Thitinan Pongsudhirak: Election shows Thailand moving into 21st century

Published on Thursday 7 July 2011 15:23

THE thunderous results of Thailand's general election on 3 July will seem familiar to anyone attuned to the political upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa.

Entrenched regimes everywhere are under pressure from information technology advances, shifting demographics, rising expectations - and the obsolescence of Cold War exigencies. In the absence of violent repression, regime survival can be achieved only through concessions, accommodation, and periodic reinvention.

With 47 million voters and turnout at 75 per cent, Thailand's latest election results pose a decisive challenge to the country's long-established regime. The Pheu Thai party - led by Yingluck Shinawatra, the youngest sister of exiled fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra - secured 265 seats in the 500-member assembly, while the ruling Democrat Party mustered just 159.

The return to power of Pheu Thai is extraordinary considering that the establishment-aligned courts dissolved the party's two previous governments, and banned scores of its leading politicians from office for five years. A similar majority of the Thai electorate voted for Thaksin's parties and their pro-poor populist platforms in January 2001, February 2005, April 2006, and December 2007, defying a military coup, a coup-induced constitution, judicial interventions, and army coercion and repression.

A vicious cycle of coups, constitutions, and elections defined Thai politics for decades: Voters were bought and sold like commodities. After elections, voters hardly ever saw or heard from their MPs, who typically went on to engage in corruption and graft in Bangkok - eventually losing legitimacy and paving the way for military coups. A new constitution and elections invariably ensued.

Challenges to the established order, anchored in the triumvirate of the military, monarchy and bureaucracy, were put down. Schoolchildren sang martial songs each morning, and Thais were more like obedient subjects than informed citizens. Dissenting views found little traction.

The rise of Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party in 2001 changed all that. The party pursued a scientific approach to elections, relied on expensive polling by foreign experts, and offered a clear agenda and strong leadership. It was the first post-Cold War party to capture the collective imagination of Thais. The voices of neglected swathes of the electorate, particularly in the rural north and north-east of the country, began to count. Vote-buying became increasingly insufficient. A bond between party and voters - based on policy - took root.

The advent of the internet made it harder for authorities to shape minds, as media sources multiplied and the resulting diffusion of information undermined the effectiveness of state propaganda.Moreover, external powers that previously turned a blind eye to coups, military dictatorships and repression now rallied around democracy and human rights.

Thailand's demographics also changed. The Cold War curriculum of induced unity and stability has no relevance for today's schoolchildren - most university students nowadays were born after the Cold War ended.

These factors fostered a new political environment, and Thaksin, a telecoms tycoon at the time, was well positioned to seize the opportunity. He overhauled the bureaucracy, delivered on his promises to the poor, mapped out an industrial strategy, and re-designed an overstretched foreign policy agenda, among other innovative measures.

However, his rule also had a dark underside, with evidence of corruption, legislated conflicts of interest, cronyism, human rights violations, and abuse of power.

But, while Thaksin did commit many infractions, his gravest "sin" was to have changed the way Thais think and behave. Some see this as usurpation; others view it as Thailand's deliverance into the 21st century.

Thaksin is best viewed as a self-serving, unwitting agent of political modernisation. It is these 21st-century dynamics and changes, plus an increasingly assertive citizenry, with which the Thai establishment must come to terms if the country is to move forward.

• Thitinan Pongsudhirak is director of the institute of security and international studies at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok