Ruling further destabilises Thai politics

The staggering impact generated by the Supreme Administrative Court will not be on anyone’s pocket, but on the already-fragile political equilibrium of Thailand.

The court’s ruling on how much compensation former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra had to shoulder regarding losses in the rice pledging scheme of her government will change everything.

It will indefinitely postpone any plan for Yingluck to return from exile. It will shower the government coalition with more serious doubts. It will put her niece, Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra between a rock and a hard place.

It will unbelievably increase the Thaksin uncertainties. The main opposition camp, the People’s Party, will not know what to say.

To sum it up, Thailand’s political absurdity can get more absurd.

It can be arguably said that Thailand have had an uneasy political “peace” over the past two years, because its three main forces or “three kingdoms” if you will cancelled one another out.

Nobody is totally happy. But that is the key. The fragile peace depends absolutely on unhappy politicians gritting their teeth and bearing it, in the process keeping extremists off the street, shots from being fired and soldiers in the barracks.

Pheu Thai got the executive powers it wanted, but due to that has lost a lot of popularity. People’s Party, formerly Move Forward, failed to become the government, but that has been compensated by increasing public support. The conservatives decided to bite the bullet by agreeing to let Pheu Thai call the shots because they didn’t want People’s Party to do so.

So, we have three players on the same field who don’t really like one another.

To add to that, the field itself is far from stable. It’s a volatile landscape where the executive, legislative and judicial powers, which are supposed to support one another, have been trying to supersede one another.

The Supreme Administrative Court ruling affects all of the above. It upsets the Pheu Thai Party definitely. The conservatives are pleased for obvious reasons. The People’s Party has seen its “number one” electoral enemy rattled by powers it does not like.

What will Paetongtarn do? As the government, she is supposed to respect the justice system and make sure Yingluck pays up. But Yingluck is a close relative with whom she always has “sympathy selfies” with and who has been penalised by a system red-shirt members, Pheu Thai’s support base, often vehemently denounced.

The court order also followed a Medical Council opinion on her father’s “illness” as well. Being a prime minister is unenviable. Being Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra is a lot more so.

According to Warong Dechkitvigrom, a leading hardline conservative, the Supreme Administrative Court ruling is a precedent that puts big question marks over other big and controversial agendas such as Digital Wallet and Entertainment Complex, which are also Pheu Thai initiatives.

“In the past, government leaders implementing costly policies got away with it no matter how much it cost the state,” he said during a TV programme on Thursday. “Now everyone will have to think twice.”

A conservative columnist believes that the Paetongtarn government’s decision to postpone the latest phase of Digital Wallet was due largely to legal fears.

Warong, however, admitted that the Yingluck government’s rice pledging and the Paetongtarn administration’s Digital Wallet were not exactly the same. There were court conclusions that rice pledging was plagued with corruption, whereas Digital Wallet, while costly, remains untainted by graft charges, he pointed out.

What he did not say is how messy it will be if corruption allegations emerge. Some conservative parties helped make Digital Wallet happen and Entertainment Complex closer to reality. The People’s Party, meanwhile, is not a big fan of using the current judicial system to crack down on corruption.

Thailand’s peculiar situation will become weirder. The three “kingdoms” Pheu Thai, People’s Party, and the conservatives will drift further and further apart, yet secret, occasional deals will abound. Mistrust will increase but mistrusting “allies” will come together whenever it suits them.

While inconvenient alliances will become more fragile, the dependence on the enemies may be more vital.

It used to be so clear-cut. Formerly, the “Yellows” were up against the “Reds”. Then it was the “Reds” joining hands with the “Oranges” to fight the “Yellows”. Today, everyone is fighting everyone and everyone is hiding a knife behind his back.

The Supreme Administrative Court’s ruling, hailed by the conservatives, decried by Pheu Thai and confusedly stared at by the People’s Party, helps make sure that all the unpredictable players will continue to play on a highly-unpredictable field.