Duncan McCargo checks in on Bangkok, where General Prayuth Chan-ocha, the leader of the May coup, has installed himself as prime minister. McCargo writes that the new regime is already starting to wear on people:
The coup has been largely a Prayuth affair: Besides the song he wrote in early June, in which he exhorts his fellow citizens to “have faith” in the military, the general has his own Friday night television show, on which he lectures his fellow Thais on topics ranging from education to how to raise their kids. (The show, broadcast on every Thai TV station, is called “Returning Happiness to the People.”) His fellow senior officers, including Supreme Commander Thanasak Patimaprakorn, who is nominally Prayuth’s superior, find themselves at the beck and call of the army chief. His office even vets their schedules before they can confirm appointments, two people familiar with the matter told me.
According to a former Thaksin minister, “the boss,” as he called him, had told everyone to lie low and to wait for the military to begin alienating people. That may have already begun. Despite the soft lyrics of his song, Prayuth is not setting out to win friends. After an initial flurry of overt resistance in the first couple of weeks from anti-coup groups — mainly “red shirts” loyal to Thaksin, who now lives in self-imposed exile in Dubai — the opposition has largely gone underground, as a result of the junta’s harsh crackdown on dissent.
Predicting that Prayuth’s creeping authoritarianism will only get worse, Josh Kurlantzick considers how the US should respond to the prospect of an entrenched military regime in Thailand:
Washington and Brussels continue to operate as if this coup were similar to previous Thai coups, just a bump in relations that will soon be overcome. Many American officials have quietly pressed for resuming Cobra Gold joint exercises with Thailand next year, for example, arguing that Thailand is a critical partner on everything from counterterrorism cooperation to narcotics interdiction to dealing with troublesome neighbors like Myanmar and Cambodia.
But this assumption, of a quick return to robust ties, is based on flawed thinking. Thailand will continue to remain highly unstable under prolonged junta rule, since the military cannot maintain power indefinitely. The large numbers of Thais who have repeatedly voted for pro-Thaksin parties will not be silenced forever. Instead of simply preparing to return to normal, the United States should be making plans to move operations in Thailand to other partners in the region and, overall, to become much less dependent on the kingdom, while reminding contacts in the Thai government and military that, if the kingdom returns to real democracy, the robust U.S.-Thai partnership of the past would resume in earnest.
Charlie Campbell spotlights the general’s many eccentricities, including his beliefs in feng shui and black magic:
He has told residents of Bangkok to each pick up to 20 water hyacinths from the Chao Phraya River to help unclog the iconic waterway. Farmers, he says, should only grow rice once a year to keep the grain’s price up. The poor need to alleviate their woes by “working harder” and the indebted must return to solvency by “stopping shopping.” If such dictates faintly echo the on-the-spot guidance dispensed by North Korea’s tyrannical Kim clan, then Prayuth’s growing superstitiousness is reminiscent of Burma’s former military rulers, who governed with the advice of numerologists, mystics and astrologers. In a high-profile speech last week, Prayuth said, “Today, I have a sore throat, a pain in the neck. Someone said there are people putting curses on me.” His solution was to have so much protective holy water poured over him that he “shivered all over.”
The Dish 