‘Legally binding’ 20-year Thai masterplan laid out

BANGKOK: Thailand’s junta on Thursday said any future civilian government will be legally bound to follow a 20-year “masterplan” for the country as generals seek to entrench their political influence for decades to come.

Soldiers have run Thailand since a 2014 coup, ushering in the country’s most autocratic government in a generation.

The military said the coup was needed to end more than a decade of political instability, instigate reform and root out corruption. But critics decry severely stifled freedoms, as promised deadlines to return to civilian rule keep slipping.

“Reforming the country needs time and a long-term strategy. So the government decided to have a 20-year national strategy as the master plan, as a strategy plan, for the country,” Major General Werachon Sukondhapatipak said at a rare briefing for foreign diplomats and media in Bangkok on Thursday.

In an announcement heavy on aims but light on concrete policies, he said the 20-year plan would help Thailand become a high income country by tackling, among other things, corruption, a sclerotic civil service as well as boosting the country’s flagging economy.

The masterplan would be “legally binding” within the country’s military-drafted constitution and any future administration “has to formulate its policies based on the national strategy”, Werachon said, without detailing specific sanctions for noncompliance.

The military has launched a dozen successful coups in the last century.

Analysts say the latest plan raises the prospect of a return to the kind of “military-steered” democracy that dominated Thailand for much of the 1980s where the army effectively controlled nominally civilian administrations.