THAILAND: Violence Feared as Poll Campaign Begins

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Aug 25 2006 (IPS) - An alleged plot to kill Thailand’s caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has set the tone for a bitter exchange between pro and anti-government groups as campaigning officially began, Thursday, for general elections scheduled Oct. 15.

The discovery of bomb-making material in the boot of a car close to Thaksin’s residence came days after scuffles – that drew blood -between the premier’s critics and his sympathisers at two major shopping malls in Bangkok.

”This (attempted violence) is unprecedented during general election campaigns. It is very serious,” Gen. Saiyud Kerdphol, a former Thai military supreme commander, who currently heads an independent election monitoring group, said in an IPS interview.

Other analysts expect more outbursts, including charges and counter-charges of violence, because of the depth of anger that has spread across a sharply divided national constituency. ”This time the political stakes are the highest ever, with Thaksin’s life now in question,” Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, told IPS. ”The violence will be more organised.”

On Friday, the defence minister in the caretaker government added another group to a list of those who have been campaigning to throw Thaksin off this South-east Asian nation’s political stage. ”There is a movement to bring the government to collapse and to kill the government’s leader,” Gen. Thammarak Isarangkun told the press.

Thaksin elaborated on who the alleged perpetrators could be. ”There are three to four military officers involved in the assassination plot. Some of them are retired,” the AFP news agency quoted Thaksin as having said. ”We know which group made (the bomb).”

This revelation comes on the heels of a new group being formed this week by university lecturers, activists, businessmen and students to raise the tempo against the prime minister. This group calls itself the Civil Society Network to Stop the Thaksin System.

For most of this year, however, the anti-Thaksin drive has been spearheaded by the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD). Its arrival on the scene in February put Thaksin, who had governed the country since the beginning of 2001, under intense political pressure. That was achieved through endless street campaigns and public demonstrations, some of which drew 100,000 protesters, in Bangkok.

But with Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai – TRT) party still in power, and the second parliamentary election for this year due in October, the PAD has decided to trade the virtues of mass demonstrations for a more confrontational approach.” (The PAD) has changed its strategy from organising mass rallies to using small groups of members to shout and curse Thaksin when he appears in public,” reports ‘The Nation’ newspaper in its Thursday edition.

”With this new ‘attacking’ style, the PAD has made the deliberate decision to create the impression that confrontation is unavoidable,” the English-language daily adds. ”Fears have arisen that the growing tension between Thaksin loyalists and their rivals could spread nationwide during campaigning, resulting in uncontrollable violence.”

Violence during previous elections had often been about local disputes between candidates or their supporters in rural areas or at provincial polls. They had included voter intimidation, harassment, killing of citizens appointed to canvass for votes and killing of candidates in the fray.

There have also been bloody showdowns between military dictators and students protesting for more democracy in 1973, 1976 and 1992. ”What we have now is a combination not witnessed before, of an election campaign and bitter political confrontation blended into one,” Michael Nelson, a German academic who has written extensively on Thai politics, told IPS. ”Such national level violence in the context of an election is unusual.”

The prospect of more political violence is in keeping with the climate of tension that has dominated Thailand since the PAD took to the streets, accusing Thaksin of alleged corruption, nepotism and abuse of power. The TRT’s response, to call for a snap parliamentary poll on Apr. 2, proved counter-productive. The main opposition parties boycotted the ballot, questioning its credibility. Then in May, the constitutional court nullified the results of that poll, which had been called three years ahead of schedule.

By July, the increasing disputes between Thaksin and his opponents, which largely includes middle and upper-middle class sections of Bangkok and ranking members of the army, burst to the surface with reports about a possible military coup in the making. Such a move to get rid of an elected prime minister was welcomed by some sections of the anti-Thaksin lobby, including the local press.

Thaksin, who was a billionaire telecom tycoon before becoming the country’s leader, has been able to withstand the political heat generated in the Thai capital due to the massive support he enjoys from the majority of the country’s voters, the rural poor. It was this electorate that helped him lead his TRT party to win successive parliamentary polls in January 2001 and February 2005 with unprecedented majorities.

This rural support base has been built on the pro-poor initiatives that the TRT has implemented since 2001. They include a debt moratorium for rural farmers, new financial schemes to develop the grassroots economy and a cheap universal healthcare package.

”Thaksin’s opponents are getting increasingly desperate and frustrated that he has stayed on and they are afraid that he will win over 300 seats (in the 500-member parliament) again,” says Nelson. ”If that happens, it will be more difficult for his opponents to tell the people that elections are bad and Thaksin has to go.”