Global IssuesPOLITICS: Thailand's Poor Discover Vote Power
Prateep Ungsongtham recalls a vastly different mood a decade ago when she tested the political pulse of the urban poor living in Klong Toey, Bangkok’s largest slum.
''They were not interested in their rights. It was always difficult to make them aware and engage them in political conversation,’’ says Prateep, a woman in her mid-50s who grew up in Klong Toey’s sprawl and has spent all her life there as a social worker, earning her the name, ‘Slum Angel.’
‘’They thought they were second or third-class citizens and had accepted that position for a long time,’’ adds Prateep, who has also served one term as a senator following the first ever elections to the upper house in 2001. ‘’They accepted being ignored because they were poor. So they made few demands of the people who ruled.’’
But in recent months, Prateep has to turn away people from Klong Toey who come to seek her views about the political direction Thailand is taking, even alerting her about developments she had missed. ‘’This has never happened before. The poor have become more educated about politics, about why they have been deprived,’’ she told IPS.
‘’The most important thing is that they have understood the democratic system, that their vote is as equal as the rich, that they have dignity,’’ Prateep said. ‘’The poor are aware of their status and that with their votes they can change the political system.’’
Such a political awakening among Thais who live on the margins of this kingdom, with its many feudal trappings, is also being documented by academics monitoring the new enthusiasm for politics among the rural poor in agriculture belts in the north and north-east Thailand.
‘’There are many people’s movements gradually emerging in villages that are changing the way voters relate to the MPs (members of parliament),’’ says Worapol Promigabutr, associate professor of sociology at Bangkok’s Thammasat University. ‘’Earlier, they just followed the MPs, accepting his actions. They also thought they were under the military and the civil servants and could not do anything.’’
‘’Now they are making more demands on the MPs,’’ he told IPS. ‘’Village heads are under pressure to meet MPs from the north-east if they betray the promises made to the voters. The poor there have discovered that their vote means something.’’
‘’This kind of thinking among the poor is revolutionary and new to Thai democracy,’’ he explained. ‘’It is a period of transition we are witnessing as part of becoming a real democracy.’’
And this emerging mental shift among Thailand’s downtrodden millions is being credited to Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister who is a reviled figure among the country’s right-wing, royalist elite circles in Bangkok.
Thaksin was ousted in a military coup in September 2006, the country’s 18th putsch, and is now living in exile to escape a string of court cases for his alleged corrupt dealings while in power. He has been already slapped with a two-year jail sentence for abusing his power as the prime minister during the five-and-a half-year period of his administration, which began in 2001.
By the time of his ouster, however, Thaksin had sown the seeds of a new political culture that gave the poor in this country of 65 million a greater role in determining their economic fortunes.
If his party, Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai or TRT), was voted in, Thaksin pledged to implement a raft of pro-poor policies. They included affordable universal healthcare and finance schemes to build a grassroots economy.
The new power that the country’s largest constituency discovered even struck some unlikely allies of Thaksin, a billionaire telecommunication tycoon who had come to symbolise the ‘’new capitalists’’ of Thailand’s booming economy in the 1990s.
‘’With the coming of the Thai Rak Thai party, poorer voters felt for the first time that their votes mattered to elect governments and who should rule the country,’’ says Surachai Sae Dan, a leading member of the banned Communist Party of Thailand (CPT).
‘’This was a change from the old political patronage system controlled by the elites,’’ Surachai, who spent 16 years in jail for his left-wing politics, said during an interview. ‘’The votes of the poor didn’t matter before. They were given assistance that the elites thought was good for the poor. There was no political bargaining.’’
The intervention of the military, supported by the conservative elites, in shaping Thai politics through 2007 only deepened the view among the rural and urban poor about the value of their vote. ‘’People felt that their votes had been stolen from them,’’ says Giles Ungpakorn, a political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulaongkorn University. ‘’This confirmed their growing awareness about the power of their vote.’’
And the street campaigns launched this year by an ultra-nationalist, right-wing royalist movement to bring down the government elected at a December 2007 poll to succeed the TRT, now banned, only raised the level of political awareness among the poor.
Attacks by the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), the right-wing movement, levelled at the poor, condemning them as stupid and lacking education and intelligence to vote did not help. The PAD had also wants to roll back voter rights by pushing for a parliament with 70 percent appointed legislators.
The PAD’s strident campaigns have, ironically, added to the poor voters’ faith in their ballots and in electoral democracy. ‘’The PAD has pushed the poor in this new direction. They are more enthusiastic about their votes as a reaction to the PAD’s rallies,’’ Giles told IPS. ‘’The PAD has helped to undermine the old patron-client relationship of Thai politics.’’
Visible signs of this burst to the surface during the public rallies held by a growing mass movement, where speakers condemned military intervention and called for the rights of voters. Saturday marked the latest show of strength, where a crowd of 50,000 people, drawn from the urban and rural poor, filled a sports stadium in Bangkok.
And Thaksin, who gained notoriety for his human rights violations while in power, has become the icon of this movement. On Dec. 13, a leading speaker at the rally screamed into the microphone: ‘’Thaksin is a symbol of democracy we can fight for.’’
To which the crowd roared back: ‘’Fight! Fight! Fight!’’
© Inter Press Service (2008) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service