POLITICS-THAILAND: Thaksin’s Stability Game Pays Off

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Nov 29 2004 (IPS) - When Thailand’s parliament finished its final session this month, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra entered a realm that had been denied to the 22 premiers before him. He became the first to complete his full four-year term in office.

This milestone also enables Thaksin to claim credit for guiding his South-east Asian country into an environment of stability, a fact that had eluded Thailand for decades due to its previously fractious and violent political atmosphere.

What worked in Thaksin’s favour, for one, was the country’s recent constitution. That 1997 document sought to breakaway from the unstable climate of the past by laying down new electoral and parliamentary rules aimed at building a stable government.

”Thaksin’s record of completing four years shows one of the successes of the 1997 constitution – creating stability,” Giles Ungpakorn, political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, said in an interview. ”The clauses in the constitution have strengthened the powers of the executive, helping the prime minister.”

Thaksin, a billionaire telecom tycoon, was also aided by the thumping majority his party received at the January 2001 elections – the first poll conducted after the new constitution was promulgated. At that poll, the TRT secured an unprecedented 296 seats in the 500-seat parliament.

The TRT’s strength was further boosted by the alliance it made with smaller parties, resulting in it having a total of 364 seats in its coalition, a number that made it impossible for the opposition Democrat Party to bring down the government through a no-confidence motion.

This stable stretch in Thai politics stands in contrast to the customary record of volatility that preceded it, reflected in the 16 constitutions and 17 military coups witnessed since this country became a constitutional monarchy in 1932.

In addition, fragile coalitions in parliament also denied Thaksin’s 22 predecessors from achieving the record he just claimed.

Among those who fell mid-way through their terms due to unstable alliances in parliament were former prime ministers Chavalit Yongchaiyudh and Banharn Silapa-archa after one year in office and Chuan Leekpai after three years. Former premier Chatichai Choonhavan, on the other hand, was ousted by a military coup after a three-year stint.

But neither Thaksin nor his newly formed TRT had envisioned the hallmark that lay in store for them. ”Prior to the 2001 elections we never thought of this possibility. We were unsure of the majority we would get then,” Suranand Vejjajiva, TRT spokesman, told IPS.

That view changed a year into office, he added. ”We felt confident about being the first government to complete a full term as we started delivering our campaign promises.”

Some of the pledges included aiding the millions of Thailand’s rural poor saddled with debt, helping to uplift the grassroots economy, providing universal health care at minimal cost to sick Thais and the eradication of narcotic drugs.

A few of Thaksin’s critics, in fact, have reluctantly acknowledged that these policies have kept Thaksin’s government in power. Such policy-driven election campaigns were novel to Thailand in as much as the push by the government to implement them soon after the elections, they added.

The TRT, in fact, is playing up this stable run as a factor that resuscitated the Thai economy after the multiple blows it endured following the 1997 financial crisis.

”The stability since January 2001 has helped the economy to recover,” says Suranand. ”Investors are more certain of the current climate.”

Some economists agree. ”The healthy economic indicators we have are because of the smooth political situation we have had,” Usara Wilaipich, economist at the Thai branch of Standard and Chartered Bank, told IPS.

”That the Thai stock market continues to draw foreign investors proves this,” she said. ”The four years also gave the government (the chance) to strengthen Thailand’s external financial positions.”

This month, World Bank officials mirrored that view in an assessment of the Thai economy, pointing to double-digit growth in private investment and growth in public investment ”for the first time since the crises.”

Yet the pages of Thai newspapers and seminar halls in and around Bangkok are raising a cry about the disturbing consequences of Thaksin’s political achievement. His four-year term, they say, has forced into silence critics of government policies within the bureaucracy and universities and also produced a pliant press.

The 1997 constitution may have brought stability to Thailand but it has ”undermined checks-and-balance mechanisms,” Ammar Siamwalla, a senior scholar at the Thailand Development Research Institute, an independent think-tank, was quoted as having said in Monday’s ‘Bangkok Post’ newspaper.

On Saturday, ‘The Nation’ newspaper lamented in an editorial that the Thai media had been silenced by the political and economic clout of the Thaksin administration.

”During Thaksin’s term several editors have lost their jobs for behaving like watchdogs instead of lapdogs,” it states. ”Critics are virtually banned from television talks shows, advertising budgets are dangled before greedy or desperate publishers (and) ruinous lawsuits are filed against leading government opponents.”

Giles, the political scientist, agrees. ”Political stability under Thaksin has come at a price,” he says, but also faults Thailand’s social movements for doing little to challenge the administration.

TRT’s Suranand, however, views it differently. ”We did not draft this constitution, nor have we tried to change the rules. We cannot be faulted for living up to what the constitution says.”

And Thaksin’s party is determined to extend this culture of stability, promulgated in the 1997 constitution, as it prepares to contest the next general election due in late January or early February next year.