THAILAND’S junta leader Prayuth Chan-Ocha handed control of the army to his handpicked successor as part of his scheduled retirement from the military.
Taking over as army chief is Gen. Udomdej Sitabutr, a member of the royalist military faction—known as the Eastern Tigers—that propelled Prayuth to power. Prayuth will stay on as prime minister and head of the junta that toppled the elected government in a May 22 coup and enshrined his absolute authority in an interim constitution.
“If you look at Thai history, the head of the army is the main key position, but that changed with the coup,” said Napisa Waitoolkiat, a political scientist at the Institute of Southeast Asian Affairs in Chiang Mai. “The head of the army is now not as powerful as Prayuth.”
The military reshuffle is an annual event and the 60-year-old Prayuth, who has served as army chief since 2010, faced mandatory retirement this year. As junta boss he was able to use the reshuffle to give key positions to his younger brother and members of his trusted circle. While the promotions could cement the military dominance of Prayuth’s allies for years to come, they risk alienating other cliques that could feel they’ve been sidelined.
“The key here is factionalism and antagonism,” said Napisa, who studies the region’s militaries. “If the power is just concentrated on one key faction like the Eastern Tigers, what about the rest? If you have this promotion line based upon this category, you automatically make a lot of people angry.”
Eastern Tigers
THAILAND’S military has a history of factionalism, with cliques often forming around military units, academy graduating classes or strong personalities. Those cliques have played key roles in the 12 coups staged since the end of absolute rule by kings in 1932, alongside several more failed coup attempts.
Like much of the political instability Thailand has faced over the past decade, the ascent of the Eastern Tigers faction—officers who served in the army’s 2nd infantry division and many in its 21st regiment, the Queens Guard—has links to former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, elected in 2001 and ousted in a 2006 coup, said Paul Chambers, editor of Knights of the Realm: Thailand’s Military and Police, Then and Now. “At the beginning of Thaksin’s rule, Thaksin was very popular and people thought he was like Midas, helping the economy turn to gold,” he said. That allowed him to become the first civilian leader to truly have a say over the military reshuffle, and he used that power to promote allies and in 2003 his cousin, Chaiyasit Shinawatra, to army chief.
King’s guard
HISTORICALLY, the most powerful group in the army was the so-called Wongthewan faction centered around the 1st infantry division, or Kings Guard, based in Bangkok, Napisa said.
“If you look at who’s commanded it, it’s a who’s who of all the dictators of Thailand or all the army commanders,” said Chambers, who is also based at the Institute of Southeast Asian Affairs in Chiang Mai. “Thaksin was smart and he put his friends to try to dominate that faction.”
Thaksin’s growing influence bothered retired generals close to the royal palace, Chambers said. When an insurgency broke out in southern Thailand in early 2004 on the watch of Thaksin’s cousin, they were able to shift power toward other factions, including the Eastern Tigers headed by Prawit Wongsuwan, who was named army chief, he said.
Prawit, who serves as defense minister in Prayuth’s Cabinet, retired in 2005 and was replaced by Sondhi Boonyaratglin, a member of a special forces faction and classmate of Prawit who led the 2006 coup against Thaksin with the help of the Eastern Tigers, including Prayuth and his immediate predecessor as army chief Anupong Paochinda, the current Cabinet’s minister of interior.
Prayuth’s rise
“PRAYUTH was attached to this faction so as it rose, he rose,” Chambers said. “As his commander Prawit rose, Prayuth rose. As Anupong rose, Prayuth rose. There was nothing personalistic about his rise.”
The consolidation of power in a single faction and their influence over politics raised alarms among observers, with Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, saying in a 2010 opinion piece in the Bangkok Post after Prayuth’s promotion that the army’s command structure hadn’t been “so dominated by a fast-track cohort of this sort” in two decades.
‘Crisis and clash’
“PAST experience with so much military power in the body politic does not bode well,” he wrote. “Powerful military cohorts do not return to the barracks voluntarily. A catharsis of crisis and clash between the military and civilians was always required, while challenges from within the military were not uncommon.”
Despite moves to sideline those in the military seen as sympathetic to Thaksin, Napisa said divisions remain.
“Colonel and below are packed with people loyal to Thaksin and the Red Shirts,” she said, referring to the political movement linked to the ousted prime minister and his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, whose government was toppled in May. She said one of the junta’s priorities after the latest coup was to control soldiers who supported the Red Shirts.
“Everybody should be prepared to deal with old-style risks and new-style risks, which are internal security, conflicts and different views,” Prayuth said on September 29 after a military ceremony in the central province of Nakhon Nayok. “From now on, the army must take care of each other to be strong and united.”
No coup
INCOMING Army Chief Udomdej said on Tuesday there was no chance that the military would interfere with the junta’s plans or that there would be another coup.
“I want everybody rest assured that there won’t be such a thing for sure,” he said. “The army will be the main foundation to ensure peace in the country.”
With Udomdej due to retire next September and the junta saying elections won’t be held for another year at the earliest, Prayuth is set to oversee at least one more reshuffle with absolute power, Napisa said. That will allow him to name the next army chief, as well as move his brother and his brother’s classmates into higher positions.
“This faction is really setting themselves up to be dominant into the future,” Napisa said. “They could really stay. They control troops and they control politics.”