History is repeating itself in Thailand, as Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra fails to address a decade-long political division in the country.
On Sunday, Dec. 1, around 30,000 protesters launched a people’s coup, swarming state agencies and forcing the prime minister to flee. When Shinawatra won the election in a landslide victory in 2011, she promised to heal deep political divisions caused by the tumultuous previous decade. But the current crisis is stark evidence that not much has been achieved so far.
The prime minister seems to have lost interest in keeping her campaign promise. She has focused instead on trying to exonerate her elder brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, who served as prime minister until being overthrown in 2006. Early last month, she attempted to pass a bill that would pardon almost anyone facing criminal and corruption charges from the political turmoil between 2004 and 2010. This bill was rejected by the Senate because of heavy criticism that it had been originally crafted to pardon her brother, a businessman who faces a jail term for corruption if he ever returns to Thailand. Her attempt to rush this bill through the legal system gave the opposition party a solid pretext to revitalize anti-government protests. Unsurprisingly, anti-government protests supported by the opposing party have spread like wildfire since this incident.
The current unrest primarily results from her misinterpretation of public mood. Unlike residents in rural areas who have benefited from populist policies, the educa-ted middle class in urban locations are not willing to forgive the prime minister’s brother. Thailand has suffered from political violence for a decade, and many people still fear the time when he used populist mandates to crack down on the opposition. Although Thailand has enjoyed relative political stability until recently, people have not fully recovered from the trauma of the early 2000s. The ruling party’s attempt to push through the amnesty bill was a striking reminder of the populist chaos of those days. The violent backlash against the bill and the administration that drafted it was inevitable.
Instead of restoring her family’s fortune and fame, Shinawatra should focus more on reducing political polarization in her country. Prolonged political turmoil will interrupt economic growth and undermine the stability of her administration. Even if she overcomes this challenge, any small disruption would start another cycle of protests and government crises while the Thai population remains deeply divided. It will take years of work to heal the wounds from past conflicts, but the current political unrest is reversing the work that has been done so far.
A version of this article appeared in the Tuesday, Dec. 3 print edition. Kenny Kyunghoon Lee is a staff writer. Email him at [email protected].
