POLITICS-THAILAND: Thaksin Juggernaut Set to Steamroll Opponents

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Oct 23 2004 (IPS) - Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is laying out a feast of handouts – including the promise of gifts from the government for every child born after July 2005 – to entice voters to back his party at the forthcoming general elections.

These gifts for the electorate, announced this week to kick off his Thai Rak Thai (Thai Loves Thai, TRT) party’s election campaign, cut across the rural and urban divide.

Farmers have been promised cows under a special programme and the premier assured the rural poor that each of the country’s 75,000 villages would receive more cash to develop the grassroot economy.

Residents of Bangkok would see the congested city’s mass transit system improved at a cost of one trillion baht (25 billion U.S. dollars) were they to re-elect the Thaksin government. Low-income earners in the city have been promised a tax break, with the minimum taxable annual income being set at 100,000 baht (2,500 U.S. dollars from the current 80,000 baht (2,000 U.S. dollars).

”Thai Rak Thai has the solution for the country. Others just keep attacking. That is destructive politics and it does not work anymore,” Thaksin told a gathering of largely foreign correspondents and diplomats on Thursday in defence of his pre-election pledges.

Even some of his harshest critics admit that Thaksin’s long list of promises will appear more attractive to the electorate because of their concrete nature, unlike the vague pledges made in the past by his predecessors.

”Thaksin has ushered in something new to Thai politics in the way he promises to implement concrete policies to win votes,” Thitinan Pongsudhrirak, a political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, told IPS.

Such an approach was unveiled when Thaksin led his newly formed TRT in the election campaign for the January 2001 poll. Among the promises made was one to transform the health care system to enable Thais to receive medical attention for any ailment by paying only 30 baht (75 U.S. cents) per hospital visit.

According to Thitinan, those ”first generation of populist policies were rooted in economic principles” as part of Thaksin’s vision to build a Thai society shaken by the financial crisis of 1997.

However, the political scientist feels differently about the populist programme on offer for the forthcoming poll, which could be held on Feb. 13 next year if Thaksin does not dissolve parliament earlier.

”The latest pledges are a way to legitimise vote buying, which often happens in Thai politics but is much more shoddy,” said Thitinan. ”It is naked spending to win support.”

Further, economists critical of the government say that Thaksin has not revealed where he will be getting the money to fund this new round of handouts. They are also worried at the increasing level of public expenditure the country will have to shoulder as a result.

Thaksin is hitting the campaign trail with an edge over his rivals, the Democrat Party.

But the prospects of the opposition, however, look dim. According to an opinion poll done by the Bangkok-based Assumption University, 26,133 voters in all 400 constituencies in the country admitted favouring the governing party over the opposition.

The university poll also said that nearly 49 percent of the people polled between Sept. 23 to Oct. 12 indicated they would vote for the TRT as against 34.9 percent favouring the Democrats.

Friday’s edition of the ‘Bangkok Post,’ an English language daily, summed up Thaksin’s prevailing political fortunes in an editorial.

”Unless there is a miracle, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra looks set to return for his second term in office,” said the daily.

Such an eventuality would earn Thaksin two unique places in Thailand’s political history: the first prime minister ever to have completed his full four-year term and the first leader to win back-to-back elections and return for a second term.

None of the 22 prime ministers who preceded him ever finished their full terms due to the fragile coalitions they had in parliament or due to military coups.

Over the last 50 years, Thai politics have been in a state of flux. During that period, it also had16 new constitutions and experienced 17 military coups.

That Thaksin’s populist agenda resonated with the Thai electorate at the January 2001 poll was evident by the thumping mandate he received to form a government with a comfortable majority. Currently, the TRT and its coalition members have 364 seats in the 500-seat parliament.

During its first two years in government the ruling TRT gained more approval, as opinion polls revealed, by its commitment to deliver on its promises – a fact that set it apart from previous administrations.

Thaksin rode this wave of popularity till December last year, when he was voted as the ‘Person of the Year’ in an independent poll. He got 82.5 percent support from the 2,203 Thais surveyed – a number that dwarfed the runner-up, a high-profile forensic expert who received 3.6 percent support.

He was aided by the increasing signs of prosperity in the country and the confidence in the government’s ability to manage the economy through its dual-track agenda – increasing domestic demand and consumer spending while promoting export-led growth.

But since January, the Thaksin administration has faced mounting crises.

They include violence in the predominantly Muslim provinces in the south, where nearly 350 people have been killed and the spread of bird flu, which has killed 11 Thais and devastated chicken farmers.

Thaksin has also been accused of displaying authoritarian-like behaviour by an increasing number of critics – many of them from the academic circles, non-governmental groups and journalists.

Despite that, academics like Thitinan expect Thaksin to return to power. ”What is at stake is the margin of the victory. He (Thaksin) once boasted of getting 400 seats at the next elections (in the 500 seat lower house).”