Opposing Democracy in the Digital Age

Front matter

1E YELLOW SHIRTS IN THAILAND

WEISER CENTER FOR EMERGING DEMOCRACIES

Series Editor

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Preface

PART | ONE Introduction Two Opposing Democracy THREE Crises and Coups FOUR The Origins of the Yellow Shirts

FIVE Democratic Breakdown

Preface

It was around 9 p.m. in the evening of September 19, 2006. Like many Thais, my Mom and I were watching an evening soap opera on TV. Suddenly the TV show was interrupted. A group of military generals appeared. They sat calmly with portraits of the king and queen behind them. For a moment I thought it was a déjà vu. I’d seen this “image” before . . . when I was young. The generals announced that they had taken over from the government and that everything was going to be alright. But I knew this would not be alright.

The story of Thailand is personal to me. Not simply because it is my birth country, but because my life has been directly affected by its democratic collapses. In 1991, at the age of nine, I experienced firsthand a collapse of democracy when a group of military generals dislodged a democratically elected government. I remember the vivid scenes I witnessed as a child, of army tanks rolling down the streets of Bangkok, and the hundreds of armed soldiers occupying key areas of the city. My father was a high-ranking army officer at the time, and the simple thought that “men in uniform” dressed just like him were responsible for such chaos and the killing that ensued was entirely confusing to me. My siblings and I grew up in a military household. We were thankful to the institution that had provided my father a good career that allowed us to have a good life. Were these men in uniform the very same that did those evil things? As I grew up and lived through several coups d’état, I became even more baffled and haunted by this question. It often perplexes me how a country that had become more prosperous over the decades could subsequently have been drawn into a xiv Preface descending spiral of sometimes weak, sometimes overbearing, civilian governments that alternated with periods of authoritarian rule.

Just a year prior to the coup of 2006, I was working at the Government House of Thailand during the prime ministership of Thaksin Shinawatra. The antigovernment protests were becoming frequent and serious. I remember the many occasions that I was unable to reach my workplace via the main entrance since it was blocked by the protesters. One day, as I squeezed myself through the back entrance along the canal, trying to make an exit, it occurred to me that I had no idea why they were protesting. Maybe I should listen in. And so I did. That was the day my interest was sparked in what would later become the “Yellow Shirts.”

The People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD)—more locally known as the “Yellow Shirts”—is one of the most contentious and sustained political movements in contemporary Thai history. Its title notwithstanding, this antidemocratic movement centers around a powerful monarchy and army, a distinct conception of “democratic politics,” and a weakly institutionalized party system. This study analyzes the relationships among these three components and situates them in the overall development of the modern Thai polity. It argues that blockage in formal and informal democratic institutions drove the PAD movement to appeal to nondemocratic institutions, which contributed to the collapse of Thailand’s democracy in 2006. By exploring the forces and conditions that promoted this antidemocratic movement, and by showing how its emergence and decline has shaped Thailand’s experience with democracy, the study seeks more generally to elucidate factors that undermine democratic political regimes.

The PAD eventually evolved into another political movement—the People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC). The PDRC was even more antidemocratic than the PAD and it was a truly digitally networked movement. Some of the PDRC leaders became social media influencers with millions of followers online. The fact that this popular movement opposing democracy could thrive online challenged our conventional wisdom that social media is a democratizing tool.

Three convictions underpin this book. The first is that there is no such thing as overthrowing democracy for the sake of democracy. A coup d’état is irreversible. Democracy cannot be “taken away” from the people and “returned” to the people in its same shape and form. Rolling back democratic rights, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant, can take a nation down a dangerous path. Democracy is difficult and messy, and publics can have many reasons to be disillusioned. But one must not give in to the urge for “order” in the face of temporary chaos and inconvenience by

Preface xv allowing democratic rights to be curbed. Second, procedural democracy— fair elections, real power for elected officials, and basic human and civil rights—is worth pursuing. By deterring the abuse of power, by allowing the exercise of popular sovereignty, and by making it easier for the disadvantaged to influence and benefit from public policy, democracy promotes the free development of human capabilities. The third conviction is that social structures, historical legacies, and political arrangements can be changed by acts of human will. Political choices matter, and they will matter even more if those who make them understand the opportunities and constraints their predecessors have faced. A grasp of these opportunities and constraints can help such actors identify, and thus more easily overcome, obstacles that otherwise overwhelm them.

While this book examines the emergence and development of the PAD and the PDRC movements between 2005 to 2014, its implications remain relevant to understanding the future of democratic politics in this Southeast Asian country. The contribution of this empirical work will not only help us to understand why democracy collapses, but it also lends insights into the flaws of democratic regimes more generally.

The failure of democracy in Thailand, despite decades of trial and error, provides some key lessons to newly democratizing states and warns us that institutionalizing procedural forms of democracy provides no guarantee for democratic survival. Extraconstitutional institutions ought not to be strong enough that they compete for political legitimacy with democratic institutions. In the Thai case, both the military and the monarchy have been institutionalized as powerful sources of authority and legitimacy both in politics and society to remain crucial power brokers in Thai politics. It is not that democracy cannot thrive as long as the monarchy and the military remain on stage. More problematic is that their authority is able to contend with that of democratic institutions. In the digital age of politics, we also cannot expect tools like social media to democratize us if we do not believe in democracy ourselves.

PART |

ONE