How many coup d etat in thailand




















Coup of Grade: F — Reason: Phibul got rid of his political opponents and civilian counterparts. Oh and he implemented his fascist vision, sided with the Axis during the Second World War and…do you need more reasons? Oh also entwined the Democrat Party with the military heard that one before? But in reality, Phibul reassumed control. The coup solidified the role of the army in Thai politics and introduced future autocrat Sarit Thanarat more on him later and Thanom Kittikachorn to the national spotlight.

Mass protests occur after a rigged election in Field Marshall Sarit Thanarat stages a coup against his former commanding officer.

Sarit goes on to create an autocratic state with him and his security chief Phao Siyanon in power, using American anti-communist aid to enrich himself.

Sarit launches a coup against his own government to rid it of the people he does not like. Genius really. Appoints his son to senior military rank. But the coup also inspired the students of the day to take a stand and demand greater say and democracy.

Using the student massacres as an excuse, CIA-backed Admiral Sangad Chaloryu seizes power and declares a national emergency. The hard-fought democratic gains of three years prior are thrown out the window. After Sangad took over power in , he appointed Thanin Kraivichien as the prime minister. Research shows if countries have already experienced a coup, they're more vulnerable to having another one. Thailand has developed what experts call a "coup culture.

What it does mean is that there has been a normalization of military coups. They are seen as an acceptable way to solve a political crisis, and often it's the public calling for the military to step in.

Coup attempts rarely happen in countries that are fully dictatorial or fully democratic. But those with systems that include a bit of both, like Thailand, are more susceptible. In , Yingluck Shinawatra, the then Thai prime minister, and Thaksin's sister suffered the same fate as her brother and was overthrown by the military. Thaksin comes from the wealthy urban establishment, but made the very smart political move to appeal to the rural masses. He ran as representing their interests and challenging the political elite, and he did a lot to lift rural Thais out of poverty.

He also consolidated power for himself way beyond what was necessary to beat out the establishment. So when you see Thailand fighting over Thaksin's influence in politics, it's partly about a telecom billionaire maybe exerting oligarch-like influence, but it is also about the fact that he shifted power from the urban elite to the rural majority.

And the urban elite does not like that. Typically this battle means the rural majority will elect a government that favors rural and poorer Thais, as they did by electing Thaksin prime minister in and , his allies in , and his sister Yingluck in Then the urban middle-class and elite will use their institutional power and influence to force that government out, as they did with a military coup in , a judicial coup in that means the constitutional court kicked out the elected government and installed a new one , and one of each in Often, this back-and-forth will involve mass protests from one side or both, which sometimes become violent.

Because the fight in Thailand is over whether the rural majority can be allowed to dominate the government, the fight often appears to be over democracy itself. The mostly-rural, pro-Thaksin majority obviously wants as much as democracy as possible because that helps them.

And the establishment minority wants less democracy because that makes it easier for them to hold on to power. This is why, for example, the late anti-government protests called for a "People's Council" to replace the democratically elected government. You also saw this happen in , when the parliament passed a constitutional amendment to finally make the Thai Senate fully democratic currently, about half of the senators are elected and the other half are appointed by a committee of mostly judges; the amendment would have made all senators elected.

The political establishment pushed for the constitutional court to reject the amendment, which they got, thus keeping the senate half-appointed and half-elected. In late , when political opposition leader Suthep Thaugsuban started leading protests against the government, he was open about the fact that he was pushing for a military coup.

Coups have simply become a normal way of solving deadlocks in Thai politics, and Thai politics have a lot of deadlocks. The mere fact that the country has had so many coups makes them a self-perpetuating problem. That they are considered normal — so normal that in mid-May many Thais snapped "coup selfies" of themselves with government-deposing troops — makes them more likely to happen.

The scholar Nicholas Farrelly has argued that Thailand has a "coup culture. Coups have become so normal that Thailand's political institutions, as well as its regular voters, have not felt compelled to find another way to resolve political conflict. This is why, as Farrelly writes of the years after Thaksin's allies won reelection in a year after a military coup had ousted Thaksin himself , "With no consensus about appropriate mechanisms for managing political conflict, the years that followed were among the most turbulent and violent in Thai history.

This gives Thai politicians and activists on both sides of the country's political divide the incentive to push for a coup in the case of a big political deadlock. The fact that people expect a coup, and that it is not seen as quite as objectionable as it is in other countries, makes those coups more likely. Thailand's coup culture partly comes from the country's military culture.

Here's southeast Asia scholar Joshua Kurlantzick :. Other countries also had such coup cultures-think of Turkey-and eventually broke the cycle to the point where coups became unacceptable. Thailand has not done so. That's in part because, compared to nearly every army in the world, Thailand's military is particularly bloated with senior officers who are not needed for defense and war-fighting. Despite having no obvious external enemies, Thailand has over 1, generals and admirals-proportionally a vastly higher percentage than in the U.

Most of Thailand's senior officers have no real jobs. Instead, they have come to believe they can gain prestige, work, and money only by intervening in politics. Since , Bhumibol Adulyadej has reigned as Thailand's king and its official head of state, making him the world's longest-serving national leader in power today.

He does not meddle in day-to-day politics, but he has sometimes played the role of a mediator who can step in to resolve disputes. The king is part of the problem in Thailand. This is more for structural political reasons than because he is any kind of anti-democratic villain, though having a reigning monarch obviously tends to be not-great for democracy. As Thailand scholar Thongchai Winichakul wrote recently for Al-Jazeera , "Ultimately, while many foreign observers credit the Thai monarchy for the country's stability, it has become a destabilizing force and an impediment to democratization.

The fact that the king has acted previously as a political mediator is actually part of the problem. Thai democratic institutions didn't develop systems for solving problems democratically because they had this royal mediator. But now the king is 86 and he's not so involved anymore, which has left an opening for an outsider mediator — a role that the military has taken for itself.

Partly it also gets back to Thailand's dispute over democracy and majority rule versus rule by a minority elite. The minority elite naturally likes the idea of keeping the monarchy involved in politics, partly because it perpetuates rule by a small elite, and partly because the military and bureaucratic elite are tightly linked with palace officials and institutions; they're all part of the same establishment.

The other problem is that it's not year clear who will succeed the year-old king when he dies; while the crown prince is next in line, there are long-running rumors that someone else may take power. This uncertainty worsens instability. This uncertainty has the pro-monarchy political elite feeling paranoid — when the king dies, will they lose their influence forever? Thailand political observer and activist Pavin Chachavalpongpun explains :. The upcoming royal succession will place the unpopular Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn on the throne.

Members of the old power fear the day when Bhumibol will no longer be the force to protect their power interests. Add on top of all this a transparency problem: Thailand's crazy-strict lese majeste laws make it illegal for journalists or analysts in the country to openly write about the king or his succession. That makes it really hard to have a national conversation about him and his role in politics, or to clearly understand what's going on.

This is the story of how Samak Sundaravej, just eight months after becoming prime minister, was booted from office because of some cooking shows. Samak became prime minister in early He was a career politician, but he'd also had a successful side career as a beloved, if avuncular, television chef. One of his most popular shows was called, "Tasting, Ranting.

Samak pledged that he would continue to host his shows after he took office, a sign of his regular-guy connection to Thais, and he did. He did a few episodes of "Tasting, Ranting" and another show called "All Set for 6 AM" prime ministers have to get up early.

The problem is that the Thai constitution makes it illegal for senior political leaders to have any other employment. The idea of the provision is to prevent corruption; if, say, a finance minister were also a highly paid consultant for the national bank, it could be a conflict of interest.

Now, obviously Samak was not going to skew Thailand's national politics to serve the interests of cooking shows. Still, he did break the law, and in September , just eight months into his tenure, the constitutional court ordered him to step down as prime minister. Naturally, there was more going on. Totally separate from the cooking show issue, Samak and his government were at the time in the middle of an enormous and at times violent political crisis.

Anti-government protesters had taken over much of Bangkok, including the airport; clashes between pro-government protesters and security forces had caused dozens of injuries and some deaths; there was a national state of emergency. Anti-government protesters had seized so many government buildings that Samak was working out of a military command post. Clearly, the constitutional court had decided that the violence was out of control and that it had to intervene, using the cooking show as a pretext.

Still, that doesn't change the fact that, at least on the surface, a national leader was deposed over a cooking show called "Tasting, Ranting. You could start a timeline of Thailand's political crisis as recently as October , when the latest protests began, or as far back as , the first of the country's many modern-age coups.

But it may make sense to put things in perspective with a timeline starting in February Thailand's military deposes the government in a coup, the country's tenth since The officers portray themselves as guardians of democracy and promise elections. May The military and its allies push to have the coup leader, a top army official, stay on as prime minister.

This sparks massive protests, which the military attempts to put down with violence. The king intervenes, the coup leader resigns, and civilian rule is restored. As southeast Asia expert Joshua Kurlantzick writes , "Thailand seemed poised for democratic consolidation.



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