Yingluck Shinawatra must keep her word on reconciliation and break it on spending
THE lesson from Thailand’s general election could not be more emphatic. Five years of strenuous attempts by the Thai establishment to destroy Thaksin Shinawatra as a political force have come to naught.
In 2006 the army pushed the democratically elected Mr Thaksin out at the end of a gun barrel. The establishment and courts hounded him into exile, confiscated his assets and twice disbanded political parties loyal to him. Despite all that, Pheu Thai, the party headed by Mr Thaksin’s telegenic younger sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, swept the board on July 3rd. Pheu Thai won a majority of the national vote, with a high turnout, securing 265 of the Parliament’s 500 seats. For good measure it swiftly announced a governing coalition with a bunch of smaller parties; the coalition now accounts for nearly 300 seats. The Democrat Party under Abhisit Vejjajiva, the outgoing prime minister, got just 159.
The fear is that such an emphatic win will reopen divisions in what not so long ago was South-East Asia’s brightest democracy. Last year’s chaos led Thailand to the brink of civil war, after 92 were killed during the army-suppressed protests by pro-Thaksin “red shirts”. It is natural to wonder about fresh divisions. Yet there are reasons to hope that Thailand has the best chance in years to start putting its divisions behind it.
There was much to object to about Mr Thaksin’s time in office. He was corrupt, and autocratic in the mould of Hugo Chávez. And never forget the extrajudicial squads he sanctioned that killed thousands of drug users and peddlers. Yet Pheu Thai’s victory underscores Mr Thaksin’s profound innovation, one that will outlive him. He transformed the old politics of local patronage into a wholesale machine spreading goodies such as universal health care and microcredit nationwide. That challenged the establishment’s notions of a perfect and deferential hierarchy, with the king at the top and the poor at the bottom as grateful recipients of occasional largesse, while the elites and the army carried on enriching themselves. On July 3rd Thais voted, yet again, against deference and hierarchy.
To begin with, the scale of Ms Yingluck’s triumph makes it very much harder for the forces of the establishment to deny her victory, through legal or extralegal manoeuvres. Mr Abhisit deserves credit for calling for elections and for accepting defeat with good grace. The army, which made a mess of governing the country after the 2006 coup, says it will stay in its barracks.
Next, the relative calm of the election campaigns underlined how very broad a swathe of the country wants to take politics from the streets and put it back in parliament. Ms Yingluck herself has often talked of reconciliation. As for the pro-royal “yellow shirts”, hotheads whose anti-Thaksin protests created the conditions for the army coup, they appear to be a busted flush. They have fallen out with their former allies in the Democrat Party, accusing them of being soft over a territorial dispute with Cambodia. Their jingoism alienated supporters among Bangkok’s middle classes. They got little kudos for boycotting the elections (see article).
Above all, Yingluck Shinawatra is not Mr Thaksin. It is true that he refers to his younger sister as his “clone”. He masterminded and bankrolled the election campaign, and his claim that he wants to retire from front-line politics is simply not credible. In office, Mr Thaksin revelled in power. Every bone in his body wants to be out before adoring crowds. But the army and perhaps the king would resist his return: indeed it could tip the country back into chaos.
So it is crucial that Ms Yingluck sticks to her promise, repeatedly made on the campaign, not to rush to grant Mr Thaksin an amnesty and bring him back. She has after all a mandate that transcends the influence of her brother. And she must remember that reconciliation is a loaded word. Red shirts have been targeted by the courts, and their media outlets shut down. They bore the brunt of the violence a year ago, even if there were armed pro-Thaksin provocateurs. Ms Yingluck must oversee the search for justice, but she will have to ensure that it does not degenerate into a witch-hunt.
Just as Ms Yingluck must stick to her promises over reconciliation, so she will have to find a way to defer many of her campaign promises to spend. These pledges helped secure her victory, but they are unaffordable. For instance, she proposes a rise in the minimum wage, to 300 baht ($10) a day. That would be hideously costly for the country, especially for small businesses in precisely the poorer regions the Thaksinites claim to embrace. When financial markets rose on news of Ms Yingluck’s victory, it must surely have been in part because they doubted she would really see the worst of her spending plans through. The Democrats had some better ideas: for instance, varying the minimum wage according to regional pay levels. Ms Yingluck should ditch her plan and embrace theirs.
It will be an early test of whether she will pursue sensible policies rather than populist ones. It will also be an indication of whether this unusual new prime minister really is the person to return Thailand to a steady path.
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