Yingluck Shinawatra’s tears divide Thailand

December 13, 2013 2:59 pm

Yingluck Shinawatra’s tears divide Thailand

By Michael Peel in Bangkok

In Thailand, even the prime minister’s tears divide the country. No sooner had Yingluck Shinawatra welled up briefly after pleading on national television this week for street protesters to go home than online critics were accusing her of fakery, pointing to video footage that showed her smiling almost immediately after she left the podium.Her supporters say she was just trying to put a brave face on a bad situation, both for Thailand and for her own family, notably her older brother and predecessor as premier, Thaksin Shinawatra.

As so often with Ms Yingluck, her performance was the Rorschach test in which everyone read their own vision of her and her turbulent nation. A political novice turned premier she was infamously described by Mr Thaksin as his clone, yet until a month or two ago she had managed to restore a relative peace that her brother and his other allies spurned.

Independent critics say Ms Yingluck has made some serious mistakes and at times acted cynically in pursuit of the Shinawatra family’s agenda, helping stoke the latest crisis. But she has also survived through being underestimated by the powerful forces that have rejected the elections she called this week and are campaigning instead to overthrow her government and suspend parliamentary democracy.

“When Yingluck first came into the political arena, she was a bit of a rabbit caught in the headlights,” says one foreign government official who covers Thailand. “But she has proved to be a very good diplomat. She’s not Thaksin’s clone, because she has a different type of personality.”

The future of Ms Yingluck, and of Thailand, is in the balance, after a relentless protest campaign to eject her from office and replace her administration with an unelected national ruling council of grandees. Suthep Thaugsuban, protest leader and a former deputy prime minister for the opposition Democrats, is due to meet senior military officers at the weekend, fuelling speculation that he is pushing the army to move against Ms Yingluck, just as they ousted her brother in 2006.

These are dangerous waters for a prime minister who until taking office after a landslide 2011 election victory, had experienced Thai politics only indirectly through the rises and falls of a sibling 18 years her senior. The 46-year-old Ms Yingluck and her brother are the offspring of a local MP of Chinese descent in Chiang Mai, the country’s second city and a gateway to the poor northern agricultural areas that are now the Shinawatras’ electoral heartland.

She has shown her independence more and more. She showed leadership – a soft style leadership, a consultative style – that seemed to work better with Thai society

– Puangthong Pawakapan, Chulalongkorn University

Ms Yingluck earned a masters in public administration at Kentucky State University before joining the expanding business empire built by Mr Thaksin on his way to becoming a billionaire.

While her business stewardship is generally seen as competent enough, she took time to establish authority as a prime minister after being handpicked by a brother who could not do the job himself because he had fled the country in the face of a corruption conviction he says is politically motivated.

But analysts say Ms Yingluck succeeded in improving relations with Mr Thaksin’s many enemies in Thailand’s powerful military and royalist elite, including Gen Prem Tinsulanonda, head of the privy council. And while Mr Thaksin is still seen as the architect of her election and many of her policies, she has established her own set of advisers who in some cases, such as Kittiratt Na-Ranong, the finance minister, she has kept in place despite her brother’s opposition.

“She has shown her independence more and more,” says Puangthong Pawakapan, a political science specialist at Chulalongkorn University. “She showed leadership – a soft style leadership, a consultative style – that seemed to work better with Thai society.”

As Thailand’s first female prime minister she has also benefited from her personal charm and good looks. But she has also had to shrug off vicious misogynistic attacks from enemies.

Diplomats and others say Ms Yingluck’s absorptive temperament helped prevent violent street clashes between police and security forces this month turn into the bloodshed of demonstrations in 2010. At the same time, she bears substantial responsibility for sparking the trouble, as her party pushed forward an abortive amnesty law seen as a way of whitewashing her brother.

Perhaps the best way to interpret Ms Yingluck’s tears is as a sign of the size of the stakes in a struggle that is highly personal as well as political – and where defeat may mean an ending much more traumatic than a gentle fade into history.

“If it goes badly, she could conceivably be banished and pushed into exile,” says Thitinan Pongsudhirak, professor at Chulalongkorn University. “And the odds are against her – because the establishment is against her because of her brother.”