Thai Politics 101: political parties

7 October 1996

Just now you might believe that all Thai political parties are the same. Politicians are whizzing from party to party. Some for ambition. Some for revenge. Some allegedly for money. Some maybe just for a change of scene. If the boundaries between them are so flimsy, are Thai political parties really different?

Yes they are. Behind the blur of shifting allegiances, there is some kind of structure. It has been gradually taking shape over the last few years. In the special conditions of this election, it is rapidly becoming more clearly defined.

Picture Thai politics as a triangle. Each side represents a distinct and powerful tradition. In this election, more than ever before, each side is fairly well aligned to a single party or party group.

The first tradition comes down from Thailand’s half century of government by soldiers and bureaucrats. In that period, the rulers argued that government was best left to professionals. Since 1947, coup-makers have justified their actions in terms of this tradition. Over the last twenty years, officials have had to share that power with elected MPs. But many still believe that bureaucratic rule is more suitable for Thailand. And many non-officials have been persuaded by the long history of conservative propaganda.

Since the d้bโcle of 1991-2, the military is understandably reluctant to try another coup. The tradition is now carried on by politicians who have entered parliament in order to restrict and retard the shift of power from official to politician. General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh has gradually emerged as the torch-bearer of this tradition. This is not just because he is a military man himself. There are ex-soldiers in all the parties. Rather it is because he has actively defended military-bureaucratic power. As Minister of Interior under Chuan, he blocked decentralization and democratization of local government. As Minister of Defence, he sheltered the military heads from budget scrutiny. For this election, he has headlined the New Aspiration Party’s programme as the kind of top-down paternalism which is part of the bureaucratic tradition. At core, Chavalit and New Aspiration stand for politics as a coup by other means.

The second side of the triangle stands for politics as a business. For the last decade, this side has been dominated by the Chart Thai party. Provincial businessmen found they could dominate the franchise by one means or another. They treated the parliamentary system as a marketplace for contracts, favours, commissions, kickbacks, deals. Of course, all Thai parties have played politics this way to some extent. But Chart Thai has played politics this way and this way only. It has shown little interest in legislation. The only significant measure considered by the Banharn government was constitutional reform, which was driven from outside parliament, and which Chart Thai consistently tried to sabotage.

Chart Thai has also never acquired any expertise in economic management. The party has never produced a capable finance minister. After 20 years in politics, Banharn had not learned the Thai word for inflation. So busy squabbling over the golden eggs, Chart Thai members never found out you have to feed and tend the goose that lays them.

In the world of politics as business, all the players are competitors with one another. So on this side of the triangle, unity is an elusive thing. Chart Thai has always been a loose alliance of competing factions. Since 1992, family feuding and political opportunism split off the Chart Patthana offshoot. Over recent years, Social Action has come to function more and more like another faction of Chart Thai. Now the Chart Patthana, Social Action and the remains of Banharn’s Chart Thai are grouped on this side of the triangle - locked together in love and hate.

The third side of the triangle stands for change; the belief that things should get better than this; a distaste for both paternalism and money politics; a hope that Thai democracy will become cleaner, more efficient, more truly representative. The core of support lies in what is loosely called the middle class - more exactly, the small and medium businessmen, professionals, and white-collar workers of urban Thailand.

This side of the triangle sees the most rapid turnover. People invest a promising party with their own expectations. Then they trash it when the party inevitably fails to deliver. The latest of these cycles has spun round the Palang Dharma party. At first, Chamlong Srimuang’s ascetic air and anti-corruption campaigns seemed to promise a more moral politics. Later Taksin’s technology promised to replace Chamlong’s ethics as a beacon of progress. But the PDP has suffered the fate of playing second fiddle in a Chart Thai led orchestra. Is not Taksin just as much involved in the marketplace of contracts and favours as the Chart Thai men? Perhaps the only difference is that he does it more elegantly? Presenting Chart Thai’s Somboon Rahong with an 8-billion baht car transformed Palang Dharma (Moral Power) into Palang Daimler (Motor Power). The party is in ruins.

Of all the parties, the Democrats are the most long-standing and the most complex. Viewed at different times and from different angles, the party can seem to fit on any one of the triangle’s sides. Deep down it has a strong paternalist streak: the party originated among royalists; Chuan felt he had to adopt bureaucrat manners to gain political acceptance. With its own share of loggers, gravel-pit owners and land speculators, the party in power has been vulnerable to accusations of playing money politics. But over the long haul, the Democrats have stood for reform. In opposition, the party easily slips into the role of the agent of a cleaner and better politics. Chuan staked out this position with his speech on the day Banharn took power ("not one satang"). And through the two no-confidence debates, the party has changed the role of the opposition as a check on the abuse of power. And has paraded a string of nice, smart, presentable, educated, polite - in short, promising young politicians. As Palang Dharma has gone down with Chart Thai, jumping ship too late to avoid the undertow, the Democrats have taken up residence on the third side.

Of course this image of a triangle is a bit too neat. In fact the centre is still a blancmange of politicians with wobbly allegiances. Some are stuck in "wrong" parties for reasons of local convenience. Some prefer to have a smaller party which can bargain with any coalition maker. Some will simply move for short-term gain. Snoh Tienthong hugged Kamnan Bo on one day, and General Chavalit on the next.

But even this is changing. The convention that the biggest party gets to head the coalition is driving big parties to gobble up the little ones. At the March 1992 election, the little parties accounted for almost half the seats. In the 1995 election, this was down to under a quarter. This time, the number will be sharply reduced again. Nam Thai has already disappeared. Seritham and Ekkaparp are disappearing. Palang Dharma is likely to suffer a decline. So too may Prachakorn Thai. Muan Chon may be reduced to a lonely fiefdom.

But still, you can argue, even these "big" parties are pretty ephemeral. None has much of an organisation. All seek election by much the same means. All will publish much the same manifesto.

But looked at from another angle, the differences between the parties are much larger than their policy menus. They represent very different ideas on how Thailand’s fledgling parliamentary system should develop. Which one comes to dominate the next coalition will have a big effect on how the country is run.

Under New Aspiration we can expect some all-round tightening of controls; a resurgence of military hubris and bureaucratic arrogance; some tighter management of the economy; and some token efforts to spread wealth a bit wider. But we would pay for this with a veteran’s bank, a military satellite, and more excitement over telecommunications and other infrastructure. Under a Chart Thai/Pattana regime, it will simply be business as usual. Under the Democrats, we can expect more ambitious management of the economy; and some faltering attempts to take on the big issues of land, education, employment. But we would have to accept the tension which always arises when reform attempts evoke conflicting aspirations. And we would probably find many skeletons still rattling around in the Democrats’ cupboards.