Military Retreats From Politics in Most of Southeast Asia

When times get bad, economically or politically, Thailand’s army traditionally loads its rifles and topples the civilian government in a coup d’etat. It is a scenario that has been repeated 17 times in the past 66 years.

So what’s going on now? Times are really tough economically, and no one is greasing up the tanks. Soldiers are teaching the jobless to knit and read, and generals in sneakers are leading “Thai Help Thai” marches to raise money for the poor.

In a dramatic break from the past that symbolizes the maturing of democracy here, the Thai army says it is withdrawing from politics.

Its new stated role is to provide national security and promote rural development, such as building bridges, fighting natural disasters and sharing skills with the less privileged. Governing, it says, will be left to elected civilians.

“Could Thailand have another coup? I don’t believe so. We’ve gone too far for that,” said Maj. Gen. Bunchon Chawarsin, chief of the army’s civic action program. “The fact is, if we took power, we wouldn’t know how to solve today’s economic problems. Not because we’re stupid but because these are very complex issues beyond our field of expertise.”

Such sentiments--that soldiers aren’t necessarily the guardians of good governance--is one most people in Southeast Asia have long embraced. To them, the generals have been part of the problem, not the solution; they have abused human rights, mismanaged economies, pilfered national treasuries.

Now, the generals may be getting their comeuppance. Throughout the region, militaries are either in political retreat, as in Thailand, or at least on the defensive, as in Indonesia and Myanmar, formerly Burma.

In Indonesia, the armed forces have lost the public goodwill they gained leading the independence struggle against the Dutch. After opening fire on student demonstrators in May and November in the capital, Jakarta, and using excessive force in other areas, the military is now widely viewed as the people’s enemy. Its soldiers are cursed by students, its generals are distrusted, and its chief, Gen. Wiranto, is under pressure to resign.

The number of seats the military holds in the 500-member parliament is being reduced from 75 to 50 and will likely be cut further. Opposition parties are demanding that the army get out of politics entirely. It remains to be seen how the generals will respond. Yet amid calls for democratic reform, their influence is on the wane--unless they are willing to stage a coup and risk losing the financial support Indonesia gets from the international community.

“When an army loses the trust of the people, as Indonesia’s has, it is very difficult to get that trust back,” said retired Gen. Saiyud Kerphol, commander of Thailand’s armed forces from 1981 to 1983.

He speaks from experience: The Thai army killed about 80 unarmed student protesters in one 1973 demonstration and 60 in another in 1992.

Also on the defensive are Myanmar’s generals, who have kept the country under military rule for nearly four decades. In the process, they have destroyed economic and political institutions and turned what should be one of the region’s richest countries into one of its poorest.

Myanmar’s per-capita income is $107, inflation is running at 50% a year, and the jails are filled with 3,000 political prisoners.

Myanmar’s global isolation has grown since the army voided a 1990 election that the National League for Democracy, led by Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, won in a landslide.

Myanmar’s neighbors consider the military government a draconian anachronism. The United States has imposed economic sanctions because of human rights abuses. And the generals’ claims that they deserve international legitimacy have fallen on deaf ears.

“I believe we’re seeing the start of a regional trend in which the military is losing credibility,” said Suchit Bungongkarn, a professor of security affairs at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. “Democracy is advancing, and generals have proved they aren’t very good at handling economic crises like the one we’re facing now.”

Thailand has a permanent civilian defense minister, and military officers are no longer permitted to serve in the Cabinet.

Vietnam this year took the unusual step of not including a military man in the triumvirate that leads the country.

In the Philippines, where the army staged seven coup attempts against the administration of Corazon Aquino, a former movie actor was elected to replace a retired general as president.

In Malaysia and Singapore, the armed forces continue to take pride in the fact that they have not gotten involved in political affairs.

Some of Southeast Asia’s armed forces have been reluctant to withdraw from the political arena because they have business interests to protect.

The Laotian army controls the lucrative logging industry. The Vietnamese military owns hotels, clothing and shoe factories and countless businesses. The Indonesian army’s interests extend from mining to manufacturing. Senior Thai and Filipino officers have become rich through the privilege of rank. Myanmar’s officers have become the elite in a society with a shrinking middle class.

Many Asians accepted such arrangements as a reward for underpaid soldiers who had fought colonialism and, in Thailand and Malaysia, communism. And many accepted authoritarian leadership as the price of economic growth.

However, no Southeast Asian nation faces an external threat today, and economies have headed south, leading to cuts in military spending. Across the region, calls for democratic reform have grown louder while tolerance for military rulers offering no solutions has lessened.

Thailand’s military has responded by redefining its role, promising to disengage from politics and business. Its new commander in chief, Gen. Surayuth Julanont, set the tone earlier this month by resigning his Senate seat and cutting his ties to several businesses.

“The new army,” he told a Bangkok journalist, “will abide by orders of the civilian government and by instructions of the defense minister, who is vested with the power to be the highest authority of all military men.”

One promising sign throughout Southeast Asia is that the economic crisis, now well into its second year, has resulted in not a single coup d’etat.

“Coups are slowly becoming passe,” said Michael McKinley, a global affairs expert at Australian National University in Canberra. “Given the military’s manifest failure to run economies in the past, one can assume dealing with a globalized economy is even farther beyond their abilities. Besides, I don’t think the International Monetary Fund would give any money to a military government.”

Lamb is The Times’ Hanoi correspondent.