There were no real surprises in yesterday’s Thai election. Just as the polls predicted, the Puea Thai party has won a comfortable victory and its leader Yingluck Shinawatra will become Thailand’s first female prime minister. Incumbent Abhisit Vejjajiva conceded defeat overnight, wishing Yingluck well and saying his Democrat Party was ready to go into opposition.
Preliminary figures, with more than 95% of the vote counted, put Puea Thai at 44.6% of the vote for 262 seats, against 32.6% and 160 seats for the Democrats. That’s not quite as big a win as the exit polls said, but it will still give Yingluck an absolute majority in the 500-seat parliament.
Yingluck has indicated that she wants to govern in coalition, and has promised talks with smaller parties — including some that had defected to the Democrat-led government only under military pressure. Her patron and elder brother, former leader Thaksin Shinawatra, also supported coalition, saying Puea Thai should “first concentrate on national reconciliation”.
Despite coups, bloodshed and political upheaval, Thai voting behavior has been shown to be remarkably consistent. Thaksin’s party, under its different names, has now won four elections in succession. Each time its strength has been in the same place: the rural northern half of the country, and especially the north-east, Thailand’s poorest region, where Puea Thai this time won 101 seats to just five for the Democrats.
The Democrats are strong in Bangkok and even more so in the south, where Puea Thai won no seats at all. But Yingluck’s party was competitive in Bangkok, finishing only 2% behind the Democrats, although winning significantly fewer seats.
In addition to the 375 constituency seats, a further 125 are allocated by proportional representation. That helps a few minor parties to get some representation, but it makes almost no difference to the relative position of the majors — the country is large and diverse enough to iron out the unfairnesses of single-member districts.
In light of the events of the past five years, this was a more peaceful and orderly election than Thailand had any right to expect. Considerable credit should go to prime minister Abhisit, who despite taking power as a result of military intervention seems to have done his best to rebuild democracy, even at the cost of his own political fortunes.
Today everyone is talking down the threat of violence and promising co-operation. Even General Sonthi, who led the coup against Thaksin in 2006 but has now turned to politics, called for reconciliation and said the “people’s voice must be respected”.
But there remains a deep undercurrent of uncertainty. The mostly anti-Thaksin Nation congratulated Yingluck in somewhat grudging fashion this morning and editorialised that her party “must learn from the past and exercise its legitimacy in a way that can take Thailand out of the years-old and sometimes violent crisis.”
Meanwhile the pro-Thaksin Bangkok Post was running a reader poll asking “Do you think political violence will occur after the election?” Latest figures were 51.9% yes, 30.1% no, and 18% for “depends on the new government”.
More than that, though, it depends on the reactions of the Thai royalist and military establishment. Their efforts to tell voters how they should think have again been repudiated. But if Thaksin really is the corrupt puppet-master that they claim, voters will see through him in the end: in the meantime, if their country is to have a chance at stability they have to accept the verdict of the electorate.
Strangely positive first day since the result. Let’s see if she can be less corrupt than her brother. And hopefully she really will work towards genuine reconciliation.
Why is it in any way inevitable that voters will see through Thaksin? It’s a largely empty journalistic bromide to suggest that there is some inherent virtue of “democracy”, admitting no variations based on media concentration, the rule of law and civil institutions (to name a few important things), which can produce a reliable and meaningful verdict on the functioning of the polis.
The truth is that both Puea Thai and its predecessor Thai-Rak-Thai achieved their popular support amongst the rural poor with blatant bribery, corruption and graft. It’s not even open to debate. I’m mean, they literally go around offering indigent Thais on the fringe of society cattle for votes. Why would it be even remotely surprising that Thaksin could keep popular with this segment of the populace, especially when he controls most of the media.
The failure of the Western media generally, including nominally progressive journalists, to examine Thai politics removed from the business imperatives which drive our trade relations, and this lazy fallacy of the middle moral equivocation between the two sides is frankly astonishing to me. Where is the solidarity with just about every educated Thai in Bangkok who could see Thaksin for who he was?
@William – look, I don’t disagree with you about Thaksin. But what’s your alternative? Permanent military rule isn’t going to make things any better – on past experience it’ll make them a lot worse – and Thaksin’s now twice managed to win elections under constitutions basically written by the establishment. You’re right about the importance of the rule of law, but it seems to me you’ll never get that to be respected unless elected governments are allowed to govern. My confidence that voters eventually see through crooked demagogues is bases on my reading of the history of democracy – it doesn’t work perfectly, but it works better than any other filtering mechanism we’ve been able to devise.
BTW, that link I provided to the provisional results no longer works; you can now see the full results here, complete with map: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/special/election/
William; you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Under Thaksin, rural poverty was cut dramatically, Thailand’s inequality (as measured by gini coefficient) decreased for the first time in ~20 years, and levels of corruption actually dropped (according to Transparancy International). TRT and PT didn’t achieve their support with “blatant bribery” – they achieved their support by offering poor thais what we in the west have mostly had since WWII, the basic elements of a welfare state, namely, affordable health care and financial support for the poor. The rage in Bangkok comes from those who have traditionally won the rural vote with precisely the kinds of vote-buying you accuse Thaksin of. They are outraged because Thaksin has permanently raised the price of the rural vote; you now actually have to offer the poor pro-poor policies, not just cash on election day. Shocking, I know.
Furthermore, Thaksin does not control most of the media – you seem to be confusing him with Rupert Murdoch. Almost all Thailand’s TV stations are technically owned by the military. Somchai, the head of the Yellow shirts, is a major media magnate himself, who owns newspapers, radio stations and tv programs. The Nation has always been virulently anti-Thaksin and the Bangkok Post has equivocated. As for your “educated Thais” who “saw Thaksin for what he was”, I was there when the wave of approval from all levels of society – from “the institution” on down – was supporting Thaksin in his “war on drugs” and his “stamping out muslim terrorism”. It was only when Thaksin clashed with “the institution” that these suddenly became evidence of wrongdoing.
I’m not defending the pre-Thaksin status quo, the coup and certainly not the traditional elites record of helping the poor, so that’s mostly irrelevant. I’m questioning the credulous equivocating tone that goes into so much of Western reporting on the strong rural support for Thaksin. And, yes, it is well established that TRT have bribed countless indigent voters with cattle.
And you’re also completely wrong about Bangkok vote. Talk to any average upper-to-middle class family in Bangkok, such as anyone associated with the major universities, and they all despise Thaksin and have big concerns about the fate of the Monarchy when the King dies and his poorly regarded brother is next in line. Perhaps it isn’t common knowledge without ex-pat communities, but that’s the reality.