Thai Army Chief Urges Public to Ignore Rumors of a Coup

Thai Army Chief Urges Public to Ignore Rumors of a Coup

Thailand’s army chief urged the public not to believe rumors of a possible coup, saying the movement of military hardware into Bangkok was for an annual parade and not to oust Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.“People are scared of something that hasn’t taken place yet,” Army Chief Prayuth Chan-Ocha told reporters in Bangkok yesterday. “Don’t be scared if you can’t see it. Everything must happen for a reason,” he said, before adding, “without a reason, nothing will happen.”

Tension has been building in Bangkok as anti-government protesters calling for Yingluck’s caretaker government to be replaced with an unelected council prepare to change their tactics. They plan to move from the protest camp they set up two months ago at a traffic junction in Bangkok’s historic quarter and instead indefinitely block seven intersections in the center of the city starting Jan. 13.

The demonstrators, who are unsatisfied with new elections called for Feb. 2, plan to create traffic gridlock in key areas of the capital to increase pressure on Yingluck to resign and convince civil servants and soldiers to join their cause. The threat of a prolonged disruption to the city and the resumption of violence that has killed eight people has rattled financial markets, causing the benchmark SET Index (SET) to fall 2.8 percent this year and the baht to drop 1 percent against the dollar.

“I want to ask for cooperation from all parties to take care of the nation, especially on Jan. 13,” Yingluck told reporters yesterday in Bangkok. “We want it to pass peacefully. We don’t want it to lead to clashes.”

Corruption Probe

Thailand’s National Anti-Corruption Commission found enough evidence for 308 lawmakers to be charged for supporting a bill that would have changed the way the Senate is formed, Vicha Mahakun, a spokesman, said yesterday.

The commission also found there wasn’t enough evidence to warrant charges against Yingluck and 72 other lawmakers.

The lawmakers may face charges for allegedly seeking to overthrow the system of government with the king as the head of state. The cases could be referred to the prosecutor-general who could bring criminal charges against the lawmakers before the Supreme Court, according to agency’s website.

The commission charged House speaker Somsak Kiatsuranont and Senate speaker Nikom Wairatpanij with abuse of power over the same case on Dec. 26.

Military Support

The protesters have said the military should support their months-long bid to replace the government with an appointed council of “good people” tasked with erasing what they describe as the corrupting political influence of Yingluck’s family. Allies of Yingluck’s brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, have won the past five elections, including two since his ouster in a 2006 military coup.

The protesters, who have vowed to disrupt the Feb. 2 polls, are led by Suthep Thaugsuban, a former lawmaker and power broker with the opposition Democrat Party, which is boycotting the vote. They say the government is illegitimate and run from abroad by Thaksin, who faces a two-year jail term for corruption if he returns in a case he says is politically motivated.

Prayuth has refused to publicly take a side. When asked Dec. 27 whether the door remained open for a coup, he didn’t rule it out. “I won’t say open or closed,” he said. “Everything depends on the situation.” Thailand has experienced nine coups and more than 20 prime ministers since 1946.

Coup Rumors

Talk of a putsch increased when generals announced they would be moving troops and hardware, including artillery, into Bangkok this week for Army Day celebrations on Jan. 18. Prayuth stressed yesterday that the army has done this every year.

The movement of military assets into Bangkok, especially from a faction of the army that spearheaded the 2006 coup, was not without meaning, said Paul Chambers, director of research at the Institute of Southeast Asian Affairs at Chiang Mai University and editor of the book “Knights of the Realm: Thailand’s Military and Police, Then and Now.”

“Prayuth Chan-Ocha is an ardent arch-royalist and anti-Thaksin,” he said. “I see this troop movement as a warning to police not to try to repress Suthep’s forces.”

While the military, royalists and many middle-class Thais are opposed to Thaksin, the police as a whole are loyal to the former premier, who was a police lieutenant colonel before entering politics, Chambers said.

Airport Seizure

In 2008, protesters who accused Thaksin’s allies of turning Thailand into a monarchy-free republic occupied Government House for several months before seizing Bangkok’s airports as the military declined to enforce an emergency decree.

Suthep was a former deputy premier with the Democrat party, which hasn’t won a national poll in more than 20 years. He faces murder charges for his role in helping oversee a deadly crackdown on supporters of Thaksin in 2010 when the Democrats were in power.

Yingluck also addressed the coup rumors, saying that past military interventions had failed to solve the nation’s divisions and all sides should find a peaceful solution.

“I believe all military heads will think about solving problems in the long term rather than using measures that are unacceptable to many countries,” Yingluck said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Blake in Bangkok at cblake28@bloomberg.net