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POLITICS-THAILAND: Rural Voters Diminish Junta’s Referendum Win

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Aug 20 2007 (IPS) - Thailand’s rural voters stood up to the country’s powerful military by refusing to march in step with the junta’s drum-beat for political change at the first-ever referendum for a new constitution held here.

Voters from the country’s north-east, home to the poorest section of the electorate, delivered an emphatic ‘no’ vote in the plebiscite held on Sunday to approve the country’s 18th constitution. According to the final tallies confirmed on Monday, nearly 62 percent of those from the north-east who voted, or 4.6 million people, cast a ballot against the constitution drafted by a military-appointed committee.

This rejection echoed in other areas, too, such as the northern provinces, where 46 percent, or 2.29 million, of those who voted marked the negative box on the ballot paper. In all, some 10.2 million people, or 41.4 percent of the electorate that participated, came together as part of the ‘no’ bandwagon.

It is a number that takes the sheen off the pro-military political establishment claiming an emphatic victory at the referendum, where those who voted for the constitution accounted for 56.7 percent of the ballots cast, or an estimated 14.3 million voters.

The country’s military leaders, who came to power following a coup last September, will also have to contend with another troubling number emerging from the plebiscite. Over 19 million of this South-east Asian nation’s 44. 2 million eligible voters abstained from voting, indicating that the ‘no’ votes and those who stayed away account for nearly two-thirds of the registered voters.

‘’This is anything but a vote of confidence for the junta; it is a remarkable outcome,’’ Giles Ungpakorn, a political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, told IPS. ‘’Backing for the junta and its attempts to reorganise Thai politics does not have as wide an approval rating as the military and its supporters made it seem.’’

What is more, the slim victory margin for the junta and its military-appointed government comes after the generals used the advantage of incumbency to silence critics and the anti-constitution groups through a barrage of police, military and state-sanctioned measures. Nearly half of Thailand’s 75 provinces, majority in the north and north-east, remained under martial law; anti-junta critics were prevented from travelling to Bangkok for protest rallies; and groups that had anti-referendum material were raided by the police.

Late July saw the military-appointed parliament in Bangkok pass a law that made it a crime to obstruct the referendum, attracting a 10-year jail sentence. Among the acts considered illegal were misleading the public about the referendum to damaging ballot papers.

And to enforce the pro-referendum campaign in rural areas, among other places, the junta gave the nod for operatives from the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), a powerful arm of the military, to monitor local communities.

‘’It may have been a peaceful poll but it was not free and fair. There were many restrictions placed during the referendum campaign period,’’ Somsri Hananuntasuk, director of the Asia Network for Free Elections, said in an interview. ‘’But there was also less vote-buying this time than before.’’

The outcome of the referendum has also called into question a view that the junta had peddled after ousting twice-elected prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra from power in last year’s coup, Thailand’s 18th putsch since embarking on the road to democracy in 1932. The Council for National Security (CNS), as the junta officially calls itself, accused Thaksin of dividing the country through his political agenda and pledged to restore unity.

‘’If anything, this referendum has shown how deeply divided Thailand is today,’’ David Streckfuss, an U.S. academic specialising in Thai political culture, told IPS. ‘’The military should acknowledge that the way it approached the constitution and the referendum was as divisive as the way politics was carried out during Thaksin’s years.’’

Voters like Suchart, a 53-year-old businessman, represent the electorate the CNS is up against in Bangkok, where 792, 694 people, or 34.4 percent of those who cast the ballot, said ‘no’ to the new constitution. Those who endorsed the new charter in the Thai capital accounted for 1.4 million votes, or over 64 percent of the ballots marked.

‘’I voted ‘no’ but expect the constitution to be approved,’’ said Suchart shortly after he stepped out of a polling booth in downtown Bangkok. His reason stemmed from dissatisfaction with the military in politics.

Sunday’s referendum was the first electoral test for the CNS and for the military-appointed government led by Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont. The new charter’s approval will pave the way for a parliamentary election later this year, a fact that Surayud played upon after declaring victory in the plebiscite.

‘’We consider that this constitution has been approved by the people,’’ the prime minister said Sunday on national television. ‘’I reaffirm that the election will be held late this year. The exact date is still under consideration.’’

That future parliamentary election may deliver a further surprise to the junta and the pro-military establishment, say analysts, since it would be another occasion for the rural voters to stand apart from the more affluent parts of the country, such as Bangkok.

These rural voters, in fact, were loyal supporters of Thaksin, who is currently living in exile in London. They ensured his party won two thumping victories at consecutive general elections in 2001 and 2005. For that, they were accused of being ‘’stupid’’ and ‘’ignorant’’ by Bangkok’s political elite, editorial writers, television personalities and even by university dons after last year’s coup.

‘’Those who voted against the constitution revealed that they are highly sophisticated and are not stupid villagers as people have described them,’’ says Giles, the academic from Chulalongkorn University. ‘’There was no Thaksin to follow this time.’’