BANGKOK: Days after populist Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra claimed his third big consecutive election victory, he bowed to an urban middle-class revolt against alleged corruption and abuse of power and stepped aside.
On February 24, the day Thaksin called a snap poll to counter unrelenting protests in Bangkok, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo declared emergency rule amid months of street demonstrations after the military said it foiled a coup attempt.
A year-and-a-half ago, she scored a big electoral win after first becoming president in a people power revolt.
The protests in Thailand and the Philippines drew inspiration from movements against army-backed rulers — Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, the 1992 “Black May” uprising in Bangkok, the fall of General Suharto in 1998.
But if past movements were aimed at overthrowing military despotism, the uprisings today target cultures of corruption and cronyism in which patronage trumps principles.
“When you start taking business excesses, blatant excesses, then the people call you for it,” said Ken Conboy, a Jakarta-based risk consultant.
“That’s what the people did with Thaksin, that’s what they did with Suharto and that’s also part of it in the Philippines.”
The army persuaded Suharto to quit in 1998 after violent student-led street protests, a decision as surprising then as Thaksin’s was this week.
Suharto’s six children had become multi-millionaires from lucrative government contracts and monopoly licences. People finally got fed up, Conboy said.
The tipping point for Thaksin came when his relatives sold — tax-free — their $1.9 billion stake in Shin Corp, the telecommunications empire he founded, to a Singapore state company, sparking outrage in the streets.
Arroyo, who survived an impeachment attempt last September, remains under a cloud of suspicion from allegations of vote-rigging in the 2004 presidential election and graft within her family.
Institutions such as courts, election commissions and other regulatory bodies suffer from a perceived lack of independence and credibility in Asia’s fledgling democracies.
Hence the recourse to extra-constitutional remedies, said Abhisit Vejjajiva, the Eton and Oxford-educated leader of Thailand’s main opposition Democrat Party.
Allegations of corruption and wrongdoing should go through the Corruption Commission, the Constitutional Court or Senate. “But these processes have been distorted by the prime minister,” Abhisit said in an interview.
“So in the end, we have an elected politician who can remain above the law with no mechanism to deal with it — no accountability, no responsibility. That to me is not democracy.”
Despite fears the Thai military might intervene in a country that has seen 23 coups or attempted coups in the last 74 years, the generals insist soldiers will stay out of this fray.
The Philippines military — which joined the movements that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos 20 years ago and former President Joseph Estrada in 2000 — repeatedly denies it will step into Arroyo’s embroglio.
After Suharto was convinced to retire after three decades of unfettered power, the Indonesian military retreated to the barracks, abandoning its old “dual function” ideology that guaranteed it a paramount role in politics.
So now, perhaps the strongest institutions in Asia’s young democracies are among the oldest — the regal and religious; kings and bishops, monks and mullahs.
Arroyo narrowly avoided being pushed out of office last year when a conference of Catholic bishops declined to join the chorus of foes and erstwhile allies calling for her head. The Church had been at the forefront of previous people power movements.
Abdurrahman Wahid, Indonesia’s first post-Suharto elected president, was head of its largest Muslim organisation. In Thailand, Thaksin announced he was taking a “rest” after visiting revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, saying he didn’t want anything to mar June’s 60th anniversary of the king’s accession to the throne.
An opposition boycott of the polls and the surprising number of abstention votes meant Thaksin would have had a hard time convening parliament and forming a government.
But he was also looking beyond the political mathematics to the metaphysics, taking cover under the mantle of the world’s longest-ruling monarch. —Reuters
