THAILAND MILITARY COUP 2006: FICTION VS. FACT

[Fidel]

Interesting look at the coup from AHRC

 

THAILAND MILITARY COUP 2006: FICTION VS. FACT

 

"There was no other way to avert a national tragedy"

The military regime has not produced any evidence to show that widespread violence was imminent, as it has claimed. There were certainly worrying conflicts, some of them planned, between supporters and opponents of the caretaker government of Pol. Lt. Col. Thaksin Shinawatra. However, there is nothing to prove that these would have threatened national security. Large-scale protests were set to resume, but those held earlier in the year had ended without any public disturbances. Meanwhile, the courts had been working to overcome obstacles to new elections, and had been taking up petitions with good progress and public support.

 

The spectre of grave national instability, which has been conjured up by dictators throughout modern history as a routine pretext to obtain power by force, lacks believability.

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"The majority of people in Thailand support the coup"

There is no way to verify this statement. The coup group has used images of people in Bangkok giving flowers and food to soldiers as propaganda, nationally and internationally, to claim that it had popular backing. But opponents and critics of the coup have been banned from organising protests or other actions. A taxi driver who sprayed his vehicle with protest slogans and drove it into a tank at high speed later said from hospital that he was not a strong supporter of the previous government, but he had been upset at all the flowers and smiling troops giving the impression that there were not many people who disagreed with the coup. Talk shows, community radio stations, websites and other avenues for free public expression have been shut down or closely monitored. The media has been ordered to "cooperate" with the regime, and has largely complied.

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"The military will step down after one month"

The coup group, renamed the Council for National Security, is set to remain in power until a new government is elected; at least one year. In the meantime, its leadership has done exactly what it accused the previous government of having done: it has promoted its own people to positions of authority. General Sonthi has himself also become director of the powerful Internal Security Operations Command, a post normally reserved for the prime minister.

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"A civilian prime minister will be selected within two weeks"

The new prime minister is a retired careerist general and personal friend and colleague of the coup leaders who led troops involved in the May 1992 massacre, for which no military officers have ever been called to account.

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"An interim civilian legislature will include persons from all social sectors"

The interim legislature has been rightly named "the assembly of generals". Out of 242 of the 250 members named so far, 76 are serving or retired generals and senior officers. Most other members are bureaucrats, businesspeople and some academics. By contrast, there is one labour representative, and four from political parties.

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"The military will be placed under the interim constitution and the Council for National Security will be limited to specific security issues"

The coup group is above the constitution; everyone else is below it. This is a traditional form of constitutionalism in Thailand. Only the 1997 Constitution was placed above all persons, because it was written in collaboration with the people and for the people, not by persons handpicked by generals, for generals. The interim constitution makes the Council for National Security the most powerful body in Thailand, with the means to control every aspect of the country's political workings while the law remains in effect. The legislature and other bodies it is setting up are merely its proxies.

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"The interim constitution will fully guarantee civil liberties and rights"

The interim constitution has no guarantees of rights and liberties. A generic provision protecting human dignity and rights as per customary practice and international obligations is meaningless, as it is without substance, lacks any institutional means for enforcement and is anyhow contradicted by reality.

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"Many law experts looked at the interim constitution and were very happy"

The advices of law experts on the interim constitution were largely ignored. The version passed is virtually identical to the interim constitution of the 1991 coup group. It has been strongly and repeatedly criticised by law experts.

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"General elections will be held within one year, if not sooner"

The minister responsible for the office of the prime minister has estimated that it may be 17 months before elections can be held. Like its predecessors, the military regime is now looking for ways to extend its tenure.

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"One of the first tasks of the interim government will be to end martial law"

The clear intention of the junta is to retain martial law for as long as possible, in order to prevent persons associated with the former government from organising against it. Meanwhile, emergency regulations remain in force in the south, despite the government's claims that it seeks peace with insurgent groups there, and the earlier condemnation of these regulations by a United Nations rights expert. The regulations could also at any time be put in force anywhere else in the country, in lieu of martial law.

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"The courts are independent"

The Constitutional Court has been recomposed as a tribunal and set the task of finalising earlier cases on constitutional violations by political parties. Like military regimes the world over, the coup group is messing with the higher judiciary for its own purposes, with the consequence that the entire judicial system is compromised.

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"The government will continue to meet all its international obligations"

Thailand's international human rights obligations were underpinned by the 1997 Constitution. In its absence, there is no legal foundation for compliance, and the institutions for protection of human rights in Thailand have been sorely damaged. Ongoing restrictions to freedom of speech, assembly, movement and other civil rights all breach international law, as does the amnesty that the coup leaders have granted themselves.

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"This is only a brief intervention to restore and strengthen democracy"

This is the biggest fiction of them all. It is also patent nonsense. Democracy is not strengthened by military coups. Nor does this coup group have any such intention. Having scrapped the only truly democratic constitution that the country ever had, however imperfect, it is now acting to reinforce established authority against the growth of other parts of society which were outside of its control. The true intention of the coup group is to restore and strengthen the role of the armed forces in the political life of Thailand. This is the opposite of democracy.

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Source

[Guest]

In other words....

 

'bollox'

[thalenoi]

Is there one human being out there who believes the Junta? or Idiot Bush, or hypocrite Chirac or....fill in the dots....

[Nervous_Dog]

I thought everyone would be happy Thaksin has gone, wasn;t the board concencious it would be great if he was gone

 

DOG

[Flashermac]

If you read back a bit in the archives, you'll see the folks running the site weren't to happy with Thaksin either.

 

http://thailand.ahrchk.net/mainfile.php/2006st/?alt=english

[siamaloha]

Some of the conspirators of the coup admited they had been planning the coup for years, very obvious that this old group of elites are very jealous of the new elites(Thaksin and his men) and could not wait to get their dues back.

 

The junta obviously have no knowledges in economy and forign trades, if they want to move Thailand forward, its better to join the free world and scrap the feudal protection law of 49% foriegn owenership law, even in Thaksin era, he knew this law was absurd for foreign investments, although his government did not have the balls to repel the law, but at least they condoned the practice of Thai nominee system to get aroud the feudal system, so foriegn investment prospered.

 

Now what? the junta wants to review all existing Thai nominees in all foreign own enterprises, this has created a panic in all foriegn enterprises who have broght in billions of dollars and hiring millions of Thai workers and suddenly they can be forced to give up their assests due to this ancient feudal protectionism, that is on the mandate of the junta.

 

Almost all the new investment contracts were cancelled after coup, the foreign investment sentiment is the lowest in Thai history, and there is no sign of business reform at all from the junta, instead they are still preaching the naive economic theory of self sufficiency, and preaching not to depend on foreign help. These guys need some clear heads and some more IQs, a population over 60 mill with 90% below poverty level, with no core industries except sex industries, they are deceiving themselves for self sufficeincy without forign investments.

 

The junta will take Thailand back another 100 years, the living standard will further fall as the foreign investments dwindled,

 

only with Anti-Taksin,up root Thaksin, anti-corrption(on their own terms), national unity(on their own terms) are the only mandates(or rather slogans) of their whole governance, and without any sort of direction to lead this poor third world country forward, the over 90% of ordinary struggling Thai masses are bound to suffer even more when the country keeps moving backward with immature kindergarten level governance.

 

 

[pasathai1]

anyone think General Sonthi being muslum will have any long term problems ?

[YimSiam]

Apparently Khun Sanuk lifted the ban on talk about the ro- err, military coup... I guess I missed that.

 

AHRC needs to detail the ways in which a military coup might not have been in reality a pro-democratic, anti-corruption revolution? Those human rights guys have no sense of humour! A David Letterman-style top ten list would have been much more engaging. What's next, an expose on Pervez Musharraf's secret anti-democratic views, or Than Shwe's tearful confession that he actually has no plans at all to let Myanmar hold an election, ever? Duh.

 

YimSiam

[Mentors]

i would like to say something but...

[Neo]

I have a Thai friend who is somewhat of an intellectual and asked him if he thought the coup was a good move. He said if they put away the corrupt persons from the previous administration then yes it is a very good thing, otherwise it's just the same old, same old like before.