The Role of the Army to the Thai Political Intervention After the 2006 Coup D'État

Abstract

After the coup d’etat by the group of army commander on September 2006, the Thai political conflicts have become much more complicated and turbulent than the previous ones that the decisiveness of the military coup can control and recover the peacefulness in the country. In addition, the political consciousness of each political mass much expands at the present time. This causes the ignorance to other different political thoughts and feelings and might lead to the political violence at last. Thus, some political groups beseeched the army leaders to do the coup d’etat. However, the flow of the democratic process blooming in all level citizens not to accept the military coup combining with the using informal power of the military leaders to influence the government establishing in the late 2008 and the suppression of the political protest in 2010 caused the serious negative images from the international sight. This phenomenon makes the military leaders showing their intention not to intervene to this conflict as before. The academic circles and the public believe that the military coup cannot be occurred and the paradigm of the army leader to accept the civil government better improve than in the past. This article aims to study the role of the army to the Thai political intervention by studying the army’s withdrawal conditions and the political role reduction. The research result found three important factors which are (1) the growth of the democracy, (2) the law to protect the soldier transfer from the politic, and (3) the independent organization under the 2007 constitution. These 3 factors make the army be able to reduce its role and not necessary to be a major player occurred in the previous Thai political history. Although, this role reduction and the limitation under the constitution, the military always still has strong influence to maintain the national and political safety.