BIG BROTHER’S POLL WATCH
>> The next election, in 2019 or 2020 or so, will not be your grandfather’s election. Or your mother’s election or your elder sister’s, either. Plans for the next election are more familiar to Cambodia’s Hun Sen and survivors of Indonesia’s late Suharto than to any Thai voter.
That’s assuming the current general prime actually calls an election and courteously grants permission for the most polite political parties below the military ranks to submit applications to speak and hold rallies with “routine surveillance” by military intelligence units, plural.
In four years of absolute control of all government and justice, the regime has brought in 298 new laws. The junta, including the general prime minister who commands it, has signed and declared 500-plus orders, all with the force of law.
You may think — a lot of people do — that they endure until a government is formed after an election, which may at some point occur. But not Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit and his Future Forward cohorts and the instant backs-up ‘tude of the green shirts. They understand what’s happening.
Credit Mr Thanathorn for getting this issue out in front of the public, and for getting out in front of this issue.
Here’s the deal. Under the constitution passed by referendum in August, 2016, everything that the junta has done since May 22, 2014, is not just legal but continuous, as in cannot be changed.
There’s always a loophole, and here it is. Those laws and junta orders can’t (legally) be changed or wiped. But the overriding constitution that legalises them can be. Credit the general prime minister and the key junta member, army chief Gen Chalermchai Sitthisad for recognising what Mr Thanathorn was up to.
The “billionaire prai” warned that he knows about Chapter 15, Section 256 of the constitution, which can amend or even rubbish the whole constitution if elected prime minister. And this designated Young Turk of 2019 wasn’t talking trash or cosmetics. He has picked as his very first election issue the necessity — his view, certainly not everyone’s — of eliminating the laws and orders the military has brought into existence in order to retain control of... well, everything.
Now, the general prime minister has officially run out of roads to map. Every law and regulation he mandated is not just in place but officially approved by the justices of the Constitutional Court. Last week, after attempting for four years to speak like a techno-autocrat, he started to sound more like a headmaster.
So long as all of you keep acting up, there’ll be no dessert and no election. Don’t blame me, you’ve brought it on yourselves. Instead of a sports day with elections, we’re going to have a route march to the polls under strict rules. And it will happen when it happens, stop asking me or I will delay it again.
There have been a few voices claiming in recent weeks that the regime might be ready for a repeat of the August 2016 referendum supervision with curbs on speech, people jailed for campaigning, encouragement of the “pro” side, intimidation of the “anti” side.
Predictions that the general election will be like that now seem optimistic.
Last week, the leader said political “parties should not expect to run their election campaigns freely”. He left that hanging, for our imaginations.
While Gen Prayut was explaining the details of the next election in language as clear as Fermat’s Last Theorem, his deputy for legal stuff was just as worrying. Or, let’s say, more so.
Newsies asked Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam if it is still the plan to hold local administration elections this year. They expected “yes” but Mr Wissanu had a surprise.
“I can’t say,” meaning he no longer knows even the most basic schedule for any election, let alone national polls with political parties and rallies and speeches and balloons.
So that was the scary political story. The scary physical story was Gen Chalermchai Sitthisad. He is the army commander, and he took umbrage with a claim by Mr Thanathorn that soldiers cruised Future Forward’s May 27 inaugural and authorised public meeting, and took photos of the 3,000 attending, and photos of licence plates of the parked cars. Gen Chalermchai was angry that Mr Thanathorn called this intimidating.
Because, he said, it is just SOP. Standard Operating Procedure by Isoc, army intelligence and other units is to watch, infiltrate, stare at (observe) find out about (photograph) every political meeting. That’s the way it is now. SOP. Stop being dramatic.