Army is still a potent political force in S.E. Asia
By Roberto Coloma
SINGAPORE: The military takeover in Thailand underscores the entrenched political role of the armed forces in much of Southeast Asia despite democratic reforms over the past 20 years, analysts say.
Weak state institutions, competing elites and personality-driven political parties enable the military to remain a key player even in countries with free elections, said Robert Broadfoot, managing director of Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy.
“I think there has been way too much use of the word democracy in most of the Asean countries,” Broadfoot told AFP.
“An election is part of democracy but an election without an institutional structure can lead to a very dysfunctional situation.”
Of the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), four are ruled by the military or regimes in which the military is an integral backer: Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and — once again — Thailand.
Myanmar’s ruling junta has for years frustrated Asean’s other members by refusing to relax its grip on the country, and observers fear the coup in Thailand may have given the Myanmar generals another excuse to dismiss the idea of civilian rule.
Thailand, which has been under various forms of military rule since the 1930s, enjoyed a relatively long spell of civilian rule from 1992 until the September 19 bloodless putsch against Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Thaksin was the first elected Thai prime minister to complete a four-year term but after his 2005 re-election, he was dragged into a power struggle with the opposition that snap elections and court cases failed to resolve.
“In times like this when it is perceived that the institutions are no longer working, it provides an avenue for the military to come in,” said Mely Caballero-Anthony, a professor at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore.
Elsewhere in the region, the Philippines has a liberal political system but still faces periodic threats of military intervention 20 years after mutinous soldiers helped overthrow the dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
“The military was politicized and a lot of our political instability today is still an after-effect of martial law and Marcos,” said prominent political scientist Jose Abueva.
One bright spot is Indonesia, the largest Asean member, which has made a successful transition to free elections and civilian rule after long-time ruler Suharto was ousted in 1998, although President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is also a former general like Suharto.
Kusnanto Anggoro, of the Centre for Strategic International Studies, said that “politically, the military now no longer holds influence” in the national government, although retired officers occupy top posts in the civil administration including the governorship of Jakarta.
In the former Indo-Chinese region, military officials wield considerable influence in Cambodia while in communist Vietnam and Laos, the political administration cannot be dissociated from the military.
The regimes in Vientiane and Hanoi came to power on the back of armed struggles against “imperialists” and thus enjoy full army support.
In Laos, six of the 11 members of the new politburo elected last February come from the military.
In Vietnam, only one of the 14 politburo members, Minister of Defence Phung Quang Thanh, is a military man.
But Carl Thayer, a Vietnam expert at the Australian Defence Force Academy, describes the army as one of the four pillars of the regime together with the Communist Party, the state bureaucracy and mass organizations.
In former British colonies Singapore and Malaysia, the military is widely regarded as politically neutral.
“A coup will not happen in Malaysia,” said Abdul Razak Baginda, executive director of the Malaysian Strategic Research Centre.
Military influence in Singapore comes in a different form: all able-bodied men are required once they turn 18 to undergo two years of full-time military service designed to inculcate patriotism and discipline in addition to combat training.
The Singapore military, along with universities and private business, is also an important source of leadership talent for the government — Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Foreign Minister George Yeo were both brigadier-generals before entering politics.—AFP
