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Southeast Asia

Jan 27, 2005

Power of the poor sweeps Thai streets
By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK - Prasittiporn Kan-Onsri has spent long hours plotting to shake up Thailand's political establishment. D-Day for the 38-year-old activist is February 6, when the country goes to the polls to elect a new parliament.

But the task at hand is formidable because the principal target in Prasittiporn's sight is the billionaire tycoon-turned-politician Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand's prime minister. Opinion polls indicate that Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai or TRT) party is set to be re-elected. All that remains uncertain is the margin of victory.

Yet Prasittiporn has faith in a vibrant political force rooted in rural poverty - the Assembly of the Poor. "We want to defeat Thai Rak Thai. That is the message the Assembly of the Poor is spreading through society," said the slightly built activist, an adviser to the grassroots movement.

The group's disenchantment arises from the government's attitude toward the poor. "They only promote populist programs, not those that will make real change for rural people," Prasittiporn said.

In a room close to the historic part of the Thai capital, the Assembly's advisers map out their election strategy below aging photographs of Karl Marx, Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh. The Assembly's members say they want to awaken Thailand's conservative and pro-rich political elite to the concerns of the poor, who, as in many developing countries across Asia, are shut out of participation in the political process.

These voices currently are being brought forth at the World Social Forum (WSF), which began on Wednesday and will continue until Monday in Porto Alegre, Brazil. One of the aims of the WSF is to give a voice to the world's poor and excluded sectors, and hear of to their success stories.

The WSF is an annual gathering of civil-society representatives, held as an alternative to the World Economic Forum, which brings together the world's political and business elite in the Swiss resort town of Davos every year.

In Thailand, there is an urgent need to wake up the pro-rich conservative elite. For instance, the country's 1997 constitution declares that an undergraduate degree is a prerequisite to being a member of parliament - thus excluding grassroots activists from holding office.

The Assembly of the Poor's public actions - bringing protests to the doorsteps of parliament and the offices of politicians - have created a stir in this Southeast Asian country, which was under military governments for nearly 60 years after becoming a constitutional monarchy in 1932.

Looking back, activists say the Assembly's protests since it was formed in December 1995 have succeeded in breaking down some barriers.

"It has made an enormous contribution to open the space for social justice and politics here," Giles Ungpakorn, political scientist at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, said in an interview.

At times, the Assembly has been speaking up when "others were not willing to do so", he said. "Their anger is understandable, since there are no political parties that reflect the concerns of the poor." This group has marked itself out as a different political animal by its composition and its way of protest.

The Assembly of the Poor grew out of a move by farmers, rural communities and the urban poor to unite under a common banner. Overnight these disparate groups discovered a constituency that cuts across 22 of Thailand's 76 districts.

This coalition of the dispossessed then turned to awareness to gain insight about the damage caused by "development" projects such as large dams. "Training leaders in the local communities and getting documents important for campaigns are part of this," said Nitirat Sapsomboon, an adviser to the Assembly of the Poor.

The Assembly works to achieve four broad themes: seeking compensation and relevant remedies to the impact of large dams in the provinces, halting moves to evict farmers from forests, exposing health hazards at work and improving the lives of slum dwellers. But it has been the innovative protests of this grassroots group that woke government leaders up to the new language - and power - of activism.

When clamoring for justice over the controversial Pak Mun Dam in northeastern Thailand in past years, the Assembly of the Poor built a makeshift village close to the dam to draw attention to how the project had destroyed villagers' livelihoods and way of life.

The makeshift village as a symbol of discontentment was used subsequently in a protest held before the parliament in Bangkok. On that occasion, the Assembly of the Poor drew close to 20,000 members to camp in this village.

These largely non-violent protests have yielded results, such as a previous government's decision to approve a pilot project worth 600 million baht (US$15.56 million) to promote rural agriculture that uses indigenous seeds and is less dependent on chemical fertilizers.

But such activism has come at a price: court cases have been filed against Assembly protesters and its office in Bangkok has coming under police surveillance. "Our phones are tapped, we feel," said Assembly adviser Nitirat.

"The Assembly of the Poor plays an important role to promote the democratic process," Nitirat said. "We are translating the principles of the constitution into action."

(Inter Press Service)

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