In the first 3 months things were quiet, then some politically motivated bombs exploded downtown announcing in no uncertain terms Thaksin was not happy and there was a price to pay. That was followed by a new Constitution, new elections, and the return of a pro Thaksin Government that immediately set about trying to return everything to the way it was the day before the coup.
That started the next cycle of street protests that eventually led to the installation of a Prime Minister who was anti-corruption and thus anti-Thaksin as Thaksin was synonymous with corruption on a scale never seen before in Thailand. That in turn led to street protests by the pro-Thaksin Red shirts. The difference was the Red shirts were prone to violence where the anti-Thaksin yellow shirts were not. That eventually led to the burning of downtown Bangkok and military intervention to disburse the Red shirt mob.
As time continued power once again shifted and Thaksin’s younger sister was elected as Prime Minister, but the problems continued. It seemed at first she was just a figurehead and Thaksin himself was in control. Several news reports cited Ministers not following her instructions and instead doing what her brother Thaksin wanted. Needless to say that was evidence of what most Thai people expected with Thaksin.
Corruption once again was running amok and Thailand did not make a small slide on the corruption index, they made a big jump. There was rice scandal underway that nearly broke the country with numbers in the hundreds of billions of Baht. That led to some Thai farmers committing suicide as there was not even money to feed themselves.
Eventually this led to more street protests and a second Coup d’état in 2014 to once again unseat Thaksin’s influence.
Present time September 2016
The Military government is proving to be more popular than Thaksin according to the polls. With the acceptance of a new and even more powerful constitution draft, significant efforts are underway to insure that any self-serving politician meets a quick and likely permanent demise including the death penalty if the monetary value of their misdeeds is significant enough.
The downside is some freedoms have been curtailed in the freedom of expression area, but without good reason. Spreading of inaccurate, tainted or otherwise destabilizing information has come to a forced end. You can still say what you want as long as what you say is accurate and can be supported independently with provable facts, but there are still some influential people here and there who don’t like the light shining on them because they are still up to no good. Seeing the high and mighty take a fall has become popular food for social media.
But for the most part short of some economic stimulus the Thai people are happy that at the moment things are better than they have been since the start of 2006 in the events that led up to the coup. There are no street protests, there is a sense of calm. The troublemakers of the last 10 years are in various stages of the judicial system with some out on bail having yet to learn and will likely flee the country before judgment day.
However fleeing the country has been taken into account as well. Before politicians would live abroad waiting for the statute of limitations to run out and simply come back free and clear to pick up where they left off, but that is no more. If they leave Thailand the clock on the statute of limitations gets paused. The clock only runs when they are in Thailand. This is on par with the Philippines changing the currency obsoleting the piles of cash corrupt politicians had hidden away. This was done when President Marcos left office in the 1980’s.
So all and all things are looking up in Thailand, but some turbulence is expected when the elections finally roll around in 2017.
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