8 - Murder and Regress: Violence and Political Change in Thailand

Summary

Thailand's electoral politics has changed drastically in the past four decades, and these profound changes have ushered in a new type of political struggle. Since the democratization process began in the late 1970s, electoral politics in Thailand has been tainted by various forms of violent conflict. Apart from targeted assassinations, other forms of election-related violence have included attacks on polling stations on election day, bombing candidates’ and vote canvassers’ houses, threatening election-related personnel with harm, burning political parties’ headquarters, and mass protests following elections. Hundreds of people have died or been injured as a result of these various types of election-related violence. Arising from this history is an important question that calls for investigation: how have the patterns and degree of election-related violence shifted over time? Election-related violence first manifested itself in the 1975 and 1976 elections, during the turbulent period of democratic transition after the 1973 student uprising. The intensity and degree of electoral violence increased in the 1980s and remained relatively constant until the late 1990s. Thai society then observed a sharp rise in violence associated with the 2001 and 2005 elections. Despite predictions that the deep political polarization that occurred after the 2006 military coup would intensify electoral competition and produce higher levels of bloodshed during campaigning and polling, electoral violence actually declined in the 2007 and 2011 elections. Violence increased again, with a new pattern of mass mobilization, in association with the 2014 elections, polls that resulted in the paralysis of the country and eventually paved the way for the military coup of May 2014.

These trends in electoral competition and violence occurred in the context of dramatic political change in Thailand during the past four decades. This chapter aims to provide a broad overview and explanation of the changing landscape of electoral politics since the democratization process began in the 1970s by focusing specifically on political violence in Thai electoral politics. It aims to identify the primary factors, processes and actors that fomented electoral violence. By examining the changes in the characteristics of actors involved in electoral violence in particular, it reflects the shifting mode of electoral competition and terrain of struggle in Thai politics over time. During 1975–76, electoral conflict was a struggle between progressive forces, led by the student movement on the one hand and the conservative elite on the other.