Thailand's by-election gives coalition government a boost

Jan 12, 2009, 5:12 GMT

Bangkok - Thailand's current government received a boost from a by-election held over the weekend that has added 20 seats to a Democrat-led coalition compared with nine for the opposition, unofficial results showed Monday.

Coalition partners have won 20 of the 29 contested seats, leaving the two opposition parties - Puea Thai and Pracharaj with nine, according to the Election Commission's unofficial tally Monday.

Thais on Sunday voted in a by-election in 22 provinces and for a new governor in Bangkok.

The Democrat Party, which leads the current coalition, won seven seats in the by-election and Sukhumbhand Paribata, their candidate in Bangkok's gubernatorial race, claimed victory with more than 900,000 votes in the capital, or nearly 45 per cent of the total, compared with about 600,000 votes for his closest rival, Yuranan Pamornmontri, representing the Puea Thai opposition party.

The outcome of both elections has strengthened the Democrat Party and their coalition, which was patched together last month after the collapse of the previous government.

After the polls, the coalition is expected to hold about 260 of the 480 seats in the lower house, deemed a fairly stable majority in Thailand's crisis-prone parliamentary system.

The main question is what the Democrats will do with their stronger mandate to rule, analysts said.

'My guess is that they won't do very much,' quipped Chris Baker, a political commentator who has co-authored several books on Thai politics and the kingdom's history. 'The only real problem they have now is the economy, and they've got very few resources to deal with it,' he said.

Thailand faces huge economic challenges in 2009, when its export-led economy is expected to be hard hit by falling orders in the US, Europe and Japan as a result of financial crisis and recession in those crucial markets.

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, the leader of the Democrats, has launched a 300-billion-baht (8.6-billion-dollar) stimulus plan this year to boost employment and assure decent prices on agricultural products for Thai farmers, but the budget is deemed insufficient to deal with a steep rise in unemployment and falling incomes from exports.

The Democrats, who came in second in the December 23, 2007, polls and squeaked in to power only after the former coalition government leader - the People Power Party - was dissolved by a Constitution Court ruling last month, have consistently failed to win the support of Thailand's north-eastern provinces, which comprise about half the voting population.

The impoverished North-East has been a political bastion for former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a billionaire businessman whose populist policies won him two elections between 2001 to 2006.

Thaksin was toppled by a coup in September, 2006, but has remained a powerful behind-the-scenes player in Thai politics for the past two years.

Thailand's past two coalition governments of 2008 were both headed by Thaksin cronies - first prime minister Samak Sundaravej, a close political ally, and then prime minister Somchai Wongsawat, Thaksin's brother-in-law.

The Democrats, who had been in the opposition for the past eight years, were caught flat-footed in the face of Thaksin's populist policies that won him tremendous support among the rural poor in the North and North-East, where more than half the population reside and vote.

But Abhisit scored a publicity victory Sunday when he attended the funeral of 84-year-old Niam Panmanee in Ubon Ratchathani, 420 kilometres north-east of Bangkok, who supported him in the last election by giving him a ring as a good luck charm.

It was one of the first times that Abhisit, a 44-year-old Oxford graduate who is faulted for lacking a common touch, has resorted to such a publicity stunt.

'Everyone says he needs to get out there and be more of a public figure and he's doing it,' said Baker. 'This is important. This shows the Democrats understand they've got to play the people's role.'