ANALYSIS: Thailand gears up for hot election

By Peter Janssen Apr 13, 2011, 7:52 GMT

Bangkok - This year's Songkran, Thailand's traditional New Year, which takes place at the hottest time of the year, finds Bangkok a cooler place than it was a year ago.

Last Songkran, normally a time of family reunions and water fights among youths, Bangkok was swarming with thousands of anti-government protesters demanding that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva dissolve parliament and call new elections.

On April 10, 2010, the protesters clashed with the army sent in to remove them from their demonstration site near the historic centre of Bangkok.

By the time the demonstrations had been crushed on May 19, at least 91 people were dead and at least 2,000 injured in the worst street violence Bangkok had witnessed in two decades.

But after this year's New Year celebrations, which run Wednesday through Friday, the protesters are to get what they were asking for, a general election.

Abhisit, leader of the Democrat Party, has promised to dissolve parliament in early May, paving the way for polls in either late June or early July.

The election promises to be a showdown between the Democrats and the Puea Thai opposition party, whose de-facto leader is former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime mover behind last year's protests.

Abhisit has billed the polls as a chance for Thailand to move beyond the political crisis that has deeply divided the country.

'Do they want a government that will continue to put their interests first or do they want people who are still tied to one person's interests and won't allow the Thai people to move beyond it?' he asked recently.

Thaksin remains a political force to be dealt with.

The former billionaire telecommunications tycoon and his Thai Rak Thai party came to power in 2001 on a populist platform that included low-cost health care for the poor, monetary handouts to each village and debt write-offs for farmers.

The policies and their swift implementation secured Thaksin a two-term premiership, but in September 2006 he was ousted in a bloodless military coup, accused of corruption and undermining democratic institutions.

The Democrat-led government has launched its own populist policies during its 28 months in power, including a 15-year free education programme; a price guarantee scheme for producers of rice, corn and tapioca and a social security system, potentially covering 20 million people.

If they return to power after the polls, the Democrats have promised to push through an asset tax, which might help address the huge income gap between Thailand's rich and poor.

Whether their pro-poor policies are enough to win votes away from Puea Thai, basically a reincarnation of Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai, depends a lot on how the opposition plays its cards in the coming weeks.

'If they are clever, they will concentrate on economic issues instead of political issues,' said Chaturon Chaisaeng, a former Thai Rak Thai leader. 'It is in economic issues that the Puea Thai party have an advantage because people believe the party is better at solving economic problems than the Democrats.'

Much will depend on the party's choice of a prime minister candidate.

Thaksin, who has been living in exile since 2008 to avoid a two-year jail sentence on an abuse-of-power conviction, has indicated that he would like the slot to be filled by his sister Yinluck, 44.

Her candidacy would send a clear message to Thaksin's political foes that he intends to use a Puea Thai victory to achieve his private goals, a return to Thailand and an amnesty.

The military, which has staged 18 coups over the past seven decades including the one that toppled Thaksin, has indicated where it stands on the upcoming election.

'I believe that if all 60 million Thais come out to cast their votes, they can change the country,' the army's commander-in-chief, General Prayuth Chan-ocha, said Tuesday, urging people 'to punish the instigators of last year's riots through the ballot boxes.'

Puea Thai politicians have threatened to unleash the protesters again if there is any sign of military interference in the general election, dim prospects for a peaceful post-polling period.

'The next government will have a difficult task: to try to bring back a peaceful Thailand as we used to have,' said Phongthep Thepkanchana, another former Thai Rak Thai member.

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