ABSTRACT
At dusk, on 19 September 2006, the military staged the 18th coup since Thailand was transformed from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy in 1932. Tanks rolled onto the streets of Bangkok and were greeted with cheers from the crowd. Bangkok residents were seen offering flowers to Thai soldiers for toppling the elected government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Two years later, the royalist yellow-shirted People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) organized months-long protests against the elected Thaksin-backed regimes of Samak Sundaravej and Somchai Wongsawat. The PAD members carried the portraits of revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej and proclaimed themselves as guardians of the monarchy against the perceived threat posed by Thaksin and his cohorts. The PAD was successful in creating a state of ungovernability by seizing Thailand’s Suvarnabhumi Airport but failed to remove Thaksin’s proxies from politics. The Constitutional Court intervened in the crisis and finally stripped Samak and Somchai of their premierships on rather absurd grounds. 1 And in May 2010, the military launched a brutal crackdown against the pro-democracy Red-Shirt demonstrators at the behest of the Abhisit Vejjajiva government, resulting in almost 100 people killed and over 2,000 injured. In a move deemed as retaliation against the state, the Red Shirts allegedly committed arson attacks against public property. Many in the Thai capital praised the Abhisit government’s harsh measures against the Red-Shirt protesters. They were convinced that some of the Red Shirts were members of an underground terrorist network. These three incidents raise a crucial yet disturbing question: What has gone wrong with Thai democracy?
