Once again, Thailand finds itself gracing the front pages of newspapers around the world for all the wrong reasons. A month-long standoff between the Thai government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and hundreds of thousands of Red Shirt protestors erupted into violence this weekend when Prime Minister Abhisit issued an order for the Army to clear demonstrators from the streets using non-lethal force.  The resulting (lethal) clashes left 21 people dead and over 800 injured in the worst political violence Thailand has seen in twenty years.

While the violence has temporarily stopped, the crisis is far from over. The Red Shirts’ primary goal, to have the Prime Minister dissolve Parliament and call snap elections, which their party would likely win, is closer to being attained now than at any point in the past year. Yesterday morning, General Anupong Paochinda, the head of the Army, called the dissolution of Parliament a “reasonable step” and stated that the current crisis must be solved by politics, essentially ruling out the possibility of increased military action and publicly demonstrating a gap between the Abhisit government and the Thai military, whose backing is crucial to Abhisit’s reign.  In a further blow to the Abhisit government, Thailand’s Election Commission ruled that Abhisit’s political party was guilty of receiving an illegal donation, and recommended that the party be removed from power. If the recommendation is upheld by the Thai Constitutional Court, the party will be dissolved and its leaders banned from Thai politics for five years. Sources close to the PM say that he is considering trying to resolve the crisis by calling elections in October 2010, though this may not be soon enough to placate Red Shirt leaders.

If the Abhisit government goes, which is looking more and more likely, it will almost certainly regroup and turn to street protests, which have proven so effective at paralyzing the incumbent government and forcing political change over the past several years. In the meantime, the Army will take advantage of political instability to continue building up its power; the tourism and foreign investment sectors of the Thai economy will continue to suffer, and effective, transparent governance will remain elusive. The end result will be predictable: a continuation of the same vicious cycle of politics that has proven so costly over the past few years.

Thailand’s leaders, both in power and out, must not allow this to go on. Instead, they must sit down and address the underlying causes of this cycle: unspoken national anxiety about the monarchy; a massive societal divide between the urban elite and the rural poor; the plague of corruption in politics; and structural idiosyncrasies in the government that create problems, such as the disbanding of an entire party as punishment for a single party member’s transgressions.

The first of these issues, that of the role of the monarchy in Thailand, is the most sensitive. Thais fervently revere the 82-year old King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who has presided over the Kingdom for 60 years and served as a unifying force during the many political transitions and tumult of the past half century. When the increasingly ill King passes away, he will be succeeded by his son, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkor, whose popularity amongst his countrymen can be described as tepid at best. Without a strong, widely admired King, the institution of the monarchy will falter, carrying with it both a powerful force for smoothing political conflict and the source of legitimacy for the monarchist Yellow Shirts, who justify many of their politics by claiming to be defending the King. Unfortunately, the reverence with which most Thais hold the King, combined with strict lese-majeste laws, mean that discussing the monarchy, let alone criticizing it, is taboo. As a result, the nation has no way of preparing for the inevitable death of King Bhumibol and the restructuring of power that will follow. Instead, national anxiety over the future of the monarchy is channeled through political chaos.

Equally problematic is the divide between the population north of Bangkok. The agrarian population, the political base of the Red Shirts, has long resented the power of the ruling elite of Bangkok. Those wealthy elites, in turn, have consistently snubbed the desires of provincial and rural workers, who make up two-thirds of Thailand’s population. That changed in 2001, when rural voters swept Thaksin Shinawatra and his populist polices into power, lighting the fuse for what was to become today’s political crisis. As Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya admitted earlier this week, no political solution will be found in Thailand until the needs and wishes of those outside Bangkok become a significant part of the national dialogue and are embraced by all political parties, not only the Red Shirts.

Corruption must also be addressed. While eradicating bribed and other illegal dealings may prove difficult in a society where such things are commonplace, political parties must strive to keep a clean record when it comes to their financial dealings. Not only is this essential for democratic growth, it is necessary for the legitimacy of parties and politicians. When, as with Thaksin Shinawatra, politicians are convicted of illegal doings, they cease to be viable candidates and provide an easy target, unrelated to actual meaningful policy debates, for opposing parties to latch onto.

That said, corruption and other transgressions within political parties are, at the moment, punished in a way that further complicates the system. When one member of a party is found to have broken the law- for example, accepting an illegal party donation- the entire party must be disbanded and its leaders barred from politics for five years. This is not only unjust, it is wildly impractical, resulting in the continual disbanding and reforming of parties under different names and new leadership, with former party heads serving as shadowy power brokers.

None of these changes will be easy. They will require serious work, and some of them, such as holding frank talks about the future of the Monarchy, are at odds with decades of tradition and habit. But these changes, and most likely others, are necessary if Thailand is to stabilize its politics and continue to grow as a democracy.

Thailand is a vibrant country that has long served as an example of what could be to its smaller, poorer neighbors. Let us hope that Thailand chooses to continue this role.

Related posts:

1. As Bangkok Burns, Thailand’s Conflict Between the Red Shirts and the Abhisit Government Deepens
2. Understanding Thailand’s Troubles
3. Goodbye to 2009: The year in review
4. Making Common Cause in Southeast Asia
5. Time to Think Creatively About Burma