Thailand (Lonely Planet, 13th Edition) - China Williams [20]
On 19 September 2006, the military, led by General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, staged a bloodless coup which forced Thaksin into exile. Retired General Surayud Chulanont was appointed as interim prime minister. In the following year, the Constitutional Court ruled that as a result of electoral fraud, the TRT Party had to be dissolved, barring 111 of the party’s executive members from politics for five years. A new constitution was approved in a referendum by a rather thin margin. As promised, the interim government held general elections in December, returning the country to civilian rule. In January 2008, the Thaksin-influenced People’s Power Party (PPP) won a majority and formed a government led by Samak Sundaravej.
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A 1907 French map put the Phra Wihan temple, but not the area around it, in Cambodia. In 2008 Cambodia wanted to include the disputed area around the temple as part of the would-be World Heritage Site.
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In that year Thailand faced great pressure on various levels: the ongoing insurgency in the Deep South, a territorial conflict with neighbouring Cambodia, the global economic crisis, rising oil prices and the extreme political polarisation at home.
After Unesco listed the ancient Khmer temple of Phra Wihan (‘Preah Vihear’ in Cambodian) as an official World Heritage Site, nationalist emotions ran high on both sides. Cambodia and Thailand moved troops into the disputed area, but returned to talks.
Ousted PM Thaksin returned to Thailand briefly, but then went back into exile (at that time to the UK, but he has since been constantly on the move) to avoid trial, and later, the sentence handed down against him by the Thai court. His wife also faced charges in court.
Samak’s PPP-led government was troubled by the extra-parliamentarytactics of the opposition People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD). Demonstrations were led by the ex-mayor of Bangkok, Chamlong Srimuang, and newspaper owner, Sondhi Limthongkul. The movement represented a mixture of anti-Thaksin, anti-PPP (considered Thaksin’s proxy) and royalist sentiments. The protesters, wearing yellow (the king’s birthday colour) and equipped with plastic hand-clappers, were dubbed ‘yellow-shirters’. They included a wide range of middle-class groups and some of the upper class. The PAD were well organised and developed strategies on a daily basis to interrupt the work of the government and cabinet. They seized public spaces and government complexes, setting up camps for months in places such as the Government House. The quasi-permanent gathering, supplied with food and drink and entertained with music and speeches, added to the capital’s traffic woes, although it eventually became something of a tourist attraction.
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On 7 October 2008, PAD protesters surrounded the Parliament while in session and demanded PM Somchai’s resignation as they considered him Thaksin’s political nominee; their clash with the police resulted in some PAD deaths and many injured on both sides.
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The supporters of Thaksin and the PPP government also organised their own movement, symbolised by red shirts and a formidable trademark of plastic foot-shaped clappers. (A later, milder version was heart-shaped.) The red-shirt protestors represented TRT and PPP supporters. They came mostly from the north and northeast, and included anti-coup activists. Both yellow and red movements found support from politicians and academics in different camps. Some skirmishes in Bangkok and other provinces resulted in more than a dozen deaths. This was seen by some as evidence of the surfacing of a longstanding, suppressed polarisation between classes and between rural and urban sectors in Thailand.
In September 2008, Samak Sundaravej was unseated as PM by the Constitutional Court for violating a conflict of interest law by hosting TV cooking shows while in office. The PAD occupation of Thailand’s main airports, Suvarnabhumi and Don Muang, in November 2008, was the boldest