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As Thailand’s
constitutional referendum campaign kicks off, the military rulers are
doing all they can to make sure it passes.
Eleven months after
Thailand’s military used its tanks to oust premier Thaksin
Shinawatra and scrap the 1997 “People's Charter”
constitution, the military-backed government will face its first real
test of its popularity when Thais will finally go to the polls for an
up-or-down vote on a newly drafted constitution.
Elections are not the
junta’s strong suit, however, and already the referendum
scheduled for August 19 has come under fire. Anti-coup groups and
former members of Thaksin’s now-dissolved Thai Rak Thai party
are furious over a draft law for the special election that says
anyone who “makes trouble, obstructs or does anything that
could disturb the referendum” could be jailed for up to 10
years, fined up to 200,000 baht and banned from politics for five
years, according to media reports.
But while opposition
from coup opponents may be expected, even the constitution drafters
don’t like the draft law. As it stands now, the bill would ban
any public relations campaigns for or against the charter, which may
just include the government’s plans to spend at least 30
million baht of taxpayer money for a PR offensive to “educate”
the public.
“Even if amended
to allow for ‘factual’ campaigning on the referendum, it
is clear that the main purpose of the law is to intimidate and
silence persons who don’t share the official view,” the
Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) said in a statement last week.
“Meanwhile the administration is pumping vast amounts of money
into Yes propaganda that is set to increase quickly.”
So far, public
education on the referendum has mainly consisted of government
officials, soldiers and even election commissioners all telling the
public to approve the constitution and urging coup opponents to keep
quiet or risk jail time. The military-appointed premier Surayud
Chulanont has told government ministers to “raise public
awareness” about the new constitution, while warning that those
who campaign against it may be breaking the law.
The Yes campaign has
already taken on strange forms. On Wednesday, the Bangkok Post
carried pictures of people distributing leaflets on the referendum
dressed bizarrely in green tights that made them look vaguely like
villains from the 1960s Batman TV series. The government hopes
millions of these so-called “democracy volunteers” will
train citizens to accept the draft constitution, and that those
people in turn will urge others to do the same, the paper reported.
In addition, The Nation newspaper reported that the government plans
to launch advertisements on television, radio, newspapers, billboards
and the Internet under the theme “Approve: New Constitution,
close to the people.”
Government officials
have gone to pains to link plans for a real election with a
successful referendum. Last week Defense Minister Boonrawd Somtas
told reporters that an election “can take place only if the new
constitution passes the referendum.” The 17 million baht that
the government has already spent on advertising to encourage a Yes
vote has also linked the referendum to an election, implying that a
No will simply mean longer military rule. What’s more, coup
leader Sonthi Boonyaratglin has reportedly ordered soldiers in all
regions “to publicize the charter to residents.”
“I don’t
think that the military can educate the people about the constitution
because it has an interest that the constitution should pass a
referendum, and it will do anything to persuade people to pass the
referendum,” said Vorajet Pakirat, a law lecturer at Thammasat
University. “Some people in provincial areas already think they
don’t have a right to vote No.”
The government’s
awkward moves to restrict discussion come on top of what is already a
strange referendum. While the vote is meant to prove that the new
309-article constitution is democratic and accepted by the people,
indeed voters don’t have a clear choice. If Thais reject the
constitution, then the generals could choose any other constitution,
make any amendments it wishes and then promulgate it. Although some
top soldiers have said they would choose the 1997 constitution, they
would also likely make changes that look very similar to the current
draft, meaning that the public could end up with a constitution that
looks an awful lot like the one the military is presenting now no
matter what they choose on August 19.
Certainly this
constitution has some key differences with the 1997 version, both for
better and worse. A prime minister cannot own a stake in any media
firm – a clear reaction to Thaksin’s ownership of
the iTV television channel – and cannot serve for more than
eight consecutive years – Thaksin once implied that he would
rule for at least 15. Censure motions can be filed by just a fifth of
Parliament, or 96 MPs—coincidentally the same number the main
opposition Democrat party won in the last legitimate election in
2005. Instead of a directly elected 200-member Senate, a panel of
unelected judges and heads of independent bodies would appoint almost
half of a 150-member upper house.
The draft also says the
government must provide the military with “forces, weapons,
ammunition, military equipment and technology that are adequate and
necessary” to protect the country. And finally, in the last
article, it absolves the coup makers of any wrongdoing, which critics
fear would open the door to more coups in the future.
Former Thai Rak Thai
members have already regrouped to launch a campaign against the
draft. The former party retains an extensive network throughout the
country’s poorer Northeast region, and at the very least, a No
campaign could act as a de facto campaign for the general election
promised for later this year, even though the government still bans
new political parties.
Interestingly, the
coalition of the Democrat, Mahachon and Chat Thai parties has agreed
to support the new constitution. The parties all boycotted the April
2, 2006 election because they said the Election Commission was biased
and a free election could not take place, which helped set the stage
for the coup. Even so, this time around the parties don’t have
a problem with the fact that two of the election commissioners
organizing the referendum on the constitution also helped write the
document and voted to support it.
Election commissioner
Sodsri Sattayatham, who is also a constitution drafter, has warned
anti-coup groups against campaigning to reject the constitution. She
also has a personal stake in the outcome. While the constitution was
being drafted, she persuaded the entire five-member Election
Commission to resign if the drafters approved a proposal to ban
anyone who helped write the new constitution from sitting on
independent bodies or running for Parliament. Essentially, that
clause would have banned her from the Election Commission due to
conflict of interest. In addition, when arguing unsuccessfully for a
“national crisis council” to be included in the
constitution, Sodsri said: “Why don’t we bring the
military into the process so things can become orderly?”
“We don't see
anything wrong with the Election Commission,” said Ong-Art
Klampaiboon, a spokesman for the Democrat party. “I think they
can do their job independently. Society will monitor them and former
MPs in the Thai Rak Thai group will monitor them, so it’s not
easy for the commission to do as they want.”
He added: “If we
accept the constitution, it will make our country more peaceful and
we can have an election later this year.”
For those who don’t
support the generals, the restrictions on campaigning for the
referendum fit into a larger pattern of the military altering the
playing field to favor soldiers and bureaucrats. Besides boosting the
military’s budget by 66 percent over the past two years, the
coup makers also passed a wide-ranging national security bill that
will turn the Internal Security Operations Command into a vast
superstructure in which senior officials are immune from judicial
oversight and have wide powers to detain suspects without warrants,
restrict travel and send those who “obstruct” their work
to jail.
Indeed, a front-page
report on Wednesday in the Bangkok Post quoted a source close coup
leader Sonthi saying he has used command staff both to lay the
groundwork for him to run in the next election and to “break
up” support for the dissolved Thai Rak Thai party in the North
and Northeast. Although many NGO leaders, academics and editorialists
initially supported the coup as a necessary evil to correct a system
that Thaksin had manipulated, it’s now clear the playing field
is still tilted—just in the other direction.
“Ultimately, the
notion of a constitution being replaced by military force is—from
the perspective of human rights, justice and the rule of law—an
absurdity,” said the AHRC statement. “While government
propaganda in Thailand may persist in trying to give the appearance
of a decent and harmless coup, the effect of removing the paramount
law of a country by force is to make clear that the country is
lawless.... Thus the country has devolved, in legal and institutional
terms, to an extremely barbaric point that will have lasting bad
effects for generations.”
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I have to admit, it is sad to see the directions that Thailand is heading towards.