More Bangkok Blues: An Update on Thailand's Political Crisis

I woke up this morning to text messages and Facebook posts about the Thai Constitutional Court’s verdict ousting Thailand's Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra. The messages ranged from the exuberant “Yeeaaahh! Bye Yingluck!” to the snide. “So I guess the Prime Minister's [planned] official trips to USA and Canada will no longer happen.” It seems safe to conclude that few people in my hometown of Bangkok are shedding tears over the ruling, which orders the prime minister to step down, effective immediately. The court case was about Prime Minister Yingluck's alleged abuse of power when she transferred a civil servant to another position three years ago---an issue that nobody really cares about, but one that has become a proxy for the other reasons many in Bangkok detest Yingluck and want her gone. As I explained in detail a few months ago, Bangkok has been roiled by many months of protests, which shut down the city and remained violent until fairly recently. The protests pitted the wealthier urbanites of Bangkok against the rural, poorer residents of Thailand’s provinces. The former group hates the influence ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawtra (now in exile) continues to have on Thai politics through Ms. Yingluck, his sister, while the latter group supports Thaksin’s party and his policies. The urban-rural division in Thailand is a stark one. What does this ruling signify? Not a whole lot. The Constitutional Court has a storied history of removing those from power it does not like, including two other prime ministers from this party. An activist and politicized judiciary hardly comes as a shock in many countries, let alone Thailand. The ruling also won't change very much. At least for now, the acting prime minister is a man with deep ties to Mr. Thaksin, which helps very little if the goal is to get rid of Thaksin's influence. We will have to wait and see whether Yingluck and her loyalists will resist the verdict. And we also have to wait and see whether a corruption case will materialize against Ms. Yingluck for “ricegate”---accusations that she mismanaged the government’s rice subsidy. For the everyday residents of Bangkok, the fear of more political violence looms large. Supporters of Thaksin and Yingluck, the so-called “red shirts,” are furious about the Constitutional Court’s decision, and have already planned protests for this weekend. Things had just started to quiet down a little bit after the Chinese and Thai New Year celebrations, too. National elections are still scheduled for June 20, which Thaksin's party is likely to win because of its strongholds of supporters outside Bangkok. The opposition party may even boycott the elections---which offers a clue as to how weak its electoral hand really is outside of the capital. Nobody seems to be talking about what can and should be done to prevent another cycle of political upheaval if a Thaksin-backed administration gets voted in this summer and faces the same resistance from the Bangkok establishment. To my mind, that’s the most significant long-term question here.