Thai Leader Yingluck Shinawatra Says Instability May Drag On; the word for “nine” in Thai sounds like the term for “step forward”

Thai Leader Yingluck Shinawatra Says Instability May Drag On

Prime Minister Is Under Pressure as Demonstrators Plan Fresh Rallies

JAMES HOOKWAY

Dec. 7, 2013 7:32 a.m. ET

BANGKOK— Yingluck Shinawatra still looks the part of Thailand’s prime minister. Perched on a chair at the Venetian-Gothic government headquarters in Bangkok, she counts off her successes since thousands of opposition protesters last month launched a campaign to unseat her—chief of which is that she is still prime minister.But in an interview with a group of visiting reporters Saturday, she conceded thatThailand’s sometimes-violent political stalemate could rumble on for some time yet. “This might not be finished soon,” she said.

After a temporary truce to mark King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s 86th birthday, antigovernment demonstrations are set to resume on Monday. Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban is urging the people of Bangkok to take to the streets at the auspicious hour of 9.39 a.m.—the word for “nine” in Thai sounds like the term for “step forward”—in another push to force Ms. Yingluck from office and, by extension, further trim the influence of her fugitive brother, former leader Thaksin Shinawatra.

Ms. Yingluck said that her government has offered to resign and/or dissolve parliament to pave the way for new elections, but stressed that the protesters’ demands go beyond what’s legally permissible in Thailand. In particular, their proposal for an unelected people’s assembly would badly damage this Southeast Asian nation’s already fragile democracy, and potentially hurt its ally the U.S.’s efforts to reassert its own influence in the region. “We don’t know how we can follow their offer. This isn’t within the democratic process or in the constitution,” she said.

Ms. Yingluck, 46 years old, has faced down crises before. As soon as she was sworn into office after winning elections in 2011, she had to deal with some of the worst flooding the country has seen. Broad swaths of Thailand’s industrial regions were submerged, underscoring the importance of this up-and-coming economy to the rest of the world by disrupting global supply chains for everything from computer components to automobile electrical systems. Diplomats and foreign business groups credited Ms. Yingluck with helping to revive investor confidence.

She also managed to reach a behind-the-scenes rapprochement with the armed forces which ousted her brother, Mr. Thaksin, from power in 2006. In return for maintaining the military’s share of the national budget and keeping out of its annual reshuffles, the armed forces so far have largely steered clear of politics under Ms. Yingluck’s term.

But Ms. Yingluck has never quite been able to shake off the perception that her wealthy telecoms-mogul brother is pulling the strings of her government from overseas, where he has exiled himself to evade imprisonment on a corruption conviction he says was trumped-up to end his political career.

Those suspicions erupted with force in early November when the ruling Pheu Thai, or For Thais, Party pushed through an amnesty bill that would have enabled Mr. Thaksin to come back to Thailand without serving any prison time. Thousands of people took to streets in protest at what many called an attempt to whitewash Mr. Thaksin’s alleged crimes.

Ms. Yingluck’s government quickly backed down, but the demonstrators, led by Mr. Suthep, morphed into a broader campaign to root out any signs of Mr. Thaksin’s influence in Thailand—and, especially, to remove the government of his sister.

This is partly the Shinawatras’ own fault, analysts such as Pavin Chachavalpongpun at Kyoto University suggest. Before the 2011 election campaign, Ms. Yingluck had no political experience. She worked as the chief executive at one of Mr. Thaksin’s property companies. When Mr. Thaksin unveiled Ms. Yingluck as his election candidate, he described her as his clone, and their Pheu Thai Party campaigned on a telling slogan: “Thaksin Thinks, Yingluck Does.”

In essence, it was a promise to return Thailand to the populist, pro-poor policies that rattled the country’s traditional ruling hierarchies during Mr. Thaksin’s term as prime minister, and which helped precipitate the coup that removed him in 2006.

In some ways, the Yingluck administration’s populism eclipses that of the original Thaksin brand.

She introduced tax rebates for first-time buyers of homes and cars, and launched a multibillion-dollar rice-subsidy program that bought rice from farmers at up to double the market price. Thailand incurs a loss of up to 200 billion baht ($6.22 billion) a year to run the program, but Ms. Yingluck’s government is sticking with it despite criticism from the International Monetary Fund and others because it fulfills a campaign pledge to put more money into the hands of farmers.

“People say we’ve spent a lot of money, but the objective is to help the poor people” and reduce the gap between low and high-income groups in the country, Ms. Yingluck said in Saturday’s interview.

Her insistence on continuing with these free-spending policies infuriates many of her critics. Mr. Suthep, a former lawmaker and deputy prime minister with the opposition Democrat Party who resigned his seat to lead the current round of protests, describes them as a form of policy corruption. “This is like buying votes. They are offering all this money, all of these promises, like capitalists making an investment in return for staying in power,” Mr. Suthep said in recent interview at his base at a government administrative complex his supporters are occupying in the city’s northern suburbs.

Ms. Yingluck, though, insists that neither she nor her family are interested in power for power’s sake, and reckons the latest round of the crisis stems from continuing ripple effects from the 2006 coup rather than last month’s amnesty proposals.

“I think I can say that our family doesn’t want to be part of any problem in Thailand,” Ms. Yingluck said. “The only thing we want to see is fairness for everyone, and a way to work together to find a long-term situation for Thailand.”

It will likely be difficult to get all the players in Thailand’s political drama to read from the same script, however. Besides Mr. Suthep’s black-clad, flag-waving protesters, there are Thailand’s influential army and courts to consider.

Ms. Yingluck said she was confident the armed forces would continue to play a role in helping to mediate the conflict and refrain from intervening directly, as it is has done many times in Thailand’s history; army commander-in-chief Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha has already helped organize one meeting between Ms. Yingluck and the silver-haired, 64-year-old Mr. Suthep.

Thailand’s judiciary, though, might be less predictable. The courts in 2008 removed one pro-Thaksin prime minister from office for illegally hosting a television cooking show and ordered the dissolution of a pro-Thaksin government for alleged vote-buying.

This time, Thailand’s National Anti-Corruption Commission is considering a petition from Ms. Yingluck’s opponents to investigate 312 pro-government lawmakers for backing proposed changes to the constitution. Thailand’s Constitutional Court ruled on Nov. 20 that the proposed amendments were illegal, opening the way for the anticorruption agency to suspend the politicians involved, and force the collapse of the government.

Ms. Yingluck said she was optimistic that wouldn’t happen, though. “I hope that they will be fair with everybody and stick with the rules, and stick with the principles” of democracy, she said.