07:36
Tieng Anh Vui
LAST year many thousands of red-shirted protesters gathered in Bangkok’s streets to back the prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra. In May she was overthrown in an army coup. And on January 9th only a handful of her supporters risked the wrath of the ruling junta by gathering outside the rubber-stamp parliament where impeachment proceedings against her had begun. Ms Yingluck can expect a five-year ban from politics, and perhaps eventually a jail sentence, if the National Legislative Assembly (NLA) finds her guilty of corruption and negligence during her three years in office. Her impeachment risks upsetting the delicate calm that has prevailed in Thailand since the coup.
The focus of the hearings, which may last several weeks, is a hare-brained and hugely costly rice-subsidy programme that aimed to boost the incomes of poor farmers. Their votes had contributed to a parliamentary landslide for Ms Yingluck’s party, Pheu Thai, in 2011. Her government pledged to pay farmers twice the market rate for their crop, hoping to recoup the costs by hoarding stockpiles in an effort to push up prices internationally. Farmers piled fertiliser on to their fields; gangs sold rice to the government that was smuggled in from Cambodia and elsewhere; and exports collapsed as international buyers found cheaper supplies in India and Vietnam. At one point Thailand’s warehouses held 18m tonnes of rice, equivalent to about half the annual global trade in the commodity; losses to the exchequer may amount to over $15 billion, the junta says.
The scheme was plainly a disaster. But in truth Ms Yingluck’s impeachment has more to do with long-running efforts by Bangkok’s royalist elites to dismember Pheu Thai—and in particular to eradicate the influence of Yingluck’s brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a populist former prime minister who was deposed by the army in 2006 but who still dictates the party’s policies from self-imposed exile in Dubai. Thaksinites have long claimed that going after Ms Yingluck for corruption targets them unfairly. The legality of impeaching a prime minister who has already left office is also questionable, and it does not help that the impeachment process is based on a constitution that the army dislikes and has suspended.
The hearings are a sideshow for a junta that knows they carry some risk for it. For all its oppressiveness and self-interest, the junta has wanted to appear conciliatory since seizing power eight months ago. Its representatives hold just over half of the seats in the NLA (it handed the rest to the Bangkok establishment) and many seem not to favour Ms Yingluck’s hounding, however much they may dislike the Shinawatra clan. The army presumably has a higher priority, that of preserving order—and its own influence—in the royal succession that will follow the death of King Bhumibol, Thailand’s ailing 87-year-old monarch. Impeaching the now-powerless Ms Yingluck, and thus further inflaming her red-shirted supporters, could complicate this task.
Yet for the time being the threat of impeachment is useful to the generals. It is probably helping to placate Thailand’s traditional ruling classes, who may well consider mounting anti-coup protests if they feel their interests are being ignored. Furthermore, Mr Thaksin’s camp has lately asked Pheu Thai supporters to comply with the generals’ request to abstain from political activity, leaving some hardliners feeling abandoned. Rumours abound that Mr Thaksin is quietly negotiating with the generals, presumably in order to get Ms Yingluck off the hook but perhaps also to safeguard that part of his immense fortune that is still in the country. Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a Thai academic at Kyoto University, thinks the government may try to string out the hearings as a vexation and a bargaining chip.
Siamese twins
That this strategy could bear fruit says much about Pheu Thai’s failure to outgrow the grip that Mr Thaksin holds on the party. Only a very small number of party bigwigs seem to have what it takes to build bridges with Bangkok’s powerful elites; Chadchat Sittipunt, an engineering professor and briefly Thailand’s transport minister, is probably among them. But on the whole it is remarkable how little thought many in Pheu Thai have put to life without Ms Yingluck, let alone Mr Thaksin, one political scientist thinks.
Impeaching Ms Yingluck will require three-fifths of NLA members to vote in favour. Those who do not favour impeachment could still carry the day, if only because ongoing efforts to redraft Thailand’s constitution promise a subtler and more durable means of limiting Pheu Thai’s power. Proposals already in circulation suggest the junta is likely to plump for a lower house elected by proportional representation and by a nominated senate. That ought to keep out any populist party—or enable any government that overreached itself to be turfed out. Another clause could allow for an army man to stay on as prime minister, as was the case throughout much of the 1980s. Hobbling the Thaksinites in this manner would require patience—a virtue that Thai politics admittedly lacks.
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