Golpe de Estado militar en Tailandia

Thai Army Stages Coup After Six-Month Political Stalemate

By Anuchit Nguyen and Chris Blake May 22, 2014 7:39 AM GMT-0430

Photographer: Manan Vatsyayana/AFP via Getty Images

Thai soldiers stand guard at a checkpoint near the pro-government ''Red shirts'' camp site on the outskirts of Bangkok on May 22, 2014.

Thailand’s army chief took control of the country after a six-month crisis that has sapped economic growth and caused political paralysis, staging the military’s 12th coup since 1932.
Two days after declaring martial law and saying there was no coup, Army Chief Prayuth Chan-Ocha announced on national television alongside senior military officials that he was seizing control in order to restore peace. He announced a daily nationwide curfew from 10:00 p.m. until 5:00 a.m.
“To restore peace back to the country in a short time and to reform the country’s politics, economy and society, the Thai military, army, navy, air force and police have seized power from May 22 onward,” Prayuth said. “All people should remain calm and live their lives as normal. All government officials continue to work in line with their regulations and what they have done before.”
The coup could provide short-term certainty to markets after months of street protests and upheaval that led to the removal on May 7 of then-caretaker premier Yingluck Shinawatra by the Constitutional Court. The military’s intervention may not resolve the deep polarization that has taken hold in Thailand over the past decade between the largely rural-based base of Yingluck’s brother Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted in a 2006 coup, and his royalist opponents.

Photographer: Pornchai Kittiwongsakul/AFP/Getty Images

Thai Army Chief Prayuth Chan-Ocha, center, arrives for a meeting at the Army Club in... Read More

Thai military and political leaders met this afternoon to discuss possible resolutions to the nation’s governance crisis. The military used several trucks to block the entrance and exits of the complex where the meeting was held. The leader of the anti-government protesters, Suthep Thaugsuban, was escorted into an army compound nearby. Feeds from television stations showed logos of the armed forces and played patriotic songs.

Red Shirts

Leaders of the pro-government movement known as Red Shirts have been arrested, Sean Boonpracong, an adviser in the prime minister’s office, said by phone. They include Jatuporn Prompan, Weng Tojirakarn, Tida Tawornseth and Korkaew Pikulthong, with caretaker Prime Minister Niwattumrong Boonsongpaisan in a safe location, he said.
The baht weakened 0.1 percent against the U.S. dollar following the announcement, after strengthening as much as 0.4 percent earlier today. The announcement of the coup came after the close of trading on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, with the benchmark SET Index (SET) rising 0.2 percent to 1,405.21.
The stock exchange will open as usual tomorrow, the exchange said in a statement. Thai airports will continue to operate as normal and there has been no order to prohibit any travel, Airports of Thailand said in a statement.

Thai soldiers stand guard at the Army Club in Bangkok. Phtographer: Pornchai... Read More

‘Big Mess’

The military has now carried out a dozen coups since the end of direct rule by kings in 1932, with three governments overthrown since 2006 by the army or judicial action. The latest putsch risks international sanctions and may extend almost a decade of unrest that has sapped growth in Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy.
“The most obvious narrative is that Prayuth herded all of these people into a room and decided they were all beyond compromise and decided he needed to seize power, but it’s got to be more complicated than that,” said Michael Montesano, a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. “Now the military has inherited a big mess and how they will manage things in a way that they don’t end up in the trouble they ended up in 2006 and 2007 is what we need to look at.”

End Game

Anti-government protesters are demanding an unelected council run the country to wipe out the influence of Thaksin and his sister Yingluck, whose parties have won the last five elections. Government supporters, also protesting in Bangkok, have vowed to fight any such move.
Yingluck dissolved parliament and called fresh elections in December in a bid to end the protests, which began in opposition to an amnesty bill that would have allowed Thaksin to return to Thailand. Thaksin fled abroad to avoid a jail term for corruption handed down by a military-appointed court.
“We are approaching the end game to the political crisis,” said Alan Richardson, whose Samsung Asean Equity Fund beat 96 percent of peers tracked by Bloomberg in the past five years. “The stock market could fall tomorrow on knee-jerk reaction to heightened perceived political risk, but it should be an opportunity to start buying near the point of maximum pessimism,” he said by phone from Hong Kong.

Shrinking Economy

The coup comes days after the state planning agency reported gross domestic product shrank 0.6 percent in the three months through March from a year earlier, as production and tourism took a hit during months of unrest. The agency this week also cut its growth forecast for this year to 1.5 percent to 2.5 percent from a range of 3 percent to 4 percent earlier.
Thailand will probably have the slowest growth among its major Southeast Asian peers this year, according to Bloomberg surveys. The economy is at risk of sliding into a technical recession this year, analysts said. The last quarter-on-quarter recession was seen in 2009 after a global slowdown led to an exports slump and anti-government protesters shut down Bangkok’s main international airport for more than a week.
“The coup seems unlikely to bring a lasting solution any closer,” Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics in London, wrote in an e-mail. “The military’s seizure of power does nothing for Thailand’s reputation among global investors, or indeed tourists.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Chris Blake in Bangkok at cblake28@bloomberg.net; Anuchit Nguyen in Bangkok at anguyen@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net Peter Hirschberg