Thailand democratic but shaky after
vote By Shawn W Crispin
BANGKOK - Thailand is back on a democratic
track after 15 months of military rule. Yet
despite successfully holding new general
elections, where over 70% of eligible voters cast
their ballots, the politically plagued country is
most likely primed for more instability in the
year ahead.
The People’s Power Party
(PPP), the reincarnation of ousted prime minister
Thaksin Shinawatra’s once dominant and later
dissolved Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party, easily won
Sunday’s highly
anticipated polls, but could
still conceivably lose the battle to form the next
coalition government.
According to
preliminary results, PPP won 228 out of a total
480 parliamentary seats, 13 short of an outright
majority and a sharp fall from the 377 of 500
seats the Thaksin-led TRT garnered at the 2005
elections. PPP party leader Samak Sundaravej told
reporters that the result guaranteed he will
assume the premiership of a PPP-led government,
though its not clear which if any of the five
small- and medium-sized parties which received
votes would be willing to join forces with his
party.
The runner-up Democrat Party won a
better-than-expected 166 seats and party leader
Abhisit Vejjajiva has so far not ruled out trying
to cobble together a coalition government with
other parties that secured votes, including the
next runner up, Chat Thai Party, and fourth placed
Pua Pandin, which respectively notched 39 and 26
seats, according to unofficial results.
Despite the poll results and international
press reports which have universally portrayed the
vote as democratic vindication for Thaksin over
the military coup-makers that removed him from
power and later disbanded his TRT political party,
there is still plenty of motivation and room for
maneuver for powerful invisible forces - including
the military’s and royal privy council’s hidden
hands - to keep the PPP from entering government.
Accusations are already flying. PPP party
advisor and former TRT government spokesman
Jakrapob Penkair said that he received information
that both Chat Thai and Pua Pandin party leaders
met discreetly on Sunday with Privy Council
president Prem Tinsulalonda, widely accused of
masterminding last year’s coup, at his private
residence while votes were still being tallied.
It’s still unclear if the meeting actually took
place, but the allegation represents the latest
PPP complaint that the military and Prem were
working behind the scenes to undermine the
pro-Thaksin party.
What is certain is that
the negotiations and horse-trading towards forming
the next government have already begun in earnest.
The local press reported that Samak had planned to
meet with potential coalition partners on Monday
at a Bangkok hotel, but that the meeting was for
undisclosed reasons cancelled. The Chat Thai
party, former prime minister Banharn Silapa-archa,
has been mum on his intentions, saying only that
his party would remain joined with Pua Pandin,
either in government or in the opposition.
It still seems more likely that Chat Thai,
which previously stood in opposition to the
TRT-led government, and Pua Pandin, which includes
a large number of former TRT party members and
senior advisors who for various reasons decided to
break away from Thaksin, will opt to join forces
with the Democrats. There are already murmurs of a
potential grand bargain whereby Banharn would
emerge as a compromise prime minister inside a
four- or five-party coalition, while the Democrats
controlled the major economic and finance
portfolios and Abhisit assumed the post of
parliament speaker rather than premier.
The three smaller parties which won seats,
Ruam Jai Thai Chat Pattana with 11, Matchima
Tippitai with seven, and Pracharaj with four
seats, could hypothetically in combination give
the PPP the numbers needed to get over the 241
seat majority hump - but the latter two parties
are known to be strongly anti-Thaksin and appeared
at least on the hustings predisposed against
joining with the PPP.
PPP-polarized For all the hopes
that the restoration of democracy would help
achieve national reconciliation, the election
results indicated a nation still badly polarized
on pro- and anti-Thaksin lines. Both the PPP and
Democrats outperformed initial pollster
expectations, which had predicted a PPP win but
with considerably fewer than the 228 votes that it
actually received. The PPP placed strongly in the
country’s north and northeastern regions, winning
respectively 59% and 71% of the popular vote.
The Democrats, meanwhile, swept their
traditional stronghold, the less populated,
southern region, as well as Bangkok, where last
year’s coup was embraced by the middle classes.
The two parties virtually tied in the rice-growing
central region, where initial results published on
The Nation website showed both parties receiving
5.65 million votes, with the PPP edging the
Democrats by less than 800 votes. They also were
in a dead heat for the 80 proportionate seats,
where 10 seats were up for grabs on party lines
across eight different geographical zones.
Those figures paint a more complicated
picture of voting behaviors than the simplistic
mainstream media analysis that grass roots voters
almost universally favor the PPP, while
urban-based constituencies prefer the Democrats.
Rather than divided sharply on class lines, the
country is more clearly divided on regional ones,
where well-entrenched political machines and
popular local personalities appeal to their
respective grass roots and often poor
constituencies.
To be sure, despite the US
government’s note of congratulations to Thailand
for holding “free and fair” elections, the polls
were riddled with irregularities. The PPP overcame
tall hurdles to win the elections, including the
military’s maintaining martial law in several of
the northeastern provinces where the PPP’s support
was known to run strongest and a new election
system designed to dilute the power of big
parties. Despite several reports of grass roots
level intimidation and harassment, as well as
bombshell revelations about a secret military plot
to undermine the party on the campaign trail, PPP
still won resoundingly in the pivotal north and
northeastern regions.
At the same time,
the military, which did not formally back any
particular party or candidates at the polls, and
in the end honored its vow to restore democracy
within one year after seizing power, was only the
symbolic loser at the polls. Regardless of whether
the PPP or Democrats form the next government, the
next administration is expected to be weak and
subjected to frequent factional infighting -
similar historically to the short-lived democratic
regimes the military has moved to topple.
For now, Council for National Security
junta chairman Air Chief Marshal Chalit Phukpasuk
and army commander-in-chief Gen Anupong Paochinda
have both ruled out another coup, even if the PPP
rather than the Democrats eventually form the next
government. Samak repeated his pledge on Sunday
during an interview with CNN to roll back the
military ruling on May 30 that legally disbanded
TRT and banned from politics for five years 111 of
the party’s senior executives, including Thaksin.
He has already scheduled February 14 as the day
for the exiled former premier to return to
Thailand to answer criminal charges brought
against him by the coup-makers.
Because
the military-appointed National Legislative
Assembly (NLA) automatically becomes the new
Senate after the democratically elected lower
house is installed, a PPP-led government will
likely find it difficult to ram through any
constitutional amendments, including any attempt
to roll back the new charter’s provision which
gives amnesty to the coup-makers and their
appointees.
Moreover, the NLA
controversially passed a new internal security act
two days before the election, which gives the
military sweeping new powers to contain domestic
dissent, including curbs on government officials
and the right to detain suspected threats to
national security for six months without trial.
Whether the top brass despite PPP’s election win
still deem Thaksin and his banned political party
members a threat to internal security is yet
another question the December 23 polls
resoundingly failed to answer.
Shawn W
Crispin is Asia Times Online’s Southeast Asia
Editor. He may be reached at swcrispin@atimes.com.
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road,
Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
