Asia-Pacific, Civil Society, Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights

Thaksin Awakens Rural Thailand

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BAAN BUA YAI, Thailand, Jul 7 2011 (IPS) - Villages like this one are nothing more than a mix of small wooden and cement houses on tree-lined lanes where people make a living growing rice or rearing cattle and pigs. Yet they are shaping the future of Thailand’s democracy and taking part in what residents call a “rural awakening”.

The general election on Jul. 3 was the latest demonstration of the power of the rural vote, when villagers of Baan Bua Yai joined forces with the millions of rice farmers living across this northeastern plateau. It was their combined political weight that chose this Southeast Asian kingdom’s new government.

And in communities IPS visited, there is no mystery about who voters credit for “opening our eyes to our political power,” as Pranom Sankak, a young mother who grows sticky rice, explained. It is former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted by the military in a 2006 coup and lives in exile to avoid a two-year jail term for corruption.

Such support for a deposed leader who is anything but a poor farmer hardly bothers the locals. A decade ago, the former billionaire telecommunications tycoon planted a new political seed in the rural expanse of Thailand, promising and delivering a slew of pro-poor policies, and continues to reap a healthy harvest.

His latest triumph at the Jul. 3 general elections saw the party of his allies, the opposition Phue Thai (For Thais), secure a comfortable majority, winning 265 seats of the 500 up for grabs. The 15.6 million registered voters in the 20 provinces of northeast Thailand were the backbone of this triumph, ensuring Phue Thai got 104 of the 126 seats contested in this region.

It was the fifth consecutive electoral triumph for pro-Thaksin parties since the 62-year-old first became prime minister in 2001. And this time, too, the Phue Thai party, led by Thaksin’s youngest sister Yingluck Shinawatra, stuck to a political formula that has proven successful at the polls since it was first unveiled by Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai), the party that Thaksin headed from 2001 till the putsch in September 2006.

Voters in the province of Khon Kaen, where Baan Bua Yai is located, were attracted by the Phue Thai party’s promise to implement a raft of welfare polices, once elected. These promises ranged from a price guarantee for rice production, easy credit for farming support services and a rise in the daily wage, to a promise to improve computer literacy for children.

“These policies appealed to many people here the way the Thai Rak Thai party’s policies for better healthcare and to improve our village economy did 10 years ago,” said Thoy Yangkam, a mother of two and a rice farmer. “We know that to get these policies we had to vote for Phue Thai.

“This voting style is different from before, when we voted for the local politicians who promised to build a road before the polls but then ran away and got lost in parliament and did nothing after the election,” she added, as she walked through her village. “The election system for us has changed. Voting for the party with the best policies is more important than voting for the local candidate.”

Local councilman Nopporn Pitisuwanrat considers such views part of a “rural awakening”, since it is heralding a belief among rural voters that they could play a pivotal role in shaping the direction of national affairs.

“Voters in Isaan (as the northeast is also known) never felt this way in the past. They had come to accept that only the people in Bangkok had the power to choose governments,” he said over a meal of rice and spicy bamboo shoots.

The steady collapse of the old political order here – where the local candidate with his or her patronage system had reigned supreme – is also littered with oddities. “Some people voted for local candidates even if they do not like them only because they belonged to Phue Thai,” said Nopporn. “They know that the party’s power in parliament is more important than the winning candidate’s.”

“Thaksin’s success in 2001 was the result of something radical in Thai politics at the time – promising polices that appealed to the voters and using a slick marketing campaign to get the message across,” said Thanet Aphornsuvan, a historian at Bangkok’s Thammasat University. “It marked the rise and significance of the big political party to help establish a stable two-party system.

“Rural voters began to realise the difference, since the promises made by the Thaksin administration were linked to the national system and the ministries had to implement the policies,” added Thanet. “It was a change from the past, where election campaign promises were personal and were hardly implemented because elected governments never lasted long.”

But the attempts by other political parties to replicate the policy-drive model of Thaksin’s allies have failed to make inroads in Isaan. Typical was one pushed by the Democrat Party, which led a coalition government that came to power with help from the military in December 2008.

On paper, the promise unveiled by the Bangkok-centred Democrat Party administration may have been appealing – four million farming households were registered to benefit from an income guarantee scheme to help farmers make up for losses in production. “Our surveys show more than 80 percent of farmers like the programme,” Kiat Sittheeamorn, a ranking member of the incumbent party, said before the election.

But farmers like Prapai Wanhom were hardly impressed when she discovered that not all rice farmers were covered by the policy. “Those of us who grow ‘khao niyow’ (sticky rice) were shut out from this scheme,” she retorted, referring to the grain grown by most farmers here and one that serves as a mark of cultural identity in the northeast.

“Why did they discriminate against us?” she asked. “They don’t care about people who eat sticky rice.”