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Published on July 24, 2007

The new constitution weakens the prime minister and weakens political parties, ensuring there will be rickety coalition governments vulnerable to higher influence. The senate, with half its members appointed and the elected half stuffed with ex-bureaucrats (as with the recent senate), will be a conservative deadweight on the parliament. The Internal Security Bill, if passed, gives the Army chief extraordinary powers to ride shotgun on the prime minister, and to act as an intimidating monitor on politics down to the grassroots.

This is not a bad reconstruction of the semi-democracy or "pre-mocracy" of the 1980s. It is quite an achievement in the teeth of history, democratic idealism and any belief in the inevitability of progress.

But there is still one problem. Who is going to be the prime minister at the centre of this elaborate structure? Unless this choice can be carefully managed, there remains the possibility that the Thaksinites could sneak back, wreck all the delicate construction work of the last year, and even wreak revenge.

There seems to be three choices, but all have their own risks and uncertainties.

The first option will be to engineer a coalition government headed by the Democrat Party. This would have the great advantage of seeming to be rational and legitimate in the eyes of the world. The difficulty lies in bringing it about. The political base of the Democrat Party has been reduced to the South and Bangkok. For people in other regions, this makes the Democrats seem alien, not for them. As voters in the North and Northeast watched their chosen leader and favourite party destroyed, they might well have felt that the Democrats were part of the conspiracy against them.

Then there is the issue of Abhisit Vejjajiva. He is clever, educated, handsome and honest. He has potential to be a respectable political leader with international acceptance. But some people may see him as being young with no ministerial experience. He comes from an elite family, was educated at Eton and Oxford, and although he is fairly popular in Bangkok, may command little empathy from the mass of the electorate.

In the last parliament the Democrats had less than a fifth of the seats. Expanding this enough to put them in position to head a coalition might be difficult. It could happen, but it is far from guaranteed without some heavy-handed and risky intervention in the electoral process on the part of the generals.

The second option is a nominee party - a puppet political party with the military hovering in the background pulling the strings. This was the favoured exit strategy after the previous coup regime of 1991-2, when the junta conjured up the Samakkhitham Party. The problem is that such a party tends to attract some of the least attractive and most corrupt of politicians. Such people have more to gain from sheltering under the protection of the military, and hence they are more likely to jump at this chance. In 1991 the generals justified their coup partly on the grounds that some politicians were corrupt. A year later, they welcomed exactly the same politicians into Samakkhitham.

The Matchima Group has positioned itself for this role. Its members were, of course, formerly fervent supporters of Thaksin. Indeed, the intertwined strands stretch a long way back. Matchima's head, Somsak Thepsuthin, is the political heir of Montri Pongpanich, who gave Thaksin the sweetheart mobile phone concession that made Thaksin rich. There is a risk that such a party could operate as nominee of the junta and nominee of Thaksin at the same time. What irony.

This option failed in 1992 precisely because of this risk. There is also a problem of who will head the Matchima Party. When the Constitution Tribunal judges banned all 111 TRT executives, they clearly deviated from the junta's script. Ideally such a party should be led by a prominent businessman, respectable ex-minister, or someone of high social standing. So far there is no convincing candidate for this role.

The third option is for one of the generals to ride out on a white horse. Sonthi Boonyaratglin has explicitly floated the possibility that he will stand.

This possibility brings to mind General Suchinda Kraprayoon in 1992. His decision to step up as prime minister triggered the violence that not only brought the junta down in flames, but also sent the military into the political wilderness for 15 long years. Is there a risk that something similar might happen again?

In 1991, the military commanded 16 per cent of the total government budget. By 2006, this figure had dwindled to 6 per cent. This decline charts not only the military's diminishing funds, but also their reduced status in society and their waning influence in politics. Over the last eleven months they have reversed that decline. Their share of the total budget has gone up from 6 to 9 per cent. They have even written into the constitution a clause obliging future government to keep them well fed and watered. The generals are again in the sinecures and in the news. Could a rash step in this exit process put all that at risk again?

By publicly floating the possibility that he might aim for the premiership, Sonthi may be trying to avoid the charge levelled against Suchinda that he went back on his word never to aim for the job. But in truth it has never been clear whether the reaction against Suchinda was triggered by this about-face or by a more visceral opposition to being ruled again by a general.

Installing a managed democracy is not easy. Concocting a constitution may be the simplest part. Designing a government with the right combination of vulnerability to higher influence, credibility in the international arena, ability to rule and immunity from Thaksin will be a work of art.

Chang Noi