POLITICS-THAILAND: Protest Vote is Biggest Message of Bangkok Poll

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Boonthan Sakanond

BANGKOK, Aug 30 2004 (IPS) - It was a double protest vote that was delivered by citizens at the keenly fought election for governor of the Thai capital on Sunday.

In a clear snub to the domination of national politics by Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party, voters elected the opposition Democrat candidate Apriak Kosayodhin as the new governor.

He pulled in over 911, 400 votes, way ahead of the 619,000 for Paveena Hongsakul, an independent candidate widely seen as backed by the ruling TRT.

The victory of Democrat party candidate in Sunday’s polls was part of a protest by the Thai capital’s educated, middle-class voters against the complete monopoly established by the TRT over national politics in recent years.

Since coming to power in a landslide victory four years ago, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has crudely expanded his control over parliament, the Senate and other political institutions by either buying over opponents or using his electoral majority to silence critics.

– The people of Bangkok have voted to create an alternative to the TRT that has taken over all the political spaces in the country,” said Paisan Plien-bangchang, a well-known performance artist and member of the radical art group Ugabad.

Sunday’s vote he says was not so much about civic problems in Bangkok, of which there are plenty, but about sending a message to the TRT that their attempt to blank out all opposition to their rule will not be tolerated.

“We lost because Paveena was clearly considered by Bangkok voters as a front candidate for the TRT,” conceded an advisor to Paveena Hongsakul’s campaign who did not want to be named. A high-profile social activist, Paveena lost a lot of votes due to her perceived association with the Thaksin administration.

The TRT has been able to successfully marginalise all opposition forces over the past four years due to Thaksin’s own charismatic draw as a ‘self-made’ billionaire, a host of populist social and economic policies and its clever revival of nationalist themes in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis that hit Thailand hard.

The TRT, which emerged as the largest party ever in Thai electoral history with 257 members of parliament in a chamber of 500 members, has since gone on to expand its hold by merging a number of smaller parties into its fold.

Thaksin has talked of winning 400 seats in the next national elections, slated for sometime early 2005. Despite the setback in the Bangkok governor’s election, the TRT is widely expected to come back to power with a comfortable majority.

The opposition, mainly consisting of the Democrats, Thailand’s oldest political party, has been in disarray since its overwhelming defeat four years ago and failure to come up with a coherent challenge to the TRT’s runaway success.

Following the stepping down of former Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai last year from his position as party leader, the Democrats chose Banyat Bantadtan, a party faithful and veteran, instead of a more charismatic and youthful Abhisit Vejjajiva, as the new leader.

Since then, the party has seen several of the party’s already small number of MPs defect to the TRT or break away to join new political formations, undermining its ability to provide a credible alternative to the Thaksin juggernaut.

Many political commentators point out that the victory of Apirak, a photogenic former telecommunications executive, is a sign that the public wants the Democrats to go for younger leaders and not ageing veterans tainted by their links to the country’s old business and political elites.

“At the moment, it should be apparent to every Democrat that Bangkokians prefer a youthful leader with a bolder vision and a democratic mind to lead the country,” said an editorial in the Bangkok-based ‘Nation’ daily.

The surprise second protest vote, apparent in the results of the Bangkok governor polls, however, was the massive support shown for Chuwit Kamolvisit, a quasi-mafiosi style massage-parlour tycoon who turned anti-corruption crusader. He came in third at the polls with nearly 334,000 votes.

Chuwit shot into public limelight last year by naming senior police officials who had asked for huge bribes in return for allowing him to operate his upscale massage parlours without harassment.

Easily the most colourful character in the race for governor, Chuwit seems to have attracted votes from youth alienated by national politics, the city’s numerous taxi drivers upset over rising petrol prices and the substantial number of people working in Bangkok’s commercial sex industry.

“Chuwit, though controversial, was seen as someone who dared to take on the system and many young people and those from low-income professions appear to have rooted for him,” said Voravidh Charoenlert, a political economist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.

Bangkok’s numerous taxi drivers for example are unhappy with the mainstream political parties for not supporting their demand for a raise in the minimum fares.

In the past 10 years, the minimum fare has remained the same despite a three-fold increase in petrol prices, hurting incomes of taxi drivers who mostly consist of migrants from the countryside or unemployed urban men.

“Neither the Thaksin nor the Democrats want to raise the fares because they are afraid this will hurt the tourism industry. But then why should we be the ones to pay to keep tourists happy?” said Visan Boonlert, a middle-aged Bangkok taxi driver who says falling income has forced him to send his children out to sell ‘somtam’, a popular Thai dish.

For their part, commercial sex and other entertainment industry workers are upset with the Thaksin government over its imposition of various restrictions on their establishments in a bid to promote ‘family values’ and please Bangkok’s conservative middle-class voters.

The Democrats, who draw support from the same vote base, are not seen as a real alternative to the TRT on these issues.

The big vote for Chuwit is also indicative of what many social activists in Thailand have been discussing for the past several years but have failed to yet initiate – the advent of a ‘third alternative’ to the emerging two-party contest between the TRT and Democrats.

This could yet be an alternative that will deal with the concerns of marginalised people from the urban and rural underclasses – who right now do not have a political voice to represent them in Thailand’s structures of power.