Days after Thailand voted for wholesale change in the form of a government led by the country’s first female leader, Yingluck Shinawatra, cracks are showing in the coalition that swept her to office – and the country’s powerful army has not formally recognized her party’s win.
In her first Western newspaper interview since Sunday’s vote, Ms. Yingluck told The Globe and Mail that General Prayuth Chan-Ocha, the head of the Thai army, has yet to call and congratulate her on Sunday’s landslide victory.
“No. No, not yet. I haven’t heard anything from him,” she said. “I have only heard from [Thai media] interviews that he will accept the people’s vote.”
While Ms. Yingluck’s Pheu Thai party and its coalition allies secured nearly 60 per cent of the seats in the lower house of parliament, it remains to be seen whether the 44-year-old businesswoman and political neophyte can appease the demands of her allies, the hard-line Red Shirts, without angering the country’s conservative military and its supporters in the monarchy and elsewhere.
The army has staged 18 coups in the past seven decades – most recently in 2006, when a coup ousted her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra – but Ms. Yingluck dismissed the prospect of another “because I don’t think it will happen again.”
Diplomats based in Bangkok believe the army will stay in its barracks for now. But no one is certain how it will react if Pheu Thai pushes ahead with provocative proposals such as reopening the constitution or pushing for an amnesty that would allow Mr. Thaksin to return to Thailand.
The leader of the leftist Red Shirt movement, which entered into an electoral alliance with the Pheu Thai party and ran candidates under its banner, said in an interview that the support of the Red Shirts was conditional on the new government sticking to an agreed platform. The agreements include rewriting of the 2007 constitution that was drafted while the country was under military rule, as well as a promise to seek “justice” for those who ordered a deadly crackdown on Red Shirt protests in the centre of Bangkok last year.
“The expectations, of course, are so high. We have to tell people what is the plan,” Ms. Yingluck said shortly after leaving a belated July 4 celebration hosted by the U.S. ambassador to Bangkok, to which Gen. Prayuth sent a basket of flowers. “I believe the people are patient … and the people [will] at least give me a chance to prove my ability to help the Thai people.”
In his only public remarks since the vote, Gen. Prayuth said Monday that the army's duty is to protect the nation, its Buddhist religion and the monarchy, but made no mention of the election results. Mr. Thaksin – as well as senior Red Shirt leaders – have been accused of seeking to overthrow the monarchy and to turn Thailand into a presidential republic, a charge Mr. Thaksin vehemently denies.
Ms. Yingluck sought to dispel the notion that she is little more than a proxy for her brother, Mr. Thaksin, who is at once the country’s most loved and loathed person. The first and only Thai prime minister to serve an entire term in office, he was re-elected in a 2005 landslide only to be ousted a year later by the military. He was later charged and convicted in absentia of corruption and abuse of power.
Ms. Yingluck said that while she has “learned” from her brother, she intended to be her own Prime Minister. “I am capable enough to make my own decisions,” she said.
She said she would open public hearings on the constitution, hoping to measure its public support. The 2007 document gives additional powers to the judiciary – which shares the army leadership’s traditionalist, pro-monarchy bent – and made it easier to impeach a sitting prime minister. In addition, nearly half the seats in the country’s Senate are now appointed, rather than elected.
