Thaksin Shinawatra's government and democratic progress in Thailand

Politics

Thaksin Shinawatra's Thailand and the Promise of Democracy

In mid-September 2006, Thailand experienced its first military coup since 1991 (Kampf, 2007). With the approval of Thailand's kind, key figures in the Thailand military overthrew the democratically elected government of then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Though Shinawatra's government was far from ideal, it was nonetheless voted into power by the collective will of the people of Thailand. For the opponents of Shinawatra to oust the man's government outside the appropriate legal methods stands as an affront to the democratic process in the nation and a challenge to the possibility of a legitimate democratic government. Shinawatra's government represented Thailand's best hope for a stable democratic process, a hope that was dashed with the military coup that occurred last year.

Shinawatra's government was the first that was fully committed to the role of capitalism in government affairs (Tejapica, 2006). In fact, Shinawatra himself was a CEO of a major telecommunications corporation in Southeast Asia. His involvement in business provided him with the financial backing to successfully launch a bid for prime minister of Thailand. His business sense allowed him to capitalize on the political tension between urban and rural centers in the nation. Shinawatra chose to court the rural vote, and promise to shift public funding into the Thai countryside. For this action, Shinawatra was accused of buying the crucial rural vote in his election campaign, and widely criticized especially in Thailand's cities (Tejapica, 2006).

Nonetheless, Shinawatra's bid for prime minister was successful and he was the first major politician in the country to take a decidedly more corporate, or liberal, approach to politics in Thailand. He stressed deregulation of trade, greater value on human rights, and limited state intervention in private affairs (Tejapica, 2006). Obviously, those politicians who wanted to preserve the military-monarchy government -- as well as those pushing for more socialist reforms -- criticized these moves as being exceptionally self-serving. Regardless of Shinawatra's personal stake in pushing a liberal agenda in Thailand, we cannot ignore the reality that such principles form the foundation of democratic governments in North America and Europe. The importance of individual rights over collective ones, or over the authority of the government, is central to the successful operation of a democratic government. While critics may have called him corrupt or self-interested, it stands that the liberal principles Shinawatra stressed are at the heart of democracies throughout the world.

In fact, the collapse of Shinawatra's democratic government has only resulted in the limitations of freedoms in Thailand. When the military took over the government, it immediately enacted marital law in Thailand. That stayed in effect until February 2007, under the argument that it was necessary to preserve peace. Leaders in the military junta that orchestrated the takeover argued that they had no choice in the coup, that it was the only way to take back control of the government from a power-hungry tycoon (Kampf, 2007). The reality of the situation, however, is that within a democratic government there are other ways to produce political change. Despite any faults that were extant within Shinawatra's government, they should have been addressed and debated through the appropriate democratic channels. Before the coup, Thailand boasted one of the most stable and healthy democracies in the region. There had been no coups since 1991, in a nation once famous for them. A progressive, democratic constitution was adopted in 1997, and Thailand was even able to weather the economic crisis that plagued Asia in the late 1990s (Kampf, 2007). If there was any legitimacy to the charges that Shinawatra's government was corrupt or that he was simply power-hungry, they could have been argued within the democratic system. His critics could have debated him in public and called for changes to the government through the voting public. The fact that they did not do this only undermines the position of the military junta that their actions were justified.