and the best thing to do was to give a helping hand and stay out of it,” he said.
Thailand’s generals have a long record of intervening in politics. There have been 18 actual or attempted coups since the country became a constitutional monarchy in 1932.
The last came in 2006 and deposed Yingluck’s brother former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who now lives in exile, but still enjoys strong support among the rural poor in northern Thailand.
Thailand has endured five years of clashes since then — both -political and in the streets — -between the her brother’s supporters and the Bangkok elites, who have power bases in the military, bureaucracy and judiciary, and who despise him.
As many as 100,000 pro-Thaksin “Red Shirts” occupied central Bangkok for two months last year to demand the resignation of the Democrat party government. In May that year the army moved in to end the demonstrations and in total, the two-month crisis left more than 90 people dead.
Relations between the army and Yingluck’s government are unsurprisingly tense, but analysts point out that army chief Prayut publicly rejected opposition calls for a state of emergency, which would have given him greater powers.
“How the army has come out of it — looking rather well — has somewhat offset, but not erased, the negative perception following the crackdown of April and May 2010,” Thitinan said. “The army has regained some credibility. It gives them political capital to engage in the longer term.”
Paul Chambers, a researcher at Payap University in Chiang Mai, went further, saying the army had been acting increasingly autonomously from the government and was “close to establishing a parallel state” devoted to the monarchy.
“If Prayut is able to appear as the sole source of stability amid intensifying political squabbling, then if the Yingluck government is somehow felled either by the judiciary or censure, he could help to fashion a new government favored by the palace,” Chambers said.
Last week, army expert Wassana Nanuam wrote in the Bangkok Post daily that Prayut’s position had not changed with the floods.
“He does not like the Red Shirts or Thaksin. He is determined to protect the monarchy and lives with the motto: ‘country above all.’ His moves will be worth watching from now on,” she wrote.
Rumors that the government is preparing a prisoner amnesty that would allow Thaksin to return could heat up the debate further.
If the former telecoms tycoon returns to Thailand, Pavin said, the general might find it hard to keep his counsel — and the army’s newly polished reputation could quickly be tarnished.
“The real color of the military is to be a ruthless agency with its own political agenda,” he said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in