Hej
En bra artikel i dagens Bangkok Post http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/349275/Thailand-still-a-coup-prone-country-new-book-claims handlar om demokratin, militären och alla kupper, jag tycker att den är läsvärd och tar upp många välkända problem i Thailand.
Författaren anser precis som jag att mycket står och faller med om PT lyckas få till ändringar av den militära konstitutionen eller ej.
DEMOCRACY
- Published: 10 May 2013 at 00.00
- Newspaper section: News
Thailand has made poor progress making the transition from military to civilian rule and faces a "high risk" of future coups, the co-author of a new book on democratisation in Asia says.
"The more coups in the past, the more likely coups will take place in the future, so Thailand is a high-risk, coup-prone country," Democratisation and Civilian Control in Asia co-author Aurel Croissant said yesterday.
Thailand has experienced 18 coups since 1932. The book ranks Thailand fifth in the world for the number of coups staged between 1946 and 2010.
Ecuador topped the list, followed by Bolivia and Syria.
Speaking in Bangkok, Mr Croissant said the three factors that make Thailand vulnerable to coups include the lack of a strong civil society, legitimacy questions about the government and "a lot of coups in the past".
The book is based on research conducted in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.
South Korea and Taiwan have made the greatest progress over the past five decades in making the transition from military to civilian rule, while Pakistan and Thailand have made the least, the research concluded.
Thailand's most recent coup was in September 2006, when the military overthrew prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
"The most important thing is to have a strong civilian consensus between political actors that they will not seek the army's support," Mr Croissant, also a political scientist at Heidelberg University in Germany, said.
Thailand, like other countries in the region, has yet to develop firm institutions for democratic control of the armed forces, he said.
The military has not been turned into an effective tool for the protection and security of citizens.
There might be some moves toward civilian control of the army, but such moves are never easy, Mr Croissant told the "Democratic Control of the Military: Thailand in Comparative Perspective" forum at Chulalongkorn University's Institute of Security and International Studies.
He said the military still poses a danger to democracy as it has the power to overthrow the government, so reforming the armed forces requires a process of trial and error.
Military reform is dependent on the growth of democracy, the economic and social climate, as well as regional and international conditions.
Chulalongkorn University associate professor on political science Panitan Wattanayagorn said democratic control of the military has rarely been seen in Thailand. But under certain governments headed by civilians, including Anand Panyarachun and Chuan Leekpai, efforts were made to gain more control over the military, he said.
Mr Panitan said civilian control of the armed forces was gradually increasing, but still required structural changes.
He said the presence of the Internal Security Operations Command was an indicator of the push towards reforming the role of the military and bringing it under civilian control.
He added that any move to allow greater civilian control of military reshuffles might be delayed until the Pheu Thai government succeeds with its proposed charter amendments.
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