It walked like a coup and talked like a coup, but,Thailand's army insisted, it was just martial law. The army, which has staged 18 coups or attempted coups, overseen 23 military governments and nine governments dominated by the military, in 82 years of stop-start democracy in Thailand, yesterday again bit the bullet and suspended the country's caretaker government. No doubt now, a real coup.
Rival demonstrations have been broken up, a curfew imposed, and up to 14 TV and 3,000 radio stations deemed politically partisan have been taken off the air. The media has been prohibited from interviewing anyone “not currently holding an official position”, and the public has been warned not to disseminate rumours on social media.
The purpose of the exercise, army chief Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha said, was mediation and to calm the the street violence between the country’s bitterly divided government and opposition parties that has claimed 28 lives and seen 700 injured since it flared up at the end of last year. To that end he has over the last two days been fruitlessly banging heads together at round table talks on the appointment of an interim prime minister, political reforms, and the timing of an election.
The opposition Democrat Party and its yellow-shirted supporters, largely based on the urban middle class, remains determined to overthrow the Puea Thai Party government run by supporters loyal to ousted former, and now exiled, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. His sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, was kicked out of the prime ministerial office by a court two weeks ago.
The opposition is demanding a “neutral” interim prime minister to oversee electoral reforms before a new election, both backed yesterday by “neutral” Prayuth. But if he agrees to the government’s preferred August date for a general election, even under different rules, voters could well put the popular Shinawatras back in power – a real test then for the army’s professed democratic vocation.