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POLITICS-THAILAND: Voters Vindicate Thaksin’s Pro-Poor Policies

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Dec 24 2007 (IPS) - Voters like Samon Somboon, a 39-year-old mother of five who makes a living collecting junk and scrap metal off the streets of Bangkok, find themselves on the side of victory. So, too, Thongdee Sungsuntia, one of the Thai capital’s many taxi drivers.

They closed ranks with the others in Thailand’s largest constituency, the urban and rural poor, to deliver unequivocal support for the People Power Party (PPP) at the first general election held since the September 2006 coup. The PPP won 228 of the 480 parliamentary seats 31 political parties were vying for at Sunday’s poll, according to unofficial results from the country’s Elections Commission (EC).

The PPP’s dominance at the election – although short of a simple majority – enables it to make the first bid at forming the next government by inviting some of the smaller parties that won seats in the lower house to form a coalition. Samak Sundaravej, a combative 72-year-old political war-horse who led the PPP, confirmed his intentions on Sunday night at the party’s eadquarters. ‘’I will be the next prime minister for sure,’’ Samak, a former governor of Bangkok, told a packed press conference.

But the party that secured the second highest number of seats, the Democrat Party, with 164, has the potential of stealing a march over the PPP if it can attract more coalition partners into its fold. The Democrats, led by the youthful-looking Abhisit Vejjajiva, recorded impressive gains in the Bangkok, the powerful political and economic centre of the country. They won 26 out of the 36 seats in the capital that were up for grabs, according to unofficial results from the EC.

This election, however, was more than a tussle for political power between the PPP, the Democrats and other smaller parties, such as Chart Thai, Peua Pandin, Ruam Jai Thai, Matchima and Pracharat. It was also a test of popular sentiment for the military junta, which grabbed power during last year’s putsch, driving out of office the twice-elected prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai – TRT) party.

During the campaign, the PPP openly identified itself with the TRT, which, together with its 111 leaders, including Thaksin, was banned from politics early this year by a special military-appointed tribunal. The PPP promised to implement the welfare policies that made the TRT popular with the country’s rural and urban poor, resulting in two thumping victories at the 2001 and 2005 parliamentary elections. Among the pro-poor initiatives were a universal healthcare programme and financial assistance to boost the grassroots economy.

‘’The results show that the military has little legitimacy in ruling the country over the past 15 months,’’ Giles Ungpakorn, a political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, told IPS. ‘’The outcome of Sunday’s poll was a rejection of last year’s coup by the largest single group in the country, which voted for the PPP.’’

Thaksin has also been vindicated by this poll, he added. ‘’It was quite clear that there is still deeply embedded support for Thaksin’s pro-poor policies. The charge made by the middle class and the rich that Thaksin had previously won by cheating has been proved otherwise.’’

A similar reality that has exposed the political divisions in this South-east Asian nation – between the middle class and richer Thais against the poor and those who identify with the marginalised – was evident in August. During that month, a new constitution drafted by a pro-military political establishment was approved in a referendum by a slender majority. Those who voted ‘no’ and abstained from that plebiscite accounted for nearly two-thirds of the 44.2 million eligible voters.

The junta and its sympathisers were hoping for a different outcome on Sunday by the steady drumbeat of messages the military leaders and the military-appointed government had inundated the public with during the past year. To counter Thaksin’s pro-poor policies, the military-appointed government gave wide publicity to the policies of ‘’sufficiency economy’’ that has been advanced by the country’s revered monarch, Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Anthems were sung and wide media publicity was given to the king’s development theory, which emphasised moderation, morality, and to live a life without greed or excessive exploitation of natural resources. Large posters asking the public to be loyal to Bhumibol, who is treated with god-like status in the country, were also put up at street corners as the election approached.

And when not wrapping itself with royal symbolism, the military regime had gone after Thaksin, a billionaire telecommunications tycoon before becoming the prime minister, for alleged acts of nepotism, corruption and the abuse of power during his over five-year term in office. Similar charges were made by the tens of thousands of Bangkok’s citizens who took to the streets in early 2006 in anti-Thaksin protests.

Voters who cast their ballots Sunday in the affluent neighbourhoods around Sukhumvit Road, in downtown Bangkok, were among those who saw eye-to-eye with the military and embraced the anti-Thaksin rhetoric. ‘’We are very worried if Thaksin comes back,’’ Pree Buranasiri, 70, an architect, said outside the polling station where he had voted.

His wife, Priya, who also cast her ballot early Sunday morning, confirmed which party they were supporters of. She greeted Abhisit, the leader of the Democrats, with red roses when he arrived to cast his ballot at the same polling station.

But in the eastern end of Bangkok, where voters like scrap-metal collector Samon live in wooden shacks along the banks of a canal, grappling with poverty was a central concern in choosing which party to elect. ‘’We have to consider our economic situation, and that is why I voted for the People Power Party,’’ she said at the entrance to her polling station, a local school. ‘’I even attended their final rally on Friday night.’’

‘’The country’s poor voted for the PPP because they felt they had been recognised as politically relevant, unlike the other political parties that took them for granted. This is how the Thai Rak Thai also succeeded,’’ David Streckfuss, a U.S. academic specialising in Thai political culture, told IPS. ‘’The elite should recognise the results, which reflect the sentiments of the poor.’’