BANGKOK — Cheer up, Thailand. That’s an order.
The military junta that seized power here last month has no plans to restore civilian rule any time soon. But it has launched an official campaign to bring back something else it says this divided nation desperately needs — happiness.
The project has involved free concerts, free food, alluring female dancers in suggestive camouflage miniskirts, even the chance to pet horses trucked into downtown Bangkok with makeshift stables and bales of hay. The fairlike events are supposed to pave the way for reconciliation after a decade of political upheaval and coups.
But critics point out the feel-good project is being carried out alongside an entirely different junta-led campaign — an effort to stifle all opposition to the army’s May 22 putsch, which deposed a government elected by a majority of Thai voters three years ago.
“The very first question you have to ask is, whose happiness are they talking about?” said Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a Thai professor of Southeast Asian studies at Kyoto University who has refused to respond to a junta summons ordering him to return home and report to the army.
“I’m sure this is not happiness for Thais who want a civilian government, whose rights were taken away by the coup,” he said. “It’s surreal. And it’s ridiculous to believe this will create an environment conducive to reconciliation. That can’t happen when the military is harassing, hunting and detaining its enemies.”
Last month’s coup, the 12th in Thailand since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932, ousted a civilian government accused of abuse of power and corruption that had increasingly been cornered by protesters, the courts, and finally the army.
The aim of the project, dubbed “Return Happiness to the People” by the military, is to get people “to relax,” said Col. Weerachon Sukondhapatipak, an army spokesman. “We’re trying to create an atmosphere to gain trust and build confidence. That is the plan.”
And the junta is serious about it.
The weekly radio address of military ruler Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha is now titled, “Bringing Back Happiness to the Nation.” It is also now prefaced with a new song Prayuth commissioned called “Return Happiness to Thailand.”
In thailand
Thailand has been deeply split for nearly a decade. On one side is an elite, royalist establishment based in Bangkok and the south that can no longer win elections and says the democratic process had been subverted by “the tyranny of the majority.” On the other side is a poorer majority centered in the north and northeast that has watched the governments it has voted into office ousted again and again — by coups and controversial court verdicts.
