THAILAND: Thaksin Won’t Go Quietly

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jun 2 2006 (IPS) - Thaksin Shinawatra is refusing fade into the night bearing the title, ‘former Thai prime minister’. His decision to stay on, with his hands firmly on the country’s levers of power, is pointing to a bruising battle in the months ahead.

Concerns about possible clashes between the opponents of Thaksin, currently caretaker prime minister, and his sympathisers are steadily making their way into the pages of the local press.

”The persisting political divide over the question of Thaksin Shinawatra’s political future is causing serious concern among several human rights advocates and academics, who fear the situation could worsen and plunge the country into deeper crisis and, possibly, explode into widespread violence,” writes Pradit Ruangdit in a commentary in Thursday’s ‘Bangkok Post’ newspaper.

”With government politicians refusing to sideline Thaksin, tensions are starting to soar again,” adds Avudh Panananda in an analysis in ‘The Nation’ newspaper also on Thursday. ”Serious damage is just around the corner.”

What lies ahead is expected to surpass the political tensions that gripped this South-east Asian country between February and April, when tens of thousands of largely middle class and upper middle class anti-Thaksin protesters from Bangkok took to the city’s streets to drive out the two-time prime minister from office. They accused Thaksin of corruption, nepotism and the abuse of power.

Analysts that IPS spoke with are reaching for dramatic expressions to capture the battle triggered by Thaksin’s decision to remain on the political stage. ”It is a titanic struggle. A grand struggle between the old order and the new order that Thaksin represents,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.

”Thaksin is the target of the opposition groups. They want to keep him out of power,” he added. ”Some of the extremists want him banished from Thai politics for good. Others want him kicked out of the country.”

A string of court cases filed by Thaksin’s opponents, open confrontations outside government institutions, politically damaging charges made by academics at seminars and open talk of a military coup are some of the elements the Thai public is being faced with.

But as a ranking member of Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai – TRT) party confirmed in an interview, the 56-year-old politician is in no hurry to quit. ”He is going to stay the course through the elections. He will be contesting it,” said Suranand Vejjajiva, a TRT parliamentarian affiliated to the prime minister’s office.

On Tuesday, the caretaker government approved plans to hold a general election on Oct. 15 – the second this year – after the Constitutional Court ruled early May to annul the results of a controversial parliamentary polls held in April. That election was ”inappropriate and unfair,” the judges declared.

Jun. 9, in fact, serves as the first of several indicators that will reveal if Thaksin will have his way politically. It is the deadline by when prospective candidates for the forthcoming poll will have to declare their membership to the party they will be representing at the elections. And the question being asked in the media and among the cognoscenti is whether the anti-Thaksin rage will compel the main factions within the TRT to break ranks and join another party.

Not likely, says Suriya Jungrungreangkit, TRT’s secretary-general. ”From the latest roll-call, all party members are present and no one wants to leave the ruling party,” he was quoted in Thursday’s ‘The Nation.’

Thai politicians are famous for breaking ranks ahead of general elections and joining contending political parties due, largely, to financial incentives they are offered to join or the likelihood of being with a winning party to profit from the financial pie that comes from being in government. Political ideology rarely plays a part.

The TRT is an example of this tradition. Thaksin, a billionaire telecommunications tycoon, founded the TRT in July 1998 and soon attracted new and old political faces, including leading men from a range of industries, by dangling financial carrots. For instance, the TRT was paying 200,000 baht (5,000 US dollars) as a ”monthly allowance” for each parliamentarian during its first term, write Duncan McCargo and Ukrist Pathmanand in their book, ‘The Thaksinisation of Thailand.’

It was during that first term, following an unprecedented victory at the January 2001 polls, that Thaksin began to reshape Thailand’s political landscape according to his vision. He was going to run the country like a business, he announced, with him as the chief executive officer (CEO).

But, while the poor who make up the majority of Thailand’s voters embraced the TRT’s policies with its slew of pro-poor economic and welfare programmes, brickbats were thrown at Thaksin by the traditional political elite in Bangkok.

The February 2005 polls were even sweeter for the TRT leader. He ended up with the largest parliamentary mandate ever recorded – winning 377 seats out of a 500-member parliament – since Thailand became a constitutional monarchy in 1932. It was a victory that saw Thaksin cross two milestones – the first Thai premier to complete a full four-year term and the first to be reelected at consecutive polls.

But if last year’s victory meant stability in a country known for unstable coalition governments to some TRT sympathisers, it was read with fear by another section of Thai voters. ”There was concern that he was going to use the election results to consolidate his power using every available means, rather than using his mandate to help strengthen democracy,” Chanida Chanyapate, deputy director of Focus on the Global South, a Bangkok-based thinktank, told IPS. ”He was more interested in building his political empire.”

She concedes, though, that the move to stop Thaksin returning as a premier for a third term is a daunting task, given that ”there has never been a party as powerful as the Thai Rak Thai in Thailand’s history and Thaksin has invested a lot to build it.” She added: ”Thaksin is the TRT.’’