Politicians in love

16 October 2000

The manoeuvre is new and a bit tricky. The giver performs a wai, hunches over, and throws himself at the receiver’s chest. As automatic response, the receiver extends a protective arm across the giver’s shoulders. The result is not quite a full Russian bear-hug or Latino cheek-kiss. But it has become the Thai politician’s way of declaring love.

With so much romance in the political air, these clinches have become a regular sight. Prachuab Chaiyasarn performed a beautiful version when joining the Seritham Party. He then repeated the act with the leader of the Chat Phattana party he was leaving. Love comes in many forms, few of them undying. The Chat Thai party may not be doing so well in this political love-fest because of a technical difficulty. Newin Chidchob had to fold himself in two to execute the manoeuvre with Banharn.

This hugging is new, and is just one signal of how much is changing in Thai politics. Since the last election, a lot has happened. A new constitution has rewritten the rules. Four years have passed - the first time a parliament has ever run the distance. An economic crisis has destroyed fortunes and stirred up emotions. The only honest prediction about the coming election result is that nobody has the faintest idea. In times of such uncertainty, people cling to one another.

Politicians are falling in love, not just with one another but with the farmer too. They fear the old electoral methods won’t work any more. They know the farmers are fed up. They think they can be easily courted. The Thai Rak Thai party has a sign on every street corner in the country announcing “3-year debt moratorium for small farmers, change the production structure, fund to strengthen the community economy”. Chat Thai is promising to “reform the countryside, reduce the country’s problems”. The Rassadorn party has a TV ad showing a group of political dinosaurs play-acting as populists before a vast rustic crowd. The Democrats and Thai Rak Thai have televised party conventions, with the camera tracking through an audience decked out in mo hom shirts and pakoma. As long as the camera tracks fast enough, you miss the glazed looks, stifled yawns, and mechanical clapping. This sort of love is new and needs time getting used to.

Lots of politicians have flocked to the party of love, Thai Rak Thai. Love in Thai politics might appear very fickle and fleeting. Passions flare and fade. Liaisons flourish and sour. Parties wax and wane like the inconstant moon. But over the 1990s, a deeper pattern has emerged. On one side: the Democrats. On the other: the rest. Of course, when it comes to romantic rituals like forming a cabinet coalition, then practical considerations overwhelm the dictates of the heart. But when the announcement of an election signals a festival of free love, then deeper passion rises to the surface.

Behind this division between the Democrats and the rest, there’s a social reality. The Democrats are rooted in the capital city and in the southern region with its economy of port towns, plantations, and tourism. They are more outward-looking. They see their future bound up with Thailand’s modern, outward-oriented economy.

The rest are rooted in the other regions (north, northeast, centre) with their economy of peasant agriculture and local market towns. Their horizons are more local.

The economic crisis has given this division a new dimension. The Democrats were hoisted into power to save the modern economy. They became the good pupils of the IMF, and the local agents of globalisation. The opposition to the Democrats has gathered among those who had less interest in globalisation, but who got hurt by the crisis all the same.

The party of love started out as the party of modernity (think new, act new). But over the last year, it has been transformed into the party of anti-globalisation. Its name is softly nationalist. Its programme appeals directly to the small businessmen and farmers who got thumped by a crisis which they did not cause and which they cannot understand. Its support base is now in the north, northeast and centre. As an organisation, Thai Rak Thai is the love child of Samakkhitham 1992, Chat Thai 1995, and New Aspiration 1996. But it differs from these predecessors in one important way. It has a programme. It has for the first time made party policy into an electoral issue. Its agenda may seem a bit rickety, but its theme has great romantic force: Thais should love other Thais more than they love foreign investors.

But first loves are always the strongest and most enduring. Despite all the bear hugs and rustic crushes, deep down politicians are in love with money. Some love schemes that translate political power into profit. In the south they seem to have redefined cooperative to mean a machine for translating big corporations’ love for a minister into contracts for his brother, and patronage for his constituents. Other politicians love their money so much they cannot let it go. The constitution allows politicians to park their assets in a trust while they hold political office. But Thaksin has not taken this option. Perhaps he fears people will not love him so much if he is not so liquidly rich.

Because of this, the election which initially looked like a romantic epic is slowly dissolving into a horror story. One by one, the Democrats are being struck down. But most of them refuse to die. They rise up from the grave and stumble towards polling day like a band of ghosts. Meanwhile Thaksin has created his party like Frankenstein, collecting bits of old bodies and binding them together with welds and wire. But just as this ghastly creation is about to lurch into life, the National Corruption Commission threatens to remove its leader, cut off its head.

Coming soon to a polling station near you: Zombies vs. the Headless Monster.