STOLEN DEMOCRACY PLAQUE
aims to limit the power of elected officials and, instead, give it to institutions traditionally associated with the palace, including the courts, the civil service and the military.
Last week, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan o Cha said he ordered an investigation into the plaque’s disappearance, but warned against making a political issue of it. He said he understood why some people might be upset.
“But, look at what we are doing today. Wouldn’t it be better for us to look ahead at the future? Old subjects are just history.”
The old plaque, about 30cm in diameter and lying flush with the pavement, was embedded in the Royal Plaza here, a vast open area in the midst of government buildings and military installations.
It was so neglected as a landmark that its disappearance could only be estimated to have taken place between April 3 and 7.
However, as a symbol of democratic change, it was revered. For the same reason, it was despised.
Debate on social media over the plaque’s disappearance has evoked a strong streak of antidemocratic sentiment, decrying the 1932 revolution for imposing unsuitable Western-style democracy causing corruption and social ills; slamming the 1932 coup makers as evil; and, even suggesting that the plaque was the physical incarnation of a curse on the nation.
Royalist resistance began almost immediately after the revolution and slowly clawed back influence for the palace.
By the late 1950s, an accommodation was reached with the military, which sought its prestige, the kidnap and execution of Canadian and German nationals in recent months, the Philippine military said.
The military has been struggling and by the late 1970s, the constitutional monarchy was the country’s most powerful institution, inviolable under the protection of the army.
This balance of power began to unravel in 2001, when billionaire populist Thaksin Shinawatra used his fortune to win an unprecedented electoral majority and become prime minister.
Thaksin, accused of corruption, abuse of power and disrespect for the monarchy, was ousted by a military coup in 2006, setting off a sometimes violent struggle for power between his supporters and opponents, with the military strongly in the latter group. His opponents saw democracy as the problem, and some identified the 1932 revolution as the original sin.
“The junta has come to the view that the problems associated with Thaksin and erasing his regime involves a more deeprooted issue of dealing with the notion of people’s sovereignty that was embedded in the 1932 proclamation and first draft constitution,” said Kevin Hewison, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University.
“In this sense, the removal of the plaque is a symbolic act of delayed counterrevolution.”
Although a group of ultra-royalists openly vowed to remove or destroy the plaque last year, there is plenty to fuel speculation of a higher-level conspiracy. to wipe out Abu Sayyaf, which originally had Muslim separatist aims, but now engages mostly in banditry and piracy.
The group has been holding
Photos purportedly taken at the plaza during the period the plaque went missing show scaffolding at the spot, more suggestive of a public works project than a thief in the night.
City officials asked to produce surveillance videos from the 11 cameras at the plaza said they were shut for maintenance during the same period.
Police said they could not accept a criminal complaint of theft except from the plaque’s owner, who was unknown. Pressed on the point, they threatened to sue an outspoken politician who suggested they were not doing their duties.
Prayuth’s suggestion that the case was a stone better left unturned was not idle advice. A government reform activist who sought to petition him on the matter was seized by soldiers and detained for 10 hours.
The plaque’s removal also coincided with the signing of the new constitution by King Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun, who succeeded his late father last year.
Bangkok Post editorial page editor Ploenpote Atthakor saw an upside to the affair.
“In the case of the ill-fated plaque, the silver lining is that its sudden disappearance has triggered an interest in this particular period of Thai history like never before. The people who removed it probably didn’t expect that.” AP more than two dozen captives, most of them Vietnamese sailors, who are easy prey for militants equipped with small, fast boats.