CourcyInt
Coup in Thailand, 19 September 2006
SPECIAL BULLETIN
TO: All Strategic Intelligence Forum members
DATE: 19 September 2006
SUBJECT: Coup in Thailand
Thailand has been in constitutional limbo since King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Thailand's powerful monarch, intervened to have the results of the April general election quashed. The election had been called by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to extricate himself from the scandal surrounding his sale of Shin Corp, the company owned by his family, to Singapore for US$1.87bn, a deal worth more than 1% of Thailand's entire economy and which many critics said undermined national security.
Since the king's intervention over the election, which due to an opposition boycott was convincingly won by Thaksin's party, the prime minister's relations with the monarch, and by extension the king's circle in the top echelons of the military, have become steadily more tense. In June Thaksin launched a libel suit against one of his political opponents, despite the king ordering him publicly to desist from such actions six months earlier. The same month Thaksin wrote a letter, later leaked, to US President George W Bush warning of a "charismatic person with extra-constitutional powers" who was planning a coup.
We suggested* at the time that the person alluded to was probably General Prem Tinsulanonda, a former prime minister who currently chairs the king's privy council, but it is possible Thaksin was referring to the monarch himself. In July General Prem began to redeploy officers friendly to Thaksin to outlying areas away from Bangkok, apparently with the agreement of his friend General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, the head of the army. Thaksin had been inserting his classmates from military college in key commands as a means of shoring up his position within the military, a tactic known to have irritated the general staff, and we noted that the redeployments could be the precursor to a coup.
On 19 September at 10pm Bangkok time (4pm GMT) Channel 5, an army-controlled television station, issued a statement from the army saying that a "Reform Council", to be headed by the king, had assumed Thaksin's powers. Tanks fitted with loudspeakers patrolled the city warning people to stay off the streets and surrounded government buildings and the royal palace. Thaksin, in New York for the UN General Assembly, used a TV broadcast to call a state of emergency and sack Sonthi as head of the army, before being cut-off after 10 minutes.
Local sources report that Sonthi's forces have seized the prime minister's offices, declared nationwide martial law, arrested senior ministers, banned unauthorized troop movements, annulled the constitution, and silenced pro-Thaksin and English-language media outlets. Thaksin's advisors in New York have retracted his initial promise to return to Thailand tonight.
Thailand has suffered 19 military coups since 1932, most recently in 1991, and the latest shows how superficially the country's elite has embraced Western-style democracy. The traditional power structures - centred round the army, the police, and the civil service - remain in place. All politicians with aspirations to high office retain close links to the military and many leaders are former generals. Politics is seen as merely another path to enrichment, as exemplified by Thaksin's use of his position to further his business interests.
The crucial factor now is the approach to the coup of the king, who is revered by Thais. The king is thought to dislike Thaksin but he has also advocated democratic practices. Whatever his decision, a return for Thaksin looks highly unlikely, despite the prime minister's enduring popularity among rural voters. Metropolitan voters are overwhelmingly opposed to him, a fact that makes coup-related violence in Bangkok unlikely.