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In Thailand, a czar is
born
BANGKOK - In what will
certainly be an unprecedented landslide vote, Thai
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's Thai Rak Thai
party appears to have won the lion's share of
seats in the country's parliament, allowing it to
lead a single-party government, avoid
parliamentary censure and amend the country's
constitution. According to exit poll results, the
party's tally from the constituency and party-list
elections will surpass 350 seats in the 500-seat
House of Representatives.
That Thaksin and
his Thai Rak Thai (Thais love Thai or TRT) would
win power was virtually guaranteed, even before
voters went to the polls on Sunday. The only
question was how many seats the TRT would sweep.
Thaksin had hoped to win 400 - a number many
observers claimed was a bit too ambitious. But
according to preliminary results, he may come
close to meeting that goal.
The TRT's
final mandate from the election, in which voter
turnout was as high as 80%, will be officially
announced next week. With more than half the votes
counted, the Election Commission projected that
the TRT had captured 374 seats, while the rival
Democrat party managed to win only 91, nearly all
of them in the southern provinces. In its election
debut in 2001, the TRT won 248 seats.
In
terms of Thai politics, TRT's sweep of two-thirds
of the House seats is a record on two fronts: it
marks the first time a prime minister has
completed his full four-year term and received a
second mandate to carry on in office; it is also
the first time in Thai history that a political
party has been able to govern the country on a
one-party basis.
The party's huge
electoral margin has made all other parties
virtually obsolete. The Suan Dusit exit poll
predicts that the TRT will have more than double
the number of parliamentarians as the opposition
Democrats, Mahachon and Chart Thai parties put
together.
Thaksin has said single-party
rule would ensure a more stable government, and
indeed his previous administration proved that he
was capable of bringing stability to the country.
But his critics say stability isn't everything,
adding that a single-party government could drive
Thailand to become even more authoritarian.
According to Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a
political science professor at Chulalongkorn
University in Bangkok, the country's future is
being "gambled away" through one-party rule. "We
have never been at this juncture before. It is a
paradox - when people voted for stability, they
gave TRT an overwhelming majority that now there
are no checks and balances," Thitinan told Inter
Press Service.
A minimum of 325 seats is
needed to block opponents from censuring the
Thaksin government and its policies in parliament,
while 350 are needed to amend the constitution.
"It took three uprisings in 1973, 1976 and
1992 to get a full-fledged democracy, and with the
support of more than 350 votes Thaksin can undo
every constitutional provision," Anek Laothamatas,
leader of the opposition Mahachon party told
reporters. "TRT's dominance will certainly lead
the country into a dark age," he added.
Thaksin, meanwhile, has denied claims that
his landslide mandate will be an end to democracy
in the country. "I'm all ears to the voices of the
people. The government will open its doors to
everyone," the Bangkok Post reported Thaksin as
saying.
Observers say it was Thaksin's
successful populist policies and practical
solutions to grassroots problems that gave TRT the
leading edge. They say Thaksin's strong showing at
Sunday's national election was due to the seal of
approval given to him by Thais who were willing to
overlook his authoritarian ways in exchange for
greater stability and economic growth.
In
Bangkok, a traditional Democrat party stronghold,
TRT will likely sweep 34 of the 37 seats
available, while the Democrats may only manage
to hang on to two of the nine seats it won in
the 2001 election. According to Sukhum
Chaloeysup, dean of Rajabhat University Suan Dusit and
the director of the Suan Dusit poll, TRT emerged a
favorite among Bangkok voters because other
parties failed to provide any credible
alternative.
The Democrats' campaign to
grab 201 House seats, thus ensuring that the
opposition would have the necessary numbers to
censure the prime minister in the legislature, did
not register with voters because Thaksin and his
party were better able to convince them that a
balance of power might disrupt the work of the
government, Sukhum told the Bangkok Post.
It should be noted that censure motions
are a traditional feature of Thai politics, but
beyond the opportunity for charges and
counter-charges to fly in parliament, no
government has ever lost a censure motion.
The Democrats' poor performance was
baffling to party leader Banyat Bantadtan, who
said he would resign as leader if the party failed
to hang on to 100 House seats.
One of
Thailand's richest men, Thaksin was first elected
in 2001 when the country was still in the throes
of the fallout form the 1997 Asian financial
crisis. He rose to favor based largely on economic
policies that helped stimulate the lackluster
economy: cash payouts to villagers to initiate
grassroots projects; relaxed lending schemes for
consumers; debt relief for farmers; low-cost
health care for the poor and increased lending by
state-controlled banks. Over the past four years
he has managed to gain popularity by keeping his
election promises. Buoyed by a global economic
recovery, Thailand's growth rate in 2004 was 6%.
"I voted for Thaksin and his Thai Rak Thai
because he has made the country prosperous," said
motorcycle taxi-driver Komsak Thienthong. "In
1997, we in Thailand suffered - business was so
bad and most shops had to shut. But look at us
now. We are prospering," Komsak told IPS.
But according to some observers, the next
four years will not be as easy. Thaksin now faces
obstacles such as bird flu, a Muslim insurgency in
the south of the country and rising oil prices
that could prove much more difficult for his
administration to handle. He has already been
subject to severe criticism regarding his handling
of the war on drugs in 2003 and a military
crackdown that lead to the deaths of more than 80
Muslim protesters in April.
According to a
report in the Bangkok Post, Thaksin said poverty
eradication was high on his agenda and he
reiterated the need to partially privatize state
enterprises. He also pledged to expedite the
implementation of a new economic policy by
restructuring the economy. Economic reform would
have top priority, Thaksin said.
The
engine of Thailand's economic growth over the next
four years will be the government's intended
post-re-election investment of more than 1
trillion baht (US$26 billion) in upgrading the
country's infrastructure, including mass-transit
systems and railway lines. Thaksin has also
pledged to underwrite new power plants and improve
logistics to reduce transport costs.
As
for his gvovernment, Thaksin said half of the new
cabinet would come from the party list and the
other half would be composed of outsiders,
according to a Bangkok Post report. The changes
within his cabinet, he added, would be
progressive, "not a 180-degree turn".
Yet
some see the advent of a one-party government in
Thailand as anything but a progression. "Thailand
has gone from being a beacon of freedom and
respect for human rights in the region to being a
country of high concern," said Brad Adams, Asia
director for the New York- based Human Rights
Watch, in a statement on the eve of Sunday's
polls. "Much of the steady progress Thailand had
made in the last decade has been rolled back under
Thaksin's tenure."
(Inter Press Service) |
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