and Pasuk 2005, 232), from 1980 to 1988 (despite three attempted coups), but at the same time, Thailand had yet to see an elected prime minister complete his term. Prime Minister Chatichai would be no exception.
The Chatichai government took corruption to levels that neither the public nor the military could stomach. The government became widely known as a “buffet Cabinet” (Baker and Pasuk 2005, 242; Connors 2007, 96–97). This stemmed from a biting reference to an antique model of governance. Members of the Thai public replaced, in their discussions of the Chatichai regime, “politics” (การเมือง, or kan meuang) with the phrase kin meuang (กินเมือง).8 Kin (กิน) means “eat,” but the compound word kin meuang refers to a specific system of “traditional remuneration from the profits of office” (Baker and Pasuk 2005, 242). Somboon discusses this model as characteristic of the period preceding 1892, ending during the reign of King Chulalongkorn. Before then, provincial administrators (chao meuang) appointed by the king received no salary and so raised their income from taxes and corveé labor. In this decentralized system of authority, it also gave the chao meuang control of the judicial administration, permitting self-serving interpretations of law. In some cases, the office of the chao meuang became semi-hereditary (Somboon 1981, 26; 1982, 33). When Thai referred to the Chatichai government with the epithet kin meuang, then, it indicted Chatichai for trying to reinstall a system of unmerited rewards for elites who, by virtue of their office and the command it afforded of the law, felt entitled to consume the people they ruled.
The military in the mid- and late 1980s saw a new group of officers, disdainful of the ideological debates of the hawks and the doves, emerge as a dominant faction at the same time that the political status of the military was on the decline. Forming the National Peace Keeping Council (NPKC) in 1991, they saw the general disgust with the Chatichai government’s excesses as the opportunity they sought to restore the military as a commanding political presence (Baker and Pasuk 2005, 242ff.; Connors 2007, 96–100; Chai-Anan 2002, 173). In February 1991, the NPKC seized the reins of the state in a bloodless coup d’état, arraigning Chatichai on corruption charges and dissolving parliament. The NPKC appointed Anand Panyarachun as prime minister until elections could be held in March 1992. The process met with little public resistance, until the junta leader, General Suchinda Kraprayoon, breaking his earlier promises not to seek public office, stepped unelected into the premiership to replace the candidate of the winning party (Samakkhitham, a party created by the NPKC for the election), who withdrew amid drug trafficking allegations (Baker and Pasuk 2005, 244; Connors 2007, 99–100; Klima 2002, 90–91). Large protests at the Democracy Monument (steps from Thammasat University and Sanam Luang) began late in April at the urging of the Campaign for Popular Democracy, led by Chamlong Srimuang, the popular former mayor of Bangkok and key member of Santi Asoke, discussed in the previous chapter. Early in May, Chamlong began a hunger strike9 that he vowed to maintain until Suchinda stepped down. Whereas Suchinda defended breaking his promise by saying, “I sacrifice my honor for the sake of the nation,” Chamlong responded, “I sacrifice myself for the sake of the nation” (Klima 2002, 112). The campaign drew demonstrators across Thai society,10 reaching around 200,000 on 17 May (Baker and Pasuk 2005, 244). The Suchinda government’s response took its cue from the 1970s, starting with a massive show of military power that escalated to violence lasting for three days and nights.
My friend Bun told me that while he was training to become a commercial jet pilot, he met a retired air force officer who explained the use of violence this way: “He said that the military makes people stupid, because it rewards people who follow orders, not people who think. In 253511 [1992], they brought soldiers in from upcountry, who had no idea what was going on in Bangkok. They did not use troops from around Bangkok, because those troops saw the news, and saw the people gathering at Democracy Monument for a long time, so maybe they wouldn’t fire on them. The soldiers from upcountry, when they were told to shoot, they followed orders.”12
The ensuing bloodshed, claiming dozens of lives, ended only when the king summoned Suchinda and Chamlong and ordered them to come to a peaceful resolution. The damage to the military’s reputation was thorough, and Suchinda stepped down, bringing Anand back as interim prime minister until elections in September. While in office, Anand gutted the NPKC, and the doves about whom Kat had told me were assigned control of key military posts. High though the price was in terms of human lives and well-being, in this case, large-scale peaceful protest had succeeded not just in ousting an unelected government, but in the process the protestors became, like the students in 1973, heroes and martyrs in the narrative of Thai democracy (Thongchai 2002).
Symbols in Struggle and the Claim to Democratic History
A notable feature of these moments—1973, 1976, and 1992—is that the demonstrators in each instance displayed images of the king, the Thai flag, and Buddhist symbols, sometimes combined in single articles. In certain moments, the national/religious/monarchical symbols had the power to stop bullets temporarily. Alan Klima, present during Black May, describes a scene that is equal parts surreal and terrifying:
It was now fully morning, but not bright. The army battalion was marching forward, while the crowd had come up off the asphalt, where they had been lying prostrate, and were now standing in unison, thankfully singing the national anthem.
Then the crowd sang the anthem to the king.
With that, the soldiers stopped their advance, held their firearms at their side, and stood at attention. For the duration of the anthem to the king, both sides stood at attention. When the people finished singing, they erupted into applause and cheers. For the soldiers’ part, as soon as the song was over, they charged. (Klima 2002, 121)
In no case did these symbols stall violence altogether (as Phra Supoj’s robes also failed to do), but this passage shows that such demonstrative claims to national loyalty, Buddhist faith, and reverence for the king were powerful for all concerned. If protestors knew they risked their lives in each case, they did so literally under the banners of nation, Buddhism, and monarchy, claiming the legitimacy of their struggles by virtue of the allegiances they displayed.
Figure 3. A Thai flag widely distributed in the May 1992 prodemocracy demonstrations bears the phrase throng phra jareun, equivalent to “long live the king.” Photo: Ron Morris.
While there are many photos and some video of the 6 October assault on Thammasat University, virtually all were taken outside the walls of the campus and show acts or the outcome of acts of violence against protestors. Girling argues that the three pillars—nation, Buddhism, and king—played an important role in progressive politics throughout the 1970s, including the Thammasat protestors, but points out that the nation of the progressive movement was a constitutional nation, not the paternalistic nation of authoritarian regimes (Girling 1981, 155). It is this constitutional nation that was the condition of possibility for the NHRC.13
“Before, they could forbid people to speak, but with the new constitution they cannot,” Kat told me. The “People’s Constitution” (รัฐธรรมนูญฉบับประชาชน) was drafted with unprecedented popular consultation, allowing for input from a wide range of Thai. Perhaps more significantly, the pressure of private individuals (like Dr. Prawase Wasi) to found a drafting assembly (rather than leaving the production of the constitution to politicians and bureaucrats alone) resulted in the generation of the 1970s (which is to say not just those who participated in 1973 and 1976 but all those who shared the broad democratic aspirations of those demonstrations) to have a decisive role in the drafting process (Ockey 2004, 160–161, 166). The constitution, Kat said, was an effort to change society, and it was to that ethos of change that the NHRC in several ways laid claim.
