POLITICS-THAILAND: Premier’s Populist Standing Comes under Test

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Dec 30 2002 (IPS) - Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s reputation as the most popular figure on Thailand’s political stage, as well as his populist credentials, are due to come under severe scrutiny in the new year.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have already gone public with two strategies to challenge Thaksin, who is about to begin his third year in office.

First, a network of 50 NGOs plans to host a ”people’s parliament” at a university here in March 2003 to give the Thai public a venue to criticise the kind of development that the Thaksin administration has pursued in its two years in office – one that sceptics say does not heed the voices of affected communities.

”The event (is) being held to encourage the government to pay more heed to public opinion,” Nitirat Sapsomboon, an activist and coordinator of the ”people’s parliament”, was quoted as having told the English-language ‘The Nation’ newspaper.

Second, activists launched over the weekend a campaign to collect 50,000 signatures in order to oust Thaksin from office.

This is the first signature campaign that Thaksin has faced since his Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai) party won at the January 2001 elections.

Under Thailand’s 1997 constitution, the public can oust an elected official by collecting at least 50,000 signatures in support of dismissal and submitting the petition to the Senate to institute an inquiry.

These actions by activists, a constituency that backed Thaksin at the 2001 polls due to his populist agenda, were triggered by his government’s stance on two controversial projects that critics say reveal the lack of sincerity in his supposedly pro-poor approach.

The project that has generated the most heat is the Thai-Malaysian gas pipeline in southern Thailand. Thaksin has continued to justify the use of force by the police to break up a peaceful demonstration by opponents of the project in mid-December.

To some critics, this heavy-handed approach, which left 38 demonstrators and 15 policeman injured, is reminiscent of the harsh manner in which past dictatorships crushed dissent.

”The atmosphere is eerie; it feels more like the days of dictatorship than of democracy,” wrote analyst Wasant Techawongtham for the English-language daily ‘Bangkok Post’. ”All this should be of concern among those who have worked hard to uphold democracy and peace.”

The gas pipeline project has been marred by protests from communities in Thailand’s four southern districts, since Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur signed joint contracts in April 1998 and in October 1999.

According to local communities, this project, which includes a 225-kilometre offshore pipeline to carry one billion cubic feet of gas a day from the Gulf of Thailand into Malaysia, will damage the environment and curtail fishing.

The same twin problems – environmental degradation and the destruction of livelihoods – lie at the heart of the restiveness about the Pak Mun dam, the other project that has dogged the Thaksin administration.

Activists are unconvinced that the prime minister will heed the call of the more than 20,000 villagers to open the dam’s sluice gates all year round since they were shut in November, to allow the revival of the fish population they depend on for livelihood.

As the controversy raged, Thaksin met the villagers in their turf in Ubon Ratchathani province in north-east Thailand in mid-December. He has not yet stated his decision on the villagers’ demands.

”We are not sure if his (Thaksin’s) latest encounter with the villagers is a way of buying time to achieve his political ends,” said Bantorn Ondam, an advisor to the Assembly of the Poor, an umbrella group of grassroots movements.

”The government wanted to impress middle-class people (by showing Thaksin bonding with the villagers),” Kaisan Techapeera, a political scientist at Bangkok’s Thammasat University, said at a recent seminar on the dam controversy.

The 24 million U.S. dollar Pak Mun dam, completed in 1994 with World Bank funding, was built to generate 136 megawatts of electricity.

But its construction on the Mun river, the largest tributary of the Mekong River, resulted in a drastic drop in fisheries, a main source of income for villagers living along the riverbanks.

Sulak Sivaraksa, one of Thailand’s leading social commentators, says the suppression of the gas pipeline protests and the government’s footdragging on the dam issue reveal its reluctance to genuinely uphold the concerns of the poor.

”The Thaksin administration’s legitimacy to rule the country will erode because it has not honoured promises made to the poor,” Sulak told ‘The Nation’.

But Thaksin may have little reason to panic if he looks at the other side of his government’s political balance sheet.

For one, his administration can claim credit for the country’s economic growth this year of more than five percent, compared to 1.8 percent growth in 2001.

For another, there continues to be wide support for some of Thaksin’s populist measures, including a universal health care scheme and poverty reduction programmes for villagers.

Most significant is the political strength that comes from the unprecedented majority that Thaksin commands in parliament, especially as the opposition party, the Democrat Party, is in disarray.

”The Democrat Party is not capable of removing Thaksin from power. All it can do is open new wounds and expose the government’s corruption and its trying to stifle independent institutions,” said Sunai Phasuk, an analyst at Forum Asia, a Bangkok-based regional rights watchdog.

This is all the more reason why discontent with the Thaksin government will be witnessed not inside political institutions but beyond the walls of parliament, Sunai predicts.

Said Sunai: ”NGOs will be involved in giving vent to public frustrations. There will be confrontations. It will be very hot.”

POLITICS-THAILAND: Premier’s Populist Standing Comes under Test

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Dec 30 2002 (IPS) - Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s reputation as the most popular figure on Thailand’s political stage, as well as his populist credentials, are due to come under severe scrutiny in the new year.
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