Bangkok - This month's two by-election wins for Thailand's
Puea Thai opposition party have demonstrated, once again, the staying
power of fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Puea Thai candidates in Sakhon Nakhorn and Si Sa Ket provinces
won landslide victories over their rivals in votes held June 21 and
Sunday, respectively.
The Puea Thai party is a reincarnation of the People Power Party,
disbanded in December, which was a reincarnation of the Thai Rak Thai
party - Thaksin's original party whose pro-poor populist policies
clinched him a dual-term premiership from 2001 to 2006.
The Thai Rak Thai was disbanded by a constitutional tribunal
ruling in May 2007 when Thaksin and 110 of his party executives were
also banned from politics for five years.
The ban has not stopped Thaksin, who has lived in self-imposed
exile since August, from being a central figure in the political
chaos that has engulfed Thailand over the past two years.
The victories of the pro-Thaksin party in the by-elections were
the latest proof of Thaksin's ongoing popularity, at least among
Thailand's poor.
Both Sakhon Nakhorn and Si Sa Ket are in Thailand's north-east,
also known as Isaan, a political stronghold of Thaksin and his Thai
Rak Thai remnants. It is Thailand's poorest region and home to nearly
half the Thai population, on which Thaksin's popularity has been
built.
'What these by-elections tell us is that in this part of the
north-east, which has been rock solid for Thaksin all the way
through, nothing has changed,' said Chris Baker, the co-author of
Thaksin - The Business of Politics in Thailand.
That is both good news and bad news for the stability of
Thailand's Democrat-led coalition government.
The Democrats did not field candidates in the by-elections, but
their coalition partners, the Bhumjaithai and Chart Thai Pattana
parties, did.
Prior to the by-elections outcome, the Bhumjaithai was looking
well-positioned to attract politicians away from Puea Thai, which
holds 198 out of 480 seats in the lower house of parliament.
The by-elections were slated as a popularity test between Thaksin
and Newin Chidchob, a classic provincial patron and the de-facto
leader of the Bhumjaithai party, who was a former close ally of
Thaksin.
It was Newin's defection from the Thaksin camp that allowed the
establishment of a Democrat-led coalition government in December with
Democrat chief Abhisit Vejjajiva as prime minister.
The Bhumjaithai defeat in Sakhon Nakhorn might have undermined
Newin's efforts to attract Puea Thai defectors in parliament to his
own party, observers said.
'The results from the Sakhon Nakhorn and Si Sa Ket by-elections
are going to make MPs who want to defect to the Democrats,
Bhumjaithai or Chart Thai Pattana think twice,' said Thitinan
Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn
University.
Although a general election is not necessary for another two and a
half years, it was widely anticipated that one would be held by early
next year at the latest.
In the short term, the by-election outcomes might have
strengthened the resolve of the current coalition government to stop
its internal bickering and try to stay in power as long as possible.
But in the long term, the by-elections are bad omens for another
Democrat-led coalition government in a post-general election period.
The most likely post-polls scenario is a victory by the
pro-Thaksin Puea Thai.
'The by-elections outcome shows that the Thaksin phenomenon is
alive and well despite the setback from the April riots,' Thitinan
said.
In April, Thaksin supporters disrupted a regional summit of
South-East Asian leaders in Pattaya, Thailand, forcing Abhisit to
cancel the event. They then took their anti-government demonstration
to Bangkok, where street riots led to an army crackdown.
Thaksin was blamed for inciting his supporters to violent unrest,
damaging the country's fragile stability, undermining its
international image and deepening the political divide between his
supporters and the Bangkok-based political elite.
As the by-elections have demonstrated, that divide remains.
The polarization is not going away,' Baker said. 'If anything,
it's getting worse.'
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