【按：本月《堅離地報聯盟》挑選的《The Diplomat》付費會員專區文章，描述了泰國政治格局的變遷及，與及他信家族與建制派之間的和解能否成功。泰國自2014年軍事政變後，前總理帕拉育退出政壇，而曾是政變受害者的「為泰黨」現領導聯合政府，但文章認為這只是一種政治權宜之計，未必能帶來長遠穩定。】

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the 2014 military coup in Thailand, which led to five years of outright military rule by a junta fronted by General Prayut Chan-o-cha, plus a further four years in which he presided over a flawed parliamentary system dominated by the same royalist and pro-military establishment that initiated the coup.

A decade on, the political landscape looks very different, with Prayut retired from politics after a dismal campaign in the 2023 election, and the Pheu Thai Party, the victims of the 2014 putsch, now leading a coalition government. King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the powerful monarch who signed off on the coup, passed away in 2016, and his son, King Vajiralongkorn, sits on the throne.

However, the 2014 coup and its legacy continues to shape Thailand’s politics in significant ways.

The lead up to the coup began in late 2013, with then-Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra facing mass demonstrations that threatened to bring down her government. The demonstrators accused her of being a puppet installed by her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, whom they claimed was pulling the strings from abroad. Thaksin himself had been ousted by a previous military coup in 2006, and subsequently fled the country to avoid criminal charges he has said were politically motivated.

In their mission to free Thailand from what they called “Thaksin-ism,” the protestors insisted that Yingluck be expelled from the country. During a press conference to address the protests, she became visibly upset when asked about this aspect of the protestors’ demands.

“We are all Thais – do you want me to not even set foot on Thai soil again?” she said in a trembling voice, tears welling in her eyes. “I have retreated until I don’t know how to retreat any further,” Yingluck added, before turning sharply and walking away from the podium.

In May 2014, with the anti-government protests still ongoing, Yingluck was removed from office by the courts in a kind of judicial coup. To finish the job, what remained of her embattled government was toppled by the military just a couple of weeks later. It was Thailand’s second military coup in less than a decade, and the second against a member of the Shinawatra family.

The junta detained Yingluck at an undisclosed location for two days, and then began legal proceedings against her. The protestors eventually got their wish when Yingluck fled Thailand to join her brother, Thaksin, in exile. The courts would later find her guilty of not properly performing her duties as prime minister, and sentence her in absentia to five years in prison. To avoid the sentence, she has not set foot on Thai soil to this day.

“Thaksin Versus the King”

What was it that made the Shinawatra family disliked to the extent that they should not only be driven out of power, but out of the country as well? Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t a sentiment shared by all Thais. On the contrary, both Thaksin and Yingluck had won sizable majorities in elections, drawing particular support from the north and northeast of Thailand: populous, lower-income regions that had benefited most from some of Thaksin’s policies, such as debt relief, micro-loans, and the 30 baht universal healthcare scheme.

By contrast – and highlighting the regional and class elements of Thailand’s political divide – the anti-Shinawatra movement drew its support mostly from the Bangkok middle classes, and from the relatively prosperous Upper South. However, it was upper class elite Thais, including titled aristocrats boasting lineage to past kings, who played an important role in kickstarting the mobilizations against the Shinawatras. So much so that the Bangkok Post made special mention of the "Blue Blood Jet Set” element when reporting on the early rallies against Thaksin. This provides insight into what made the movement against the Shinawatras so emotionally charged during his time in office: Namely, that Thaksin somehow fell afoul of the country’s royalist establishment.

Other explanations for the depth of hatred toward Thaksin and his family don’t stand up to scrutiny. Western observers have rightly condemned his role in Thailand’s War on Drugs, which led to thousands of arbitrary killings. However, the Thais protesting against him seemed largely untroubled by this, and probably even supported it. Likewise, anti-Thaksin protestors were mostly silent on other human rights abuses that occurred under his watch, such as those impacting the Malay Muslim population in the country’s troubled southernmost provinces.

A more common accusation against Thaksin was that he was corrupt, a central rallying cry at the protests against him and his sister. Understandably, this issue is keenly felt in a country where corruption is endemic at almost all levels of society. However, it’s puzzling that the crusade against corruption was focused solely on members of the Shinawatra family. In fact, the movement against Yingluck happily followed the leadership of former Democrat MP Suthep Thaugsuban, whose own corruption was well-known.

What’s more, the levels of political corruption almost certainly increased under the post-coup government led by Prayut, whose Cabinet included a host of disreputable characters. The anti-corruption voices that yelled loudly against the Shinawatras suddenly fell silent when confronted by other well-reported scandals, such as the luxury watches owned by Prawit Wongsuwan, Prayut’s deputy prime minister and close ally.

Fighting corruption was simply a means to get rid of Thaksin rather than an end in itself. What the protests – and coups – against the Shinawatra family were primarily about was that Thaksin had fallen out of favor with the powerful establishment figures centered around the palace. They had begun to see him as a threat.

One likely reason for this was apprehension at Thaksin’s success at the polls, as well as his popularity in rural areas. After all, these were the same parts of the country in which then-monarch King Bhumibol had, according to official palace mythology, trekked and toiled and sweated, as he met with locals while surveying for royally-sponsored development projects. Thaksin’s own policies to benefit the rural poor, and the gratitude he received in return, were seen by the palace and its supporters as an affront to this legacy.

It’s also likely that the palace felt Thaksin had overstepped in his relations with members of the royal family. We know from leaked U.S. diplomatic cables that royalist elites, including Privy Councillor Prem Tinsulanonda, were displeased with Thaksin’s involvement with then-Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, and the fact that Thaksin is said to have showered the prince with significant amounts of money to win his favor. Moreover, Thaksin is rumored to have had some kind of relationship with King Bhumibol’s eldest daughter, Ubolratana, beginning as far back as the 1970s when the two were living in the United States.

For whatever reason, the palace turned against Thaksin in a visceral way, and from that moment on, his position became untenable. When the fiercely royalist military overthrew him in 2006, the coup was widely believed to have been planned by Prem Tinsulanonda and the king’s Privy Council – perhaps even with the involvement of King Bhumibol himself. As Thai political analyst Thitinan Pongsudhirak said at the time, “This coup was nothing short of Thaksin versus the King.”

But the coup was a huge miscalculation. It plunged Thailand into a messy and protracted crisis from which it is still trying to extricate itself. The elites who initiated the coup were out of touch with how much the country had changed in the 21st century, and taken aback by the continued support for Thaksin. They seemed to expect that, by quietly signaling the palace’s support for the anti-Thaksin protests and the coup, they would win the acquiescence of the population. They found instead that many Thais still passionately believed in democracy, as flawed as it often was in the country.

Moreover, since Thaksin had courted previously overlooked voters in rural areas, and delivered on election promises that provided them with tangible benefits, they realized that their votes held actual value. These people, many of whom would go on to form the basis of the pro-Thaksin Red Shirt movement, were furious that the coup had taken away their electoral power. In 2007, after one year of military rule, the overly confident establishment permitted new elections. They were surprised and appalled when a Thaksin proxy party, the People’s Power Party, emerged victorious. If the 2006 coup was indeed “Thaksin versus the King,” then the election results suggested that Thaksin was winning.

From the perspective of the palace and its supporters, this only intensified the perceived level of threat, which was sharpened further by anxiety over the looming royal succession. At the time of the 2006 coup, King Bhumibol was approaching 79 years and in poor health. Having been monarch since 1946, he was the only king most Thais had ever known and, according to the royalist worldview, he was also the very fabric holding the country together. To make matters worse, his son and heir, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, was widely disliked and considered unsuitable for the throne.

Driven by this sense of existential unease, the royalist establishment doubled down on its mission to curb Thaksin’s electoral success, sending the country hurtling from one crisis to another. From 2007 until 2014, Thailand went through numerous rounds of debilitating, often violent, street protests.

In 2008, Bangkok’s two main international airports were closed by anti-Thaksin Yellow Shirt protesters for more than a week, disrupting hundreds of flights and leaving hundreds of thousands of travelers around the world stranded.

In 2009, pro-Thaksin Red Shirt protesters stormed a building hosting a regional summit, forcing Asian leaders to the rooftop to be evacuated by helicopter. In 2010, further pro-Thaksin Red Shirt rallies were brought to a violent end by a brutal military crackdown, with a final death toll of around 86 civilians.

In 2013-2014, the “Shutdown Bangkok” protests against the Yingluck government caused major disruptions in the capital for six months before the military seized power.

The cost of this extended conflict was significant; the economy suffered incalculable losses, Thailand’s international standing was damaged, and the country was left bitterly divided.

All of this was also a disaster for the palace, which faced an unprecedented backlash due to its perceived political interference and bias. The social taboo of publicly criticizing the monarchy – not to mention fear of the lèse-majesté law, which severely punishes anyone deemed to have “insulted” the king – ensured that the rumblings of discontent began quietly. Nonetheless, at early pro-Thaksin rallies and on the internet forums of the day, some Thais were testing the waters by discussing the political role of the monarchy.

In 2007, thousands of Red Shirts marched on the private residence of Privy Council President Prem Tinsulanonda, blaming him for masterminding the coup. The incident infuriated royalists, who saw it as a veiled attack on the palace itself.

As use of social media became more widespread, criticism of the monarchy became more prevalent, and the establishment found itself reaching for the lèse-majesté law more often in an attempt to contain it. However, the unresolvable dilemma for the royalists was that the more people were imprisoned for insulting the monarchy, the more people grew to resent the institution. On at least one occasion, in 2010, dissatisfaction with the palace spilled out onto the street, with chanting and the spraying of anti-monarchy graffiti in Bangkok’s Ratchaprasong district.

The irony is that Thaksin had never really shown any inclination to undermine the monarchy or upset the social order that was built around it. As prime minister, he had gone to great lengths to ensure that the 60th anniversary of King Bhumibol''s accession to the throne was celebrated with as much pomp and grandeur as possible. And even though Thaksin’s attempts to get close to members of the royal family may have seemed lacking in refinement to those already within the palace inner circle, his neediness suggests a kind of idolatry of the monarchy, rather than contempt.

As a nouveau riche, Thaksin desperately wanted to join the established social order that drew its legitimacy and power from its proximity to the monarchy – not tear it down. But the establishment, in its insecurity, imagined a threat that was never really there, and in doing so, created a real one.

Once he was cast out – both figuratively from the Thai elite, and literally from the country – Thaksin at times showed signs of fighting back. He would appear by satellite to speak to his Red Shirt supporters as they occupied Bangkok streets, and in a BBC interview broadcast at the height of the protests in 2010, he even claimed he would return to Thailand if the Red Shirts overthrew the government.

However, at other times, he would seem to pull back, especially when it came to crossing the line with regard to the monarchy. Frustrated by this, many of his supporters coined the term “fighting then bowing” to describe the approach of Thaksin and his party.

When a close adviser once urged him to take a more radical approach, Thaksin is said to have lost his temper. “Since when did I say I was Ho Chi Minh?” he chastised, slamming his fist on the table. Thaksin is a businessman, not a revolutionary – and his instincts have always leaned less toward picking a fight, and more toward striking a deal.

A New Generation of Radicals

Meanwhile, in the oppressive aftermath of the 2014 coup, a new generation of would-be revolutionaries were coming of age. Unlike past coups, in which the military had seized power only briefly, it was clear in 2014 that they were settling in for a longer haul. By the end of Prayut’s five years of military dictatorship in 2019, the crisis had been dragging on for some 14 years.

This meant that many younger Thais had grown up knowing only political turmoil. They were also growing up in one of the world’s few outright military dictatorships, which they found embarrassing. The dictatorship infringed on their lives in numerous ways, from Prayut’s dull “Returning Happiness to the People” TV show, which was broadcast weekly, to his outdated, royalist “12 core values,” which he mandated all school children recite daily.

For young Thais who wondered if all of this was normal, the internet proved an important window to the wider world. Since the 2006 coup, many activists had been growing more vocal in their campaign to abolish the lèse-majesté law. Fearing r...