Thailand in 1989: Democracy Ascendant in the Golden Peninsula

Abstract

8 August 1989 marked the completion of the first year in office of the Thai administration headed by Prime Minister Chadchai Choonhavan, Thailand's first elected Prime Minster since the short-lived and violence-plagued governments of Kukrit and Seni Pramoj, March 1975 to October 1976. When, after the July 1988 general election, General Prem Tinsulanonda gracefully but surprisingly declined to form a Prem VI government (Prem I dating back to 1980), the mantle of leadership passed to Major-General Chatichai who headed the Chart Thai (Thai Nation) Party which had gained the largest number of seats (eighty-seven) in the elected lower House of Representatives. As noted in Southeast Asian Affairs 1989, From the very beginning, a sense of uncertainty regarding the tenure of the Chatichai government has been looming large.1 For a government that many expected not to last beyond three or six months to have a first anniversary is an event to be celebrated in and of itself. For such a government based on an inherently internally compedtive and unstable six-party coalition to not only survive, but to have strengthened the democratic process in Thailand while blazing new trails in Thai foreign policy is even more noteworthy. Rather than the government falling, some formerly doubtful Chatichai-watchers are looking for a probably reshuffled Chart Thai-led coalition to stay in power for a full four-year constitutional term, thus to 1992. The success of the government is partly based on Chatichai's own widespread popularity. A long-time veteran of Thai political battles, beginning as a young officer at the time of his father Lieutenant-General Phin Choonhavan's 1947 coup, Chatichai came to the Prime Minister's Office with the reputadon of being a good-dme-loving playboy. In office, however, the 69-year-old Chadchai, working 12-14 hour days, has demonstrated deft political skills and a public style that has thrown would-be leadership alternatives into the public relations shadow. As a populist politician Prime Minister Chadchai has shown a seldom-erring ability to keep his finger on the public pulse, rewarded his business supporters, kept the bureaucrats off-balance, and forged an independent foreign policy course that rhetorically infuses Thai nationalism with new vitality as Thailand acts to turn the battlefields of Indochina into a market-place.