Who's Corrupt, Who's Clean in Thailand?

At an event marking Thailand’s national anti-corruption day, coup-maker Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha claimed in a ceremonial address that his country would be graft-free within the next 20 years. The military government-sponsored event featured exhibitions of alleged corruption under previous elected administrations, including the coup-ousted Yingluck Shinawatra’s rice price support scheme and alleged misappropriations in ex-premier Abhisit Vejjajiva’s “Thai Khem Khaeng” fiscal stimulus policy.

“Corrupt people must be weeded out, and we must stop people from falling prey to the scourge in future,” Prayut said.

When Thai voters passed a military-backed constitution in an August 7 national referendum, the surprise result was portrayed by the ruling junta as a vote for the charter’s various tough anti-corruption measures and promise of cleaner future politics. The vote guaranteed a future overarching political role for the armed forces in an appointed Senate, whose members will be strongly empowered to check, balance, and depose elected politicians and their proxies. A second referendum question on whether the Senate should play a role in selecting a possibly unelected prime minister in certain deadlock scenarios also passed.

While the junta maintains hard curbs on political assembly, Prayut is effectively campaigning on an anti-corruption ticket to sustain his strongman rule if and when elections are held and democracy restored in late 2017. Prayut’s proponents have predictably interpreted the referendum result as popular endorsement of his strongman style, which they argue has grassroots appeal among Thais who crave clean, decisive, non-partisan governance after years of political chaos and paralysis under political party rule. Coup-makers justified their 2014 seizure of power in part on the need to stop rampant government corruption.

Prayut has strived to portray his graft-busting as even-handed, with culprits fingered on both sides of the country’s color-coded “red and yellow” political divide. Coup-ousted ex-premier Yingluck is currently in the dock and on the hook for billions of dollars worth of state losses for alleged irregularities in her government’s populist rice price support scheme. Yingluck has maintained her innocence, while her Peua Thai party and Red Shirt protest group have argued the trial is politically motivated. Several other Peua Thai politicians now face corruption and abuse of power charges; if convicted they would be barred from running for elected office.

Criticism of bias has been blunted somewhat since the referendum with charges leveled and sentences handed down to pro-royalist, or yellow, political elites. Many political observers were stunned by Prayut’s executive order on August 25 to suspend Bangkok’s twice-elected governor, Sukhumbhand Paribatra, on still unproven corruption allegations. Sukhumbhand, a Democrat party stalwart of royal lineage, has denied any wrongdoing. Some have viewed his military-ordered suspension as a trial run for how soldiers appointed to the Senate will exercise power over elected politicians in a post-election, military-guided democracy.

Observers were equally surprised by the high court ruling in September that jailed media mogul and yellow shirt protest leader Sondhi Limthongkul for 20 years on corruption charges related to a bank loan dating back to the 1990s. While the ultra-royalist Sondhi spearheaded the street movement that eventually led to then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s ouster in a 2006 military coup, the media mogul is also known to have run afoul of Prayut’s military clique. Sondhi narrowly survived a 2009 machine gun assassination attempt he later claimed -- but never proved -- was staged by a royalist military special warfare unit.

Analysts are thus split over whether Prayut’s anti-graft drive is a genuine attempt to promote cleaner politics, or a Machiavellian scheme to maintain power by fracturing and weakening political parties he has consistently blamed for the country’s entrenched political problems. There is widespread speculation that military lawmakers will enact electoral laws that require political parties to dissolve and re-register under new names, an order that would likely split both the Democrats and Peua Thai into two or three smaller, weaker parties. Democrat party leader and former premier Abhisit Vejjajiva has already suggested his party may boycott polls in such a scenario.

One sovereign risk analyst who requested anonymity said Prayut’s counter-corruption drive would be taken more seriously by the international community if it more systematically addressed the graft-ridden bureaucracy. He said that as long as the campaign appeared “personalized” it would be viewed by his agency more as “political opportunism” than “impartial, deep-rooted reform.” The veteran analyst also said that while corruption accusations against police officials were a positive sign, it was notable that similar charges have not yet been lodged against the junta’s own military members.

A Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy survey on regional corruption perceptions released earlier this year took a similar view. While most survey respondents believed that Prayut’s government “is less corrupt than the civilian government it overthrew in 2014,” and more than half “were satisfied with the performance of anti-graft agencies,” the analysis said “there has been too little substance behind the junta’s trumpeting of their war on corruption and determination to call crooks to account.” The report concluded that “the only [national institution] avoiding forensic investigation is the military.”