No Post-Election Coup, Promises Thai Commander-in-Chief – The Diplomat

Earlier this week, the top of Thailand’s armed forces reassured the general public that the navy wouldn’t stage a coup after the nation’s upcoming common election. Gen. Chalermpol Srisawat, the commander in chief of the Royal Thai Military (RTA), advised reporters on Tuesday that he anticipated to see the nation’s democratic improvement proceed beneath the present constitutional monarchy, the Bangkok Publish reported.

Chalermpol was responding to journalists’ questions on how the navy would react if the election, which is tentatively scheduled for Could 7, 2023, considerably altered the political panorama. When requested straight whether or not it would launch a coup in response, he merely responded, “No, sir.”

He mentioned, “The armed forces observe orders from the federal government that was fashioned by way of political means however we don’t become involved in politics.”

Such guarantees problem liberally from the mouths of the highest brass and spokespersons of the RTA, fairly often in response to journalists’ probing. As protests grew forward of final month’s Constitutional Court docket listening to into the tenure of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, a Protection Ministry spokesperson felt the necessity to insist that the navy wouldn’t overthrow the federal government. “I guarantee you that there isn’t a coup in any respect. Please really feel relieved and relaxed,” the spokesperson mentioned.

Military chief Gen. Narongpan Jitkaewtae echoed the identical sentiment shortly after his appointment in October 2020. “The possibility of a coup is zero,” Narongpan mentioned on the time, “supplied no teams create circumstances or violent conflicts that trigger struggling.”

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It’s not shocking that Thai navy commanders are always pressured to discipline such questions. The RTA has carried out 12 coups because the finish of absolutely the monarchy in 1932 – 19 if one additionally consists of unsuccessful makes an attempt – and plenty of of those have been preceded by sincere-seeming denials and disavowals. After Gen. Prayut Chan-o-cha imposed martial legislation on Could 20, 2014, the navy insisted that what was unfolding was not a coup. Two days later, it introduced it was seizing management of the federal government.

Whereas the query has change into much less urgent since 2019 on condition that the navy remains to be successfully in cost beneath the present administration of Gen. (now Prime Minister) Prayut, it should change into extra pressing as Thailand approaches subsequent yr’s election. Prayut’s authorities, born from the coup of 2014 and cemented in energy by a flawed election in 2019, stays deeply unpopular, and a genuinely free election would very possible return its opponents to energy in some configuration.

How the navy may reply is a salient query. The RTA’s interventions over the previous 15 years have been aimed toward averting the return of the fugitive former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who turned resoundingly well-liked after his election in 2001. Seen as a menace to the nation’s conventional royal institution, Thaksin was faraway from energy in a coup in 2006, however the outdated guard has by no means fairly succeeded in scrubbing away his affect.

After 2006, as Thaksin-aligned events gained repeated elections, the institution used quite a lot of underhand authorized means, some straying into the absurd, to take away his proxies from workplace. Ultimately, it misplaced endurance and launched one other coup in 2014 to take away his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, from energy.

Regardless of all of those efforts, nevertheless, the Pheu Thai Occasion stays the most important occasion within the Thai parliament, and the 5 years of direct navy dictatorship that adopted the 2014 coup helped radicalize a youthful era of political activists which have taken intention not simply on the navy’s outsized position in Thai politics, however the monarchical energy that stands behind it. True to kind, after the youth-focused Future Ahead Occasion scored important beneficial properties within the 2019 election, a court docket banned it on a technicality. Its successor, the Transfer Ahead Occasion, is now poised to run within the 2023 election.

On this context, it’s subsequently completely affordable for journalists to ask how navy commanders would react to the return of opposition forces at subsequent yr’s election. Whether or not their solutions inform us something of substance is one other query. Certainly, the RTA’s historical past of interventions in Thai politics ensures that the guarantees of its commanders are just about the other of reassuring.