Thailand’s Constitutional Court has ordered Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and nine members of her cabinet to step down:
Lennox Samuels situates the order within what critics call a “rolling silent judicial coup” against the Shinawatras’ political movement:
The ruling comes weeks after the same court nullified the February 2 national election, which Yingluck’s Pheu Thai party was expected to win. The party won the last election, in 2011, routing the opposition Democrat Party. Ever since that 2011 victory, anti-government elements have been agitating to topple Pheu Thai. … “This is a full-blown version of a judicial coup, with long-lasting impact on the balance of powers,” legal expert Verapat Pariyawong tells The Baily Beast. Previous rulings were among the principal reasons that led to the rise of an anti-Thaksin government and the 2010 massacre of the Red Shirts. “One can only hope that the political outcome will be different this time,” said Pariyawong. “But to be realistic, once the rule of law in the chamber is gone, all that is left is probably violence on the street.”
Keating remarks that, for all they are reviled by their opponents, “no party with one of the Shinawatra siblings at the top of the ballot has lost a Thai election” since 2001:
None of this is necessarily to defend the Shinawatras. Thaksin was a populist tycoon with an authoritarian streak who was accused of human rights abuses including extrajudicial killings and detentions during the country’s war on drugs. Yingluck was fairly transparently acting has his proxy by pushing an amnesty bill that would have allowed him to return to the country. A scheme to hoard rice to drive up global prices has been an economic disaster.
But it’s fairly apparent that any time Thai voters are asked, they vote Shinawtra—particularly in the country’s less developed north. But any time one of them or their allies gets into power, the judiciary and the military figure out a way to remove them. The opposition, whose supporters are drawn primarily from the urban middle class, are now advocating that the country’s electoral democracy be replaced with a vaguely defined “People’s Council.” If the Shinawatras are removed from power again, we could also see the return of massive and occasionally deadly street protests of years past.
Adam Pasick looks ahead:
Niwattumrong Boonsongpaisan, a cabinet minister, was named as acting prime minister, and much of Yingluck’s cabinet will remain in office, preventing the political vacuum that some had feared. But that’s only a stopgap, since the entire government has been in caretaker mode since Yingluck dissolved parliament and called for elections last year. The vote in February was boycotted by the anti-Thaksin (and misleadingly named) Democrat Party and the results voided by—you guessed it—the constitutional court. …
Previous setbacks have resulted in violent street clashes between security forces and Thaksin supporters known as “red shirts,” who have scheduled a protest for May 10 in response to Yingluck’s ouster. The outcome of that rally may determine whether Thai politics are yet again about to swing from absurdity to violence. In any case, chaos seems certain.
The Bloomberg editors slam the Thai opposition, which is still refusing to participate in the upcoming elections:
The courts have now satisfied one of the opposition’s central demands by getting rid of Yingluck. For weeks this spring, the army allowed protesters great leeway as they tried to blockade Bangkok’s streets. Yet neither the judges, the generals nor the king — the third leg of the traditionalist establishment — has stepped in to replace Yingluck’s government, for at least one obvious reason: No undemocratically chosen administration would command legitimacy among a majority of Thais or the international community.
The opposition’s continued refusal to stand in the elections — even with more than two months to prepare — simply cannot be justified. There’s little reason to suspect that the July vote won’t be largely free and fair. If the Democrats and their allies lose again, as they have repeatedly over the past two decades, it will be because they have still not crafted a message that appeals to most of their countrymen, nor built a strong political organization that extends to all parts of the country.
The Dish 