BANGKOK: When Thais go to the polls on Sunday, they will be doing more than endorsing candidates in a snap parliamentary election. Their ballots will attest how much faith this country has in a key pillar of its young democracy —- the electoral exercise itself. Such a test of the general election, being held three years ahead of schedule, is only one of the many odd features of the most controversial parliamentary poll ever held in this South-east Asian country.
The legitimacy of the incumbent government, led by caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, hangs on the size of the voter turnout. A mark of how desperate the ruling Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai-TRT) party is, to ensure mass participation, is visible in the over a month-long campaign mounted in the local media.
Full-page advertisements in most newspapers across the country say: “One vote will decide the future of Thailand. Please go to the election on April 2. Thailand has come so far, so we will not step back.”
In previous elections, by contrast, TRT advertisements carried a clear message on why the electorate should vote for its policies. Newspaper advertisements were also released by the country’s opposition groups, such as the Democrat party, the Chart Thai party and the Mahachon party.
“The advertisements by the TRT is an added feature in this election, because voter turnout is an issue,” Giles Ungpakorn, political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, told IPS.
“If there is a large turnout and if the Thai Rak Thai wins convincingly, then they will have legitimacy to govern.” But the most important feature lies in the ballots themselves. They carry a box on which voters can indicate whether they are satisfied or not with the slate of candidates and resort to a ‘no vote’.
“This was introduced on the ballot paper in the early 1990s to give the voter another choice, rather than making the ballot invalid,” Gotham Arya, former head of the Election Commission and currently a respected conflict-resolution advocate, told IPS. “The current constitution also endorses this option.”
The case for a “no vote” has been one of the messages that an increasingly large number of anti-government critics in Bangkok have been pushing for, ever since Thaksin announced, late February, that he was calling a snap poll to counter attacks against his administration. His critics have also been demanding that Thaksin resign rather than call elections.
By the end of this week, the two-month long campaign of the anti-government chorus, led by the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), had succeeded in bringing parts of Bangkok to a standstill with their protests, some of which have attracted over 100,000 largely middle-class citizens.
To convince the electorate that the Thaksin administration had to be defeated, through the ‘no vote’, the PAD has levelled a litany of charges against Thaksin, including alleged corruption, nepotism, suppression of press freedom and undermining independent institutions.
What may hurt Thaksin and the TRT is the tax-free sale, revealed in January, of Shin Corp, a telecommunication conglomerate owned by the Shinawatra family, to Temasek, the investment arm of the Singapore government, for 1.88 billion US dollars.
The ‘no vote’ option gains importance from the decision by the three main opposition parties to boycott the poll to deny it legitimacy. A snap poll, senior members of the Democrat party told the media, will not resolve the problems of corruption and conflict-of-interest linked to the TRT party.
Consequently, the certainty of who will win on Sunday is no more an issue. The powerful TRT — which won with a thumping majority at the February 2005 parliamentary election, as it did when it first came to power in the January 2001 poll — is running uncontested in as many as constituencies. The sole challenge is coming from small, little-known parties. Yet, to begin its third consecutive term in office, the TRT has to ensure that all 400 seats of the 500-member parliament, that will be decided through the first-past-the post system, attracted a minimum 20 per cent of the registered voters in each constituency.
Failure to meet this requirement will mean that the new parliament will not be able to sit and elect a new prime minister. According to Thai law, a full house, including the 100 seats of parliamentarians elected on a proportional representation system, is needed for the new term to begin.
The prospect of this unprecedented political nightmare loomed up in the run-up to the polls, after the election commission disqualified about a third of the 941 candidates who had sought to run.
For Thaksin, a billionaire before becoming premier, the uncertain political landscape is a far cry from that which prevailed a year ago.
His party had secured 19 million votes at the February 2005 elections, earning 377 seats. But then there was no question about a low voter turnout, and over 60 per cent of the electorate cast their ballots. It was a triumph that reflected wide support, particularly in the provinces, where the country’s majority, the rural poor, live. They had benefited from the TRT’s pro-poor policies and from other economic initiatives that had helped boost growth.
If Sunday’s election sees a large turnout, endorsing the legitimacy of the snap poll, then the burden will shift to the opposition parties and the PAD, says Giles. “To ignore such a response by the people will raise questions about the democratic credentials of the PAD and the opposition parties.”—Dawn/IPS News Service
