the situation in Thailand
Uniting or Dividing?: Thais call for Thaksin Shinawatra to Step Down as PM
by Ellen Roggemann
While the call for Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to leave office in Thailand is uniting sex-workers with middle-class businessmen, the political situation is also increasing the appearance of a divide between the interests of the central elite and the rural poor.
Since Tuesday, March 14th, demonstrators have camped outside the government house in Bangkok declaring their commitment to continue until Shinawatra steps down as Prime Minister. On the weekends, the numbers of protestors swell to between 50,000 (police estimate) and 300,000 (organizer estimate) people. Those involved, including the major opposition parties, are boycotting the snap election Shinawatra called for April 2nd. They want him to step down so that criminal investigations into massive corruption and
misdeeds in government can begin. The charges include a tax-free $1.9 billion sale of shares in his family's telecommunications company, ShinCorp,to a Singaporean company, Temasek.
The anti-Thaksin campaign, led by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), has gained support from consumer interest groups, businessmen, academics, religious leaders, grassroots organizations, workers unions, government officials, and media personalities.
Meanwhile Thaksin has been drumming up support in the rural areas of the North and Northeast, with rallies drawing crowds of 50,000 people. Members of the Caravan of the Poor, a group of pro-Thaksin farmers, walked or drove their tractors down to Bangkok, a trip that took some twenty days to complete, to show their dedicated approval of the PM.
Thus, the political crisis appears to be one between middle-class Bangkokians and the rural poor. As Hataikarn Ponnarat, a 27-year-old attending a Thaksin rally in the Northern Province of Chang Rai, said to AsiaNews, "What the protesters are doing in Bangkok is not good for the country... many people here hate the people in Bangkok. They think we're lowly educated and that we're stupid because we're not graduates of their good universities. But you should remember that most Thais are poor people
in the countryside."
However, grievances over Thaksin's policies are long-standing and held by a range of groups representing different interests. Farmer's rights organizations and networks of people living with HIV/AIDS oppose a proposed Thai-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA). International human rights organizations, such as the United Nations and Human Rights Watch, have blasted Thaksin for the extrajudicial killing of over 2,500 people in his "war on drugs."
"Grassroots [organizations] were first to protest Thaksin. We have protested him for a long time before all of this," says Bamrung Bunpanya advisor to the Non-Governmental Organization Coordinating Committee on Rural Development in the Northeast (NGO-Cord), a network group that supports people's organizing in the country's poorest areas.
Although the main rallying points of the anti-Thaksin camp, corporate corruption, cronyism, and tax evasion, are issues that directly impact poverty, many grassroots organizations are having a difficult time joining the cry for Thaksin's removal. Thaksin's populist policies have earned support among rural and urban poor.
If the goal of enacting these policies was to build electoral support when the middle-class showed increasing disapproval of Thaksin, as critics claim, then the policies have proved quite effective. In the 2001 election, Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party received 60% of the vote, due in large part to solid support in the countryside, where 70% of Thais live. Before Thaksin announced the dissolution of the Parliament to prepare for the April 2nd election, TRT held 377 of the 500 seats in parliament.
However, Thaksin's critics point out, these policies have been ineffective at solving poverty. Surveys completed by the National Health Security Office at the end of 2004 found that the scheme assuring 30 baht of free health care for all Thai citizens is riddled with management and budget problems. Doctors and health experts say that the hundreds of state hospitals, especially those in rural areas, are running out of money because of the underfunded program.
Another hallmark Thaksin program gives approximately $23,000 to each village in Thailand through a revolving loan program meant to create projects jump-starting the rural economy. According to the national Statistical Office of Thailand, the amount of debt for agriculture in the Northeastern
and Northern Regions, where approximately half of the population is involved in agriculture, increased by 54% and 63% respectively from 1998 to 2003. A survey found that funds were not used for the projects detailed on application forms, but instead were spent on goods such as mobile phones, electrical appliances and motorcycles. When loans could not be repaid, villagers borrowed from local moneylenders at higher interest rates.
As reported in the english-language Thai newspaper The Nation, "The Thaksin government knows very well that people at the grassroots aren't familiar with running a business...Money distributed through the populist policies ends up being spent on mobile phones, phone cards, motorcycles, pickup trucks and consumer items. The rich or top-bracket earners stand to benefit from such grassroots consumption because they control most of these businesses."
These policies' failure to reduce poverty, Thaksin's opponents say, show that populist policies have become a new way for the TRT party to buy votes.
Bamrung says that Thaksin's resulting popularity is then cemented by the favorable coverage being disseminated by media outlets controlled by Thaksin himself.
"Information in rural areas comes from satellite programs on radio and television owned by Thaksin. [Critical] information is more available to the middle-class...than the rural," he says.
Until the deal with Thamasek, Shinawatra's family owned the only privately owned television station in Thailand, iTV. Last year, twenty three journalists were fired at iTV after standing up in defense of editorial independence.
Meanwhile, Thaksin has been accused of keeping dissenting views at bay on the remaining state-run television stations by using advertising money and government contracts to reward or punish stations. The Thai Journalist Association report that the police special branch has sent warning letters
to TV and radio programs critical of Thaksin and his cabinet. This intimidation tactic is one of the 18 cases of abuse and interference with print and broadcast media recorded by the association. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that Thai media has "worsened markedly" since Thaksin's election, citing an increase in criminal and civil defamation charges against journalists (some with the largest damage claims for libel in the world), politically motivated media takeovers, and intimidation of
community radio stations.
One of the main organizers of the anti-Thaksin movement, Sondhi Limthongkul, is a media personality whose TV program, notoriously critical of the Thai government, was taken off the air last summer.
"[So, the pro-Thaksin anti-Thaksin polarization] can be seen as a debate between people who consume Thaksin information and those who consume other information," Bamrung says.
Whether based on a real conflict of interest or fabricated by political manipulation, the urban-rural polarization is expected to be reflected at the polls on April 2nd. The major opposition parties have
boycotted the elections and are urging people to check "no vote" on their ballots. Thaksin's party, running unopposed in almost all precincts, predicts a victory that, they say, will serve as a "fresh mandate."
Meanwhile, both sides are positing themselves as the protectors of democracy. Thaksin continues to believe that electoral party politics will solve the current crisis even as the limited number of eligible candidates is expected to leave the parliament one MP short of being able to reconvene.
Protestors and grassroots organizations say that they are fighting for "people politics." They claim that as a leader Thaksin has eroded democracy by corrupting the system of checks and balances set up under the country's progressive constitution. He has, they say, created a "do nothing" National Elections Commission, failed to reconvene the National Counter Corruption Commission, halted the creation of a National Broadcast Commission, and refused to accept reports of the National Human Rights Commission. He has also, they allege, tailored policies to suit his family's businesses, citing the relaxation of regulations and licensing fees on credit cards, aviation, and telecommunications.
"The protests show that the people are trying to control the government. They are changing the political culture of our country. [Participating in politics] is the duty of the people all of the time, not only 'four years go vote,'" says Suntaree Hattee Sengking, chairperson of NGO-Cord.
And with protests on Saturday drawing a crowd of 300,000 Thais from Bangkok, the South, the North, and the Northeast, the call for a more participatory democracy appears to be coming from both sides of the seeming social divide.