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2 ASIA
HAND 'Third force' parties to determine
polls By Shawn W Crispin
BANGKOK - Thailand's transition from
military to democratic rule is firmly on track, as
the highly anticipated December 23 general
election nears and the military coup-makers fade
into the political background. Seven main
political parties are on the hustings and neither
the front-running People's Power Party (PPP) nor
the close-trailing Democrat Party is expected to
win an outright majority.
A military
tribunal's decision on May 30 to disband former premier
Thaksin Shinawatra's
once-dominant Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party and ban
its top 111 members from politics for five years
has fundamentally changed Thailand's electoral
landscape, the main result being the revived
bargaining power of middling and small political
parties, akin to the politically unstable era of
politics seen in the 1990s.
Both the
front-running People's Power Party (PPP), the new
incarnation of Thaksin's TRT, and the conservative
Democrats, which served in the political
opposition for TRT's six years in power, have
sworn against joining forces with the other,
meaning the makeup of the next coalition
government will likely be determined by which can
strike an alliance with two main middling parties,
Chat Thai (Thai Nation) and Pua Pandin (Motherland
Party). Both have referred to themselves as "third
force" parties, which if the pollsters have it
right, will be major swing factors in the next
government's formation.
The poll results
will almost certainly result in a dizzyingly
complicated numbers game, in the end producing a
weak coalition government at perpetual risk of
factional defections that could bring on its
demise. Recent voter opinion polls show PPP
leading the race, on pace to win somewhere between
180 and 200 of the total 480 parliamentary seats
up for grabs. According to the same surveys, the
Democrats are primed to be the first runner-up,
garnering anywhere between 120 and 140 seats,
including nearly all of the 54 seats in the
country's southern region.
Chat Thai and
Pua Pandin, meanwhile, are provisionally expected
to win somewhere between 60 and 70 seats each,
with the former placing strongly in the central
regions and the latter cutting into the former
TRT's stronghold in the pivotal northeast region,
which accounts for 130 seats. A smattering of
smaller parties - namely Matchima Tippatai,
Pracharaj and Ruam Jai Thai Chat Pattana - is each
expected to win somewhere between 10 and 20 seats,
with the first two parties' leaders strongly
opposed to Thaksin and therefore unlikely to join
any PPP-led coalition.
Applying those
rough estimates, Chat Thai and Pua Pandin will be
exceptionally important in determining which of
the top two vote-getting political parties is able
to form and lead the next government. The
Democrats have already indicated that they would
be willing to form a ruling coalition, excluding
PPP, even if they are the election runner up. PPP
leader Samak Sundaravej has publicly criticized
that stance, arguing that the top vote-getting
party should assume power.
According to
some political insiders, PPP has failed despite
frequent advances to win the assurances of Chat
Thai or Pua Pandin - of which PPP would apparently
need at least one to achieve a majority - that
they would be willing to join a PPP-led coalition
government. Both Chat Thai and Pua Pandin party
executives have maintained that they remain
politically neutral, and would only be willing to
join a government that aims to return Thailand to
political normalcy after nearly three years of
confrontation between pro- and anti-Thaksin
interest groups.
Leanings and
loyalties It's a relatively safe bet that
Chat Thai, which before last year's military coup
stood firmly in opposition to Thaksin's TRT, would
likely commit its elected MPs to a Democrat-led
government. A senior Democrat party executive, who
requested anonymity, told Asia Times Online that
the two sides already had a confidential agreement
to that affect, but have not gone public with
their alliance due to fears it could erode Chat
Thai's grassroots support in certain hotly
contested constituencies.
Unlike most
other political parties, which are pandering to
rural constituencies with various hues of populist
promises, Chat Thai is running a more
old-fashioned campaign, relying largely on the
weight of party leader Banharn Silapa-archa's
still strong name recognition in the country's
central rice-growing heartland. The party's main
vow has been to work towards national
reconciliation and a return to political normalcy.
Banharn, a former prime minister and
favorite whipping boy of the local press, has
through his former firm opposition to Thaksin's
rule won favor in the same royalist circles that
during his 1995-96 premiership frowned upon on his
lack of formal schooling and pedigree as a
provincial power-broker. The machine politician
has since rehabilitated his image to something
approaching national statesman and his name has
been bandied about as a potential compromise prime
minister in a broad-based ruling coalition where
the Democrats control the main economic
portfolios.
The bigger political question
surrounds the newly formed Pua Pandin party,
though initial indications are that it too would
opt to
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