The Paradox of Thailand's 1997 People's Constitution

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The Paradox of Thailand's 1997 People's Constitution The Paradox of Thailand's 1997 “People's Constitution”: Be Careful What You Wish For Author(s): Erik Martinez Kuhonta Source: Asian Survey, Vol. 48, No. 3 (May/June 2008), pp. 373-392 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/as.2008.48.3.373 . Accessed: 18/03/2011 12:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Asian Survey. http://www.jstor.org THE PARADOX OF THAILAND’S 1997 “PEOPLE’S CONSTITUTION” Be Careful What You Wish For Erik Martinez Kuhonta Abstract Thailand’s adoption of a new constitution in 1997 was meant to advance far- reaching reforms in the country’s democratic development. A decade later, it is clear that these constitutional reforms failed. The Constitution unintentionally consolidated Prime Minister Thaksin’s grip on power and indirectly precipitated the conditions for the 2006 coup. This article argues that the drafters’ search for a more stable democratic government helped produce an electoral author- itarian regime that triggered the military to intervene. Keywords: Constitution, democracy, political parties, Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra Introduction “The Constitution of 1997, vaunted as the most democratic ever, delivered power into the hands of the least democratic leader of recent years.” ––Chang Noi, Nation columnist1 On the night of September 19, 2006, a military coup, executed with remarkable speed and precision, brought to an end the Erik Martinez Kuhonta is Assistant Professor of Political Science at McGill University in Montreal. He thanks Netithorn Praditsarn, Paul Hutchcroft, Kazue Takamura, and an extremely thoughtful anonymous reviewer, for comments that helped im- prove this article. The article is a revised version of papers presented, respectively, at the an- nual meetings of the American Political Science Association in 2006 and the Association for Asian Studies in 2007. 1. “Two Stories on the Origins of Thai Democracy,” The Nation [Bangkok], July 24, 2006. Asian Survey, Vol. 48, Issue 3, pp. 373–392, ISSN 0004-4687, electronic ISSN 1533-838X. © 2008 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permis- sion to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: AS.2008.48.3.373. 373 374 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLVIII, NO. 3, MAY/JUNE 2008 democratically elected Thaksin Shinawatra regime. In the early hours of the coup, the generals released a statement calling for the immediate annul- ment of the Constitution as well as the dissolution of the Constitutional Court. This was a strong indication that the coup group saw the Constitu- tion as an important element in the vast armory sustaining the Thaksin empire. The return of the military to civilian politics shattered a 14-year period in which democracy had become increasingly consolidated in Thailand. What were the reasons for this coup? The coup group listed four: Thaksin’s meddling with democratic institutions, his unprecedented polarization of society, his actions bordering on lèse majesté, and his corrupt behavior.2 All of these factors refl ect deep frustration with Thaksin’s authoritarian tendencies and monopoly of power. Although Thaksin’s behavior appears to have been the proximate cause precipitating the coup, it is important to look beyond his actions and place Thai politics in a broader context. In other words, what were the con- ditions that allowed Thaksin to act so despotically? How did the prime minister amass the degree of power that fi nally necessitated a response by the military? I argue in this article that the conditions that provided Thak- sin the means to rule in an autocratic fashion can be traced to the 1997 Constitution. It is this Constitution—the most democratic in Thailand’s history—that paradoxically provided the basis for Thaksin’s stranglehold on power and also ultimately the impetus for a military coup to take down his regime. In 1997, Thailand drafted a new constitution that was poised to make far-reaching reforms in the quality of its democracy. With ambitious goals, the “People’s Constitution” sought to structure a democratic system that would consolidate a strong check-and-balance system, strengthen political parties, and uphold political, social, and economic rights. A fully elected Senate, a party list system, and the creation of numerous independent watchdog agencies were key elements of the new Constitution. Yet by most measures, democracy in Thailand since 1997 had taken a turn for the worse. Although the rural poor fi nally felt enfranchised under the Thaksin regime’s populist programs, in terms of liberal values such as the rule of law, civil rights, freedom of expression, and a system of checks and balances, democracy took a heavy beating. Power became concen- 2. See the offi cial announcement of the coup group, initially called the Democratic Re- form Council, in “Coup d’Etat in Thailand,” Bangkok Post, September 20, 2006. See also “CNS Makes Its Case for the Coup,” The Nation, November 22, 2006. The Council for Na- tional Security’s White Paper explaining its motives for launching the coup is reproduced in ibid., November 27, 2006. ERIK MARTINEZ KUHONTA 375 trated in the hands of Thaksin Shinawatra and his Thai Rak Thai Party (TRT). The independent agencies failed miserably to serve as watchdogs of the state. The Senate ended up functioning as a second arm of TRT rather than as a check on Parliament.3 The media weathered perennial attacks on their rights to challenge the government, while human rights violations, especially in the war on drugs and the unrest in the deep south, increased signifi cantly. The main argument of this article is that the 1997 Constitution uninten- tionally provided the basis for Thaksin’s monopolization of power and for a subsequent military response. The Constitution’s concern with political stability ironically facilitated the consolidation of electoral authoritarian- ism. This period of electoral authoritarianism, coupled with charges of corruption, in turn generated a response by the military. The coup, there- fore, can be traced, at least indirectly, to the 1997 constitutional reforms. For the drafters of the Constitution, what plagued Thailand’s democ- racy was the prevalence of corrupt, patronage-based politicians who used electoral power for their own personalistic interests. These provincial poli- ticians gained power by assembling large factions that would then make demands for cabinet seats in order to ensure a free fl ow of kickbacks. To break this trend, the Constitution sought to create numerous rules that would strengthen executive power and political parties at the expense of individual politicians and their factions. The creation of a party list cou- pled with a 5% threshold level, of single-member districts, and the 90-day rule were all meant to strengthen institutions and government stability.4 While the Constitution writers sought to institutionalize political parties, they also held high hopes of creating a polity where politicians would not be swayed by party organization.5 Hence, they created a Senate that was meant to be impartial and whose members could not belong to any politi- cal party. The Senate was to act as a prestigious body that could check the partisan ways of the lower house. Most critical, the Senate’s impartiality 3. Thailand’s Parliament is bicameral, with a lower house, the House of Representatives, and an upper house, the Senate. 4. A 5% threshold means that a party must receive at least 5% of total votes in order to be allotted seats in Parliament. A single-member district is one where only one seat is contested per district, as opposed to a multi-member district where several seats may be contested. The 90-day rule is a rule that stipulates that a member of Parliament (MP) has to be part of a po- litical party for at least 90 days before registration for the next election. 5. Institutionalization is the process by which institutions and procedures gain value and stability. See the seminal work by Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968); and Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scully, eds., Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America (Stanford, Calif.: Stan- ford University Press, 1995). 376 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLVIII, NO. 3, MAY/JUNE 2008 would allow it to select the best candidates for the newly formed, indepen- dent watchdog agencies. It is in these confl icting goals that the Constitution drafters set the basis for the rise of electoral authoritarianism in Thailand. Their vision of strong parties came to fruition—but in a grotesque way.
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