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WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: In Thailand, Poor Show Power from the Streets

Marwaan Macan-Markar* - IPS/TerraViva

BANGKOK, Jan 24 2005 (IPS) - Prasittiporn Kan-Onsri spends long hours plotting to shake up Thailand’s political establishment. D-Day for the 38-year-old activist is Feb. 6 when the country goes to the polls to elect a new parliament.

But the task at hand is formidable because the principal target in Prasittiporn’s sight is the billionaire tycoon-turned politician Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand’s prime minister. Opinion polls indicate that Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai – TRT) party is set to be re-elected. What remains uncertain is the margin of victory.

But Prasittiporn has faith in a vibrant political force rooted in rural poverty – the Assembly of the Poor. ”We want to defeat Thai Rak Thai. That is the message the Assembly of the Poor is spreading through society,” said the slightly built activist, an advisor to the grassroots movement.

Their disenchantment rises from the government’s attitude towards the poor. ”They only promote populist programmes, not those that will make real change for rural people,” he adds.

In a room close to the historic part of the Thai capital, the Assembly’s advisors map out their election strategy below ageing photographs of Karl Marx, Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh.

The Assembly’s members say they want to awaken Thailand’s conservative and pro-rich political elite to the concerns of the poor, who as in many developing countries across Asia are shut out of participation in the political process.

And these voices matter internationally and will be brought forth at the World Social Forum (WSF), which will be held in Porto Alegre, Brazil from Jan. 26 to 31. One of the aims of the WSF is to give a voice to the world’s poor and excluded sectors, and hear of their success stories.

The WSF is an annual gathering of civil society representatives, held as an alternative to the World Economic Forum, which brings together the world’s political and business elite in the Swiss resort town of Davos every year.

In Thailand, there is an urgent need to wake up the pro-rich conservative elite. For instance, the country’s 1997 constitution declares that an undergraduate degree is a prerequisite to being a member of parliament – thus excluding grassroots activists from holding office.

The Assembly of the Poor’s public actions – bringing protests to the doorsteps of parliament and the offices of politicians – have created a stir in this South-east Asian country that was under military governments for nearly 60 years after becoming a constitutional monarchy in 1932.

Looking back, activists say the Assembly’s protests since it was formed in December 1995 have succeeded in breaking down some barriers.

”It has made an enormous contribution to open the space for social justice and politics here,” Giles Ungpakorn, political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, said in an interview.

At times, the Assembly has been speaking up when ”others were not willing to do so,” he added. ”Their anger is understandable, since there are no political parties that reflect the concerns of the poor.”

This group has marked itself out as a different political animal by its composition and by its way of protest.

The Assembly of the Poor grew out of a move by farmers, rural communities and the urban poor to unite under a common banner. Overnight, these disparate groups discovered a constituency that cuts across 22 of Thailand’s 76 districts.

They work along four broad themes: seeking compensation and relevant remedies to the impact of large dams in the provinces, halting moves to evict farmers from forests, exposing health hazards at work and improving the lives of slum dwellers.

This coalition of the dispossessed then turned to awareness to gain insight about the damage caused by ‘development’ projects such as large dams. ”Training leaders in the local communities and getting documents important for campaigns are part of this,” says Nitirat Sapsomboon, an advisor to the Assembly of the Poor.

But it has been the innovative protests of this grassroots group that woke government leaders up to the new language – and power – of activism.

When clamouring for justice over the controversial Pak Mun dam in north-eastern Thailand in past years, the Assembly of the Poor built a makeshift village close to the dam to draw attention to how the impact of the project had destroyed their livelihoods and way of life.

The makeshift village as a symbol of discontentment was used subsequently in a protest held across the parliament in the Thai capital. On that occasion, the Assembly of the Poor drew close to 20,000 members to camp in this village.

These largely non-violent protests have yielded results, such as a previous government’s decision to approve a pilot project worth 600 million baht (15.56 million U.S. dollars) to promote rural agriculture that uses indigenous seeds and is less dependent on chemical fertilisers.

However, such activism has come at a price, including court cases filed against Assembly protesters and its office in the city coming under police surveillance. ”Our phones are tapped, we feel,” says 38-year-old Nitirat.

”The Assembly of the Poor plays an important role to promote the democratic process,” adds Nitirat. ”We are translating the principles of the constitution into action.”

(*These stories are part of a special series commissioned from the IPS network by the TerraViva World Social Forum 2005 edition.)