AP Analysis: Why junta rules Thailand, with no end in sight

BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand's military seized power from an elected government on May 22, 2014, with the justification that it wanted to end chaotic and violent political confrontations that had wracked the country for years.

After years of political turmoil and musical chairs, his sister Yingluck Shinawatra came to power in a landslide election victory in 2011.

Arrogant and flexible in his ethics, Thaksin alienated the educated, urban middle class and alarmed traditional ruling circles — royalists and the military — who also feared his lock on the electorate challenged the power structure.

When threats fail to keep critics and dissidents in line, they are detained at military bases, usually for no more than a week, for interrogation sessions called "attitude adjustment."

Agriculture has been weakened by severe drought, while scandals in the fishing and seafood industry — involving labor abuses and illegal fishing practices — risked sanctions in the markets of the EU and the United States.

What concerns economists is that the junta's generally narrow focus on political stability constrains it from tackling the country's acknowledged structural problems — competitiveness, industrial production capacity, productivity, education and training, state-owned-enterprise reform — that the pre-coup turmoil allowed to fester.

Junta officials have expressed their annoyance at Washington, but how deep their anger actually runs is hard to gauge — anti-American statements play well with their supporters, but military-to-military relations run deep.

[...] Thailand has stood fast against unfavorable financing terms offered by the Chinese for a much-desired major rail project, and has expressed interest in joining the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

The draft charter will be voted on in an Aug. 7 referendum that amounts to the first measurement of public sentiment toward the military government.

Prayuth has said the junta will press ahead with its plans regardless of the outcome, suggesting that if the draft charter is rejected, a replacement will be enacted without a popular vote.

[...] the problem the junta faces is that it has not moved the country one inch away from the polarized politics it claimed to be seeking an end to, since it has been a party to the conflict all along.