A saga and sideshow with much at stake

A saga and sideshow with much at stake

The impeachment case against former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra this month for dereliction of duty while in office over the rice-pledging budgetary losses is both a saga and a sideshow.

An official inspects pledged rice at a warehouse in Ayutthaya. Both sides of the political spectrum stand to lose from the outcome of impeachment proceedings against former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra over the rice-pledging scheme. Thiti Wannamontha

It is a saga because the impeachment hearings are less about Ms Yingluck and more about her self-exiled brother Thaksin Shinawatra, also a former prime minister who was deposed and later convicted for corruption.

The see-saw tussle between Thaksin's camp and his opponents has fundamentally characterised Thai politics over the past decade. His forces kept winning elections as often as his opponents kept finding ways to dislodge them from office.

On the other hand, the Yingluck case is also a sideshow because it keeps Thailand stuck on Thaksin, whose wide array of adversaries wants to keep him at bay or even to banish him and his clan altogether. Thaksin won't let go of Thai politics because he has too much to gain from so much he has lost, and his opponents don't really want to let him go even though they want to get rid of him because the mere deletion of Thaksin won't be enough to restore the Thailand that he unwittingly transformed through political brilliance and sheer greed for power and wealth.

Tame and timid post-coup conditions under martial law notwithstanding, there is no going back from what Thailand has become over the decades, especially since the Thaksin years. So the impeachment manoeuvrings are essentially recurrent machinations that are deeply rooted in Thailand's contested political order. We will probably see more manifestations of this grand tussle for Thailand's soul and practical future while the country is hovering and locked down under a military government during the post-coup period. Nevertheless, the impeachment hearings will yield several far-reaching implications.

First and foremost, the outcome for Ms Yingluck is a critical test for Thailand's reconciliation efforts. While two other Thaksin-aligned Pheu Thai party executives, Somsak Kiatsuranon and Nikom Wairatpanich, are also in the impeachment dock for trying to amend the constitution, the Yingluck case is the telltale sign of where Thailand's domestic peace and conflict stand today.

On the face of it, the case is odd because Ms Yingluck was already disqualified from office prior to the May 22 coup for improperly overseeing a senior bureaucrat's transfer. As the coup abrogated the 2007 constitution, the case against her can only rely on enabling laws. In other words, impeaching Ms Yingluck when she is no longer prime minister, during a coup and while there is no working constitution requires a lot of supporting legal technicalities.

Moreover, the coup-appointed NLA's authority and jurisdiction will likely be contested down the road. This means the Thaksin camp could later revive the case during a subsequent administration in the event Ms Yingluck is impeached. Retroactive and backdated decisions are more frequent these days, and thus the Yingluck decision this month will be highly consequential but may not be irreversible.

Naturally, the generals who seized power and the broad pro-coup/anti-Thaksin coalition behind them have to show something. It would not make "coup sense" if her administration was deposed by the putsch though she did nothing wrong.

The pro-coup coalition also must be wary about Ms Yingluck's potential return to politics in the next election. She might just win big again like in July 2011, with her brother as jockey, thereby negating putsch purposes. It is a daunting probability for the pro-coup/anti-Thaksin coalition, regardless of how the new constitution is crafted and in view of a hitherto unwinnable opposition party that refuses to change.

To be sure, the overall charge against the Yingluck government was focused on various abuses of power that featured the colossal rice-pledging blunder that resulted in losses in the hundreds of billions of baht and culminated with the amnesty bid that sparked broad-based anti-government street demonstrations, which led to an intractable political environment that paved the way for the coup.

For all of her government's infractions, the pressure is immense to punish Ms Yingluck. A successful impeachment would ban her from near-term politics. It may also exacerbate her pending criminal case on the judicial track on similar charges. Ms Yingluck's worst-case scenario is jail time. For the hardcore pro-coup columns, going all the way would mean seeing her behind bars after a ban from politics.

But going for the jugular here would exacerbate tensions and deepen divisions in Thailand. The Thaksin camp is decidedly conciliatory, as it sees the ball being in the opponents' court. Thaksin has explicitly told his supporters to stand down. The Shinawatra clan has everything to lose if the red shirts are reactivated at this time, but this is likely to change if Ms Yingluck receives what her supporters see as complete injustice.

Because the NLA is basically handpicked by the military junta, the ruling generals have a dilemma on their hands. Going too far against Ms Yingluck will worsen Thailand's conflict and polarisation, driving away reconciliation and compromise. But not going far enough will raise questions about the basis of the coup and suspicions about behind-the-scenes deal-making between the generals and Thaksin.

Whatever the outcome, the legal and institutional architecture of Thai politics is likely to be further weakened. The executive branch of the future could become even more ineffective because a prime minister could be disqualified, impeached and jailed over a bureaucratic transfer or a policy plank that was publicised at election time for voters to decide. Indeed, if this logic and precedent could be evenly applied to prime ministers in retrospect, the current one could end up in the dock as well.

Some policies work, some policies don't. But if those behind policy formulation and implementation are impeached or jailed, the future of effective policy making is doomed. The best judge for policy success and failure is the electorate. Such was the case in Thailand's Feb 2 poll, which was nullified. Thaksin's Pheu Thai Party was on course to do much less well in light of the fiscal losses from rice pledging and poor implementation that cheated myriad farmers. Until the electorate decides, as the ultimate owners of Thailand, more machinations like the Yingluck impeachment drama are in store against the backdrop of a sticky decade-long saga during the interim but indefinite post-coup era.


Thitinan Pongsudhirak is associate professor and director of the Institute of Security and International Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak

Senior fellow of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University

A professor and senior fellow of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Political Science, he earned a PhD from the London School of Economics with a top dissertation prize in 2002. Recognised for excellence in opinion writing from Society of Publishers in Asia, his views and articles have been published widely by local and international media.

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