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Tuesday April 11, 4:40 PMANALYSIS - Has absent Thai PM turned the tables on his foes?BANGKOK (Reuters) - Be careful what you wish for -- you might just get it.The old adage is looking ominously prescient for the enemies of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who got much of what they wished for when he stepped aside a week ago after an embarrassing and incomplete election result. But in boycotting the snap poll that ultimately forced the telecoms billionaire from power, the opposition parties triggered a constitutional mess that now threatens the very democracy they said they were fighting to preserve. And, by stepping aside, the man who held Thailand's largest-ever majority only a year ago has put the onus on the opposition, led by the Democrats, and the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), an ad hoc anti-Thaksin street campaign, to sort it out. "The PAD and Democrats need to take a long view and see Thailand beyond Thaksin," said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a politics lecturer at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University. "But they are so fixated with extirpating Thaksin and everything he stood for that they have disregarded the overall well-being of Thai democracy and constitutional rule. "It's not over -- that's the problem. We may have only seen the end of the beginning. I wish it was the end, but I think Thaksin's standing down was only the initial phase." A roller-coaster week for the stock market tells a similar tale. The day after he quit, Bangkok's bourse jumped three percent on hopes a peaceful solution would emerge soon to end the crisis, which started seven months ago with demonstrations accusing Thaksin of corruption, cronyism and abuse of power. But after the initial euphoria, the main SET index has back-tracked as the power vacuum has become ever more plain to see. With the paralysis set to continue for months, worries about risks to economic growth are only likely to grow. The Nation newspaper, critical of Thaksin ever since he swept to power in 2001 on a platform of cheap healthcare and rural handouts, sounded a cautious note on Tuesday with a front-page headline: "Can we get out of this jam?" CONSTITUTIONAL YAWN The Democrats are demanding reform of the 1997 constitution -- the country's 16th in 74 years of on-off democracy -- before they lift their poll boycott, which left parliament with empty seats and therefore unable to convene. They argue Thaksin systematically gutted all the neutral bodies that are meant to act as checks and balances on the government, and so at the very least want a review of how the people on such commissions are selected. "There has to be a revamping of the process of selection and maybe there has to be some form of check on the way power is exercised," Democrat leader Abhisit Vejjajiva told Reuters. But for the Eton- and Oxford-educated head of the country's oldest political party, it will be a tough message to sell in the countryside, where most of Thailand's 63 million people spend more of their time worrying about putting food on the table. By-elections on April 23 are meant to plug some of the 40 gaps in parliament, but nobody expects all 500 seats to be filled by May 2, the date by which the constitution says parliament must meet. The Democrats, whose support is mainly in the south, could end up shouldering the blame, especially from the millions who see Thaksin as the first leader ever to cater to the needs and aspirations of those living beyond the bright lights of Bangkok. "Thaksin's government is no comparison to the Democrats. When Democrats were in power, all the benefits went down south," said Sitichai Buacharoen, a 42-year-old store vendor in the central province of Nakhon Pathom. "Before, nothing seemed to be getting done here," he said. Even in Thailand's far south, where anti-Thaksin sentiment is deep-rooted after two years of bloody Muslim separatist unrest, the opposition suffer from perceptions their election boycott has hindered, not helped, democracy. "The people who will suffer from this the most are the Democrats," said Bae, a social worker in his 40s from Pattani, a southern provincial capital. "They are the people who brought Thailand to a halt and have torn up democracy. People won't forget that." (Additional reporting by Chawadee Nualkhair) |
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