Thaksin Shinawatra, the Kingdom of Thailand’s billionaire telecom-tycoon turned Prime Minister, went on national television on 3 April 2006 to claim an overwhelming victory in the referendum-style election the previous day. In face of an opposition boycott, Thaksin had won 56 per cent of the ballot. His Thai Rak Thai Party’s 16 million votes (out of 29 million cast) was down on its record February 2005 score of 19 million, but well above the 11 million that had swept Thaksin into office in 2001; and the trt had taken nearly every seat in the House of Representatives.footnote1 Buoyed by his renewed mandate from a largely rural electorate, Thaksin looked set to continue in office for the rest of his term. Just 24 hours later, after an unscheduled audience with King Bhumibol Adulyadej, an ashen-faced Thaksin, surrounded by his stunned and tearful entourage, announced from the front steps of Government House his decision to stand down as Prime Minister for the good of the nation.
Thaksin had weathered an unprecedented storm of almost daily anti-government demonstrations in Bangkok and the other main cities for two months prior to the election.footnote2 The anti-Thaksin campaign had begun in September 2005 under the personal leadership of Sondhi Limthongkul, multi-millionaire owner of the Manager Media Group and former crony of Thaksin’s, turned militant oppositionist. When his popular talkshow, Meuang thai raisapda, was taken off state tv due to its increasingly hard-hitting exposés of government corruption, Sondhi turned the programme into a weekly roadshow, attracting boisterous anti-Thaksin audiences across the country. His newspapers published the sermon of a popular (if controversial) monk from the Laotian border region, Luang Ta Maha Bua, alleging that Thaksin was aiming to establish a presidency; and an article claiming the pm had presided over a merit-making ceremony at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, the country’s holiest site, thus usurping the monarch’s role. Sondhi’s four-month blitz, making use of all his mmg outlets—cable tv, newspapers, magazines, books, cds and websites—helped the widespread but largely passive opposition to break through the government’s media blockade and build up political momentum. The travelling talkshows soon became known as ‘the Sondhi phenomenon’, and served as dress rehearsals for the mass movement of February–April 2006.
The first big anti-Thaksin rally took place in Bangkok’s grand Royal Plaza on February 4th, its numbers swelled by popular indignation at the tax-free sale for $1.9bn of the Thaksin family’s 49.6 per cent stake in the giant Shin Corporation to a Singaporean investment outfit. Four days later the People’s Alliance for Democracy was formed, under the collective leadership of Sondhi and four others, representing the major strands of the opposition. They comprised Major-General Chamlong Srimuang, former mentor and ally of Thaksin, ex-governor of Bangkok, leader of the May 1992 uprising against military rule and head layman of the ascetic Santi Asoke sect; Phiphob Thongchai, a senior ngo activist and education reformer; Somsak Kosaisuk, a veteran public-sector labour leader; and Somkiat Phongpaiboon, a university lecturer and protest movement leader. The five supremos were joined in their nightly brainstorming sessions by Khamnoon Sitthisaman, Sondhi’s right-hand man, a political analyst and royalist commentator; and Suriyasai Katasila, a full-time activist and pad coordinator. The pad’s objectives were to remove the Prime Minister from office and dismantle the Thaksin regime through a new round of constitutional reform, by petitioning King Bhumibol for the application of his Royal Prerogative. The pad leadership aimed to build up a nationwide anti-Thaksin network, to increase popular pressure but avoid violence and bloodshed. The movement staged a series of major demonstrations in downtown Bangkok, with the Royal Plaza rally on February 4th followed by another on the 11th, and two more at the Sanam Luang ground on February 26th and March 5th.
The pro-government counter-mobilizations began in early February 2006, in direct response to the anti-Thaksin movement. Initially, these took the usual dirigiste form of deploying local bureaucratic channels to bus in throngs of government officials, bemused villagers and wide-eyed schoolchildren to Government House, to cheer on the embattled Prime Minister by waving roses and pre-printed placards for the tv cameras. From February 24th when, amid resounding calls for him to resign, Thaksin dissolved parliament and called a snap election, his Cabinet hawks—former communists, provincial bosses and ex-generals—took charge of the movement and geared it directly towards confronting the anti-Thaksin demonstrations in Bangkok. Throughout March 2006, a string of mass rallies was held in Bangkok and other major provinces, especially the North and Northeast where trt had a strong base, to provide the now caretaker Prime Minister with a show of support and a platform for his combative speeches. For the opening rally of the election campaign in Bangkok on March 3rd, the 300-plus trtmps and 75 provincial governors were assigned quotas and expected to draft in, respectively, 3,000 or 10,000 supporters. Cheap lodging around the capital was fully booked, and hundreds of thousands of people were bussed in to Sanam Luang to listen to Thaksin’s hour-long diatribe.
Meanwhile on March 2nd, two contingents of villagers from the North and Northeast, each around 2,000-strong and calling themselves Khabuan E-tan (‘Column of Buggies’) and ‘Kharavan Khonjon Doenthao’ (‘Caravan of the Walking Poor’), had set off on their well-provisioned and widely publicized journeys to Bangkok. They converged on the outskirts of the capital two weeks later, and were enthusiastically greeted by the caretaker pm in person. Moving on to Chatuchak Park, in the north of the city, they joined forces with hired taxi and motorcycle drivers and camped out in a self-styled Caravan of the Poor & Democracy-Loving People Village. This counter-demonstration, by tens of thousands of poor beneficiaries of Thaksin’s populist programmes, proclaimed three objectives: to give moral support to the Prime Minister, to buttress democratic rule via election, and to call for further government help in alleviating the manifold problems of the poor.
On March 14th, in an effort to force Thaksin to resign before his referendum-style election, the pad led 100,000 demonstrators in a huge march from Sanam Luang along the Ratchadamnoen Boulevard to Government House, where they camped out. They staged another big rally there on March 25th, but Thaksin managed to avoid any face-to-face confrontation with the demonstrators. Finally, to put pressure on the still largely reticent big commercial interests, the pad organized a rally on March 29th in the fashionable shopping and tourist centre of Siam Square on Sukhumvit Road, and occupied it for two days. Contingents of protesters were also dispatched on an excursion to the Silom business centre, the Singapore Embassy, the Office of the Election Commission, etc. The atmosphere in these demonstrations was generally safe and relaxed, festive, resolute, even rowdy and raucous at times, but never violent or murderous. Young couples, pensioners and families with small children mingled with black T-shirted volunteer guards, groups of ngo and labour activists, Buddhist monks, police officers, reporters and a sprinkling of foreign tourists. Beside the rousing speeches and announcements, the organizers offered a variety of educational and entertaining interventions by university professors, dissident senators, ex-diplomats, folk bands, classical musicians and an amateur Chinese opera troupe.
The Caravan of the Poor avoided any full-frontal clash with the pad demonstration, mostly staying put at Chatuchak Park. But it did dispatch groups of protesters to various opposition sites in downtown Bangkok such as Thammasat University’s Sanam Luang campus, the Manager Media Group offices and those of the anti-Thaksin Nation Multimedia Group, where some minor scuffles took place. The atmosphere among the Chatuchak crowd was folksy and convivial, more like a temple fair than an earnest political rally. Pro-government speeches and diatribes against the pad alternated with country bands, slapstick comedies and even a papaya-salad-making contest. Finally, the Caravan of the Poor dispersed and went back home to vote in the April 2nd election, delivering Thaksin his unilateral landslide that was to be reversed the following day by the ‘whisper from heaven’.footnote3 If this was an unusual political denouement for a constitutional democracy, it was also a reminder that the Kingdom of Thailand has never been a democracy per se but always, in the peculiar formulation reiterated in the official English translation of the 1997 Constitution, ‘a democratic regime of government with the King as Head of the State’.