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.
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
China has approved the creation of a national nature reserve at the disputed Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島), claimed by Taiwan and the Philippines, the government said yesterday, as Beijing moves to reinforce its territorial claims in the contested region. A notice posted online by the Chinese State Council said that details about the area and size of the project would be released separately by the Chinese National Forestry and Grassland Administration. “The building of the Huangyan Island National Nature Reserve is an important guarantee for maintaining the diversity, stability and sustainability of the natural ecosystem of Huangyan Island,” the notice said. Scarborough
RSS