TIME - Man of the Year/CompactPublishing-TimeMagazine-TimeManOfTheYear-Win31MSDOS.iso/moy/060192/06019938.000

Text File | 1992-09-10 | 8KB | 154 lines

                                                                                THAILAND, Page 68

Growing Pains


Why the burgeoning middle class in a prosperous Asian country
rose up to insist that a flawed democracy was better than
military rule

By GEORGE J. CHURCH -- Reported by Jay Branegan/Bangkok


    How's this for a sign of political maturity: blood runs in
the streets as soldiers repeatedly fire into crowds of
protesting citizens intent on forcing government changes. In
most countries those events would be interpreted as a sign of
catastrophic breakdown. But in Thailand they signal that the
country no longer consists of a mass of illiterate peasants who
meekly submit to military rule. That may have been true for most
of the past six decades, but now a five-year economic boom has
created an urban, affluent, well-educated middle class that is
demanding a voice in politics, and it cannot be subdued by
bullets. The very name given to the demonstrators by the Thai
press -- mob mua thue, or mobile-phone mob -- testifies to the
interaction of affluence and politics: democracy activists
coordinated their protests by cellular telephone.

    True enough, the democrats have not yet prevailed.
Suchinda Kraprayoon, the general who made himself Prime Minister
in April, stepped down Sunday after his coalition withdrew its
support. But the generals in the past have proved adept at
ruling through civilian figureheads. After 60 years holding the
real power in the country, the military is deeply entrenched
throughout society; these "businessmen in uniforms" own or
control hundreds of enterprises, including two nationwide TV
channels, 200 radio stations and their own bank. The army
remains popular among peasants, who are still a majority of the
population and provide most of the soldiers, and it has proved
that it is ready to turn its guns on its own people, if
necessary, to hang on to power. There is some fear now of
another outright coup to keep the brass in control.

    The revered King, Bhumibol Adulyadej, has tried to guide
the country toward stability, but he has no legal power over
political affairs. Belatedly, he did mediate a compromise last
week to stop the bloodshed by getting the Suchinda government's
promise not to block amendments to the Thai constitution that
would trim the soldiers' authority. And he appointed an
emissary, former Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanonda, to negotiate
with Suchinda an amnesty agreement for those responsible for the
crackdown. This apparently eased military objections to
Suchinda's ouster.

    Yet it seems unlikely that Thailand will go back to the
political past. The violence in the streets showed just how much
the country has changed; until then, Bangkok was the last place
anyone would have looked for riots and bloodshed. Since the fall
of the absolute monarchy in 1932, the country has experienced
10 successful coups, a number of failed ones and 14
constitutions. But only occasionally did violence occur in the
so-called Land of Smiles. An old joke is that when a coup is
attempted, usually both sides drive all their tanks into the
street and then stop to count. Whoever has the most wins.

    As recently as February 1991, the country sat still for a
bloodless military coup that overthrew a more-than-usually-
corrupt elected civilian government. Corruption at least was the
stated reason for the coup; the real motivation was that the
army feared that this government, unlike most nominally headed by
civilians, would actually try to shake loose from the soldiers'
behind-the-scenes control.

    Throughout the 1980s, Thai society changed rapidly. A boom
spurred largely by Japanese and Western investment in chemicals,
textiles, consumer electronics and other industries gave the
country one of the highest economic growth rates in the world,
averaging around 11% from 1987 through 1990 and slowing only to
7.5% in 1991. Thailand, a nation of more than 55 million people,
is the world's largest rice exporter, a leading producer of
seafood and one of Asia's top tourist destinations. Living and
educational standards have expanded enormously: in 1965 only
about 16,000 Thais were attending college; today the number is
perhaps 300,000. Bangkok has matured into an overcrowded (pop.
8 million), traffic-choked city boasting chic restaurants,
satellite and cable TV, fax machines and all the other
appurtenances of a thoroughly modern metropolis.

    Several sparks finally ignited this mixture. As the civil
war in neighboring Cambodia simmered down, the threat to
Thailand from communist Vietnam, which long occupied Cambodia,
also diminished. The army's aura as protector of the nation
dimmed accordingly; Suchinda provoked only sardonic laughter
last week by declaring that soldiers had fired into crowds in
order to stop a threatened takeover by communist agitators.
Despite their lessening prestige, however, the generals behaved
in especially ham-handed fashion, flouting earlier pledges to
restore democracy by ramming through a constitution that
virtually institutionalized military control of the government
-- and then having their parliamentary coalition name Suchinda
Prime Minister, despite a clear popular preference for an
elected civilian in the job.

    Equally important, antimilitary forces found an
inspirational leader in Chamlong Srimuang, a former general who
quit the army in 1986 to run for governor of Bangkok. A Buddhist
ascetic, he was re-elected in 1990 and ran a notably clean and
democratic administration. He put together a civilian coalition
that scored heavily in parliamentary elections in March.

    In recent weeks Chamlong has attracted an unusually broad
spectrum of society -- students, workers, businessmen, even
bureaucrats -- to participate in mass demonstrations, though he
proved regrettably unable to prevent some from turning to
rock-throwing violence. Gothom Arya, vice chairman of the
Campaign for Popular Democracy, an academics' group, asserts
that "everybody rallied behind the students: the political
parties, the NGOS [influential nongovernmental welfare
organizations] and the middle class. This represented something
very new in Thai politics. The middle class is more powerful
than ever before."

    It is not yet all-powerful, however. Many Thais agree with
Sukhumbhand Paribatra, a political-military expert at
Chulalongkorn University, that "what we are witnessing is the
military's last hurrah. The last few days' violence was its
dying gasp." But he adds that he "can't say when, how or at what
cost" a civilian-led democracy will prevail. In fact, the death
watch on military rule, if it really is that, may well drag on
through weeks, months or even years of tension, turmoil, renewed
demonstrations and possibly even more bloodshed.

    But the economic boom that has helped loosen the
military's grip may also indirectly restrain more attempts by
the generals to hang on through violence -- they have as much
to lose as anyone else. Not the least reason King Bhumibol was
able to broker last week's compromise was a growing fear on both
sides that continued bloodshed would severely damthe economy by
frightening away tourists and foreign investors. It simply is
not as easy for the military to maintain control of the affluent
and educated Thailand of today as it was in the simpler peasant
society that the nation was once, but will never be again.