A New Year’s wish
THE Nation surely is not the only entity making a New Year wish for 2018 that Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-ocha would stop threatening to delay the anticipated election.
The junta chief at the weekend shared his New Year resolutions – to reduce poverty and to introduce conflict-free democracy. After three and a half years of military rule, neither goal seems particularly realistic. The government-in-uniform has yet to properly address the problems of poverty or income disparity.
Prayut has often expressed his distaste for populist policies of the sort prior Democrat and Pheu Thai governments relied on to maintain support. In the general’s view, he means simply giving money to the poor, which he correctly notes would not represent a permanent, sustainable solution. But he’s offered no viable alternatives.
Soldiers are not economists, so the population can only hope the military gets out of government sooner rather than later, in the expectation that conditions will rapidly improve thereafter.
As for Prayut’s wish that democracy can take root unimpeded by political conflict, we would all be better off if he were simply a retired general spending his days playing with his grandchildren. Instead, he is our prime minister as well as head of the dictatorial junta, and the only real reforms he’s introduced have been aimed at perpetuating a military role in politics.
As have all coup makers, Prayut is now plotting to maintain his influential role after the election. The military-sponsored interim charter envisions handpicked senators supporting his government. Amendments to the Political Party Act give newly formed parties an electoral advantage in return for backing the generals. Prayut has even launched a personal election campaign with his mobile Cabinet meetings, which put him in direct touch with the electorate upcountry – contact denied mainstream politicians.
Despite all of this, it seems he remains insecure about his chances at the polls, and hence his reluctance to fix an election date. The promised election is in effect being held hostage. The junta can be expected to cite continued threats to national security – whether real or imagined – in order to keep postponing the election. There may well be more curious “discoveries” of hidden caches of militarygrade weapons, and fingers pointed at the usual suspects clad in red.
So, our wish is that the junta would simply stop doing this. The ruse no longer works. We have glimpsed behind the curtain. We wish, with little hope of an answer, that the generals would attempt genuine structural reform in politics to seed the ground for viable democracy. We wish they would open the gates to free and fair elections and let the people choose people who are better qualified to run the country.