By Chaiwat Satha-Anand
Have you heard the sound of the most recent coup in Thailand? When such a phenomenon takes place in this fair land, the usual responses follow: foreign countries issue warnings as well as expected nominal sanctions, and urge the country to return quickly to the democratic abode of civilization; while journalists provide “analysis” of the situation. Such “analysis”, much of the time, is based on a universal narrative of democratic journey encountering dictatorship. Responses from some patriotic Thais include: “we are too complicated, you don’t understand us”; “it’s none of your business”; or “please understand our situation and pray for us.”
Having been born and growing up much of the time under the spectres of several coups, this most recent coup doesn’t surprise me as another episode in the biography of Thai politics, but it worries me. I am worried about both the degree to which contemporary Thai society and the nature of the coup are understood by those who have staged and supported the coup. Since the former will reveal itself, here I will concentrate on the latter.
There are people who think of a coup as a reset button for politics which signifies a new beginning much needed in the context of impasse such as what has transpired in Thai society. Maybe there is some truth in such belief. But silently anyone who pushes the button might hear the sound of failure in the project h/she has worked on. If it’s the computer game we are talking about, usually the reset button comes when one admits, rightly or wrongly, that h/she cannot win. As a result, there is no point in continue playing. Perhaps, one needs to hear the sound of this reset button.
If a coup has a sound, and if one tries to listen to that sound, what will be heard? I am certainly not referring to the generous flow of nationalist songs heard again and again by all who cared to eagerly await the next official announcements during the first two days after the coup. I would argue, however, that by listening to its sound, the meaning of this coup staged in the second decade of the twenty first century might be better construed. But to do so sometimes it is better to go back in time.
In the seventeenth century, Cardinal Richelieu- the villain made famous by Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers sent an agent to work in Rome. This agent, Gabriel Naude, later wrote in an interesting book titled: Considerations politique sur les coups d’ Etat (1639) that “…with coups d’ Etat, we see the thunderbolt before we hear it rumbling in the cloud; in coups d’ Etat… everything is done at night, in the dark, in the fog and shadows.”
Political science textbooks generally define a coup as a non-constitutional seizure of political control of state institutions. But seen as an element, an event, or a way of doing that does not submit to the laws, Michel Foucault- the French thinker- points out in his Security, Territory, Population (2007) that a coup d’etat is “the state acting of itself on itself, swiftly, immediately, without rule, with urgency and necessity, and dramatically. It is therefore not a takeover by some at the expense of others but the self-manifestation of the state itself. It is the assertion of raison d’etat (reason of state) that the state must be saved, whatever forms may be employed to enable one to save it.”
Foucault’s last sentence underscoring both the reason and the methods used importantly crystallizes the ontology of a coup. Despite noble purposes declared and valid justifications given, fundamentally a coup is a military solution used on political problems, characterized by the threat of violence on those who refuse to submit. It goes without saying that military solution is generally considered as the “last resort” to be used when other methods, diplomatic ones in international affairs or national dialogue in domestic affairs for example, do not work. In this sense, the silent sound of a coup is a sense of despair that existing political process no longer works and a society cannot deal with its problems politically.
To embark on a journey out of the coup, apart from effectively solving existing problems plaguing people and crafting a new rule of governance, the first phase as rightly outlined by General Prayuth Chan-Ocha, the leader of the National Council for Peace and Order, on May 30 is to rebuild national peace and unity through reconciliation. And here lies any coup’s paradox. Rebuilding peace through reconciliation in a badly divided society requires hope in the strength of political society that conflict can be dealt with through political process characterized by reason and dialogue.
In order to rebuild national peace and reconciliation, the NCPO has to walk Thai society out of a sense of hopelessness echoed by the sound of the coup. A difficult but necessary task at present is to rekindle new hope that conflicts in Thai society can be dealt with politically and therefore peacefully.
Dr. Chaiwat Satha-Anand is a professor at Thammasat University in Thailand and a member of the JUST International Advisory Panel (IAP).
4 June 2014