CAN TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORM PATRONAGE POLITICS?

THAILAND

By Thitinan Pongsudhirak*

The Bangkok Post-Mar 30

By the time it takes place after evident foot-dragging by relevant authorities, the next election in Thailand will be unlike its precursors. There will be new parties with new policy ideas, new vote-gathering technologies and first-time voters who came of age during Thailand’s political tension and polarisation more or less over the past two decades. At issue during the next poll is whether and to what extent Thailand’s entrenched and endemic patronage-driven and vote-buying political system has really changed. The evidence is mixed but it is plausible that a new kind of politics will emerge not directly in the next poll but in the 2020s.

To be sure, signs and signals of the old political system are rife. Of all the politicians who have been in the news, very few are new. We keep hearing from tired old names and faces from the established political parties, namely Pheu Thai and the Democrats, who just won’t go away after being part and parcel of the political crisis and prolonged malaise that has beset Thailand. In the provinces outside Bangkok, from the populous north and northeast to the southern and central regions, the ruling families and local patrons still hold sway.

In recent months, they were out to greet and meet with Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha in Sukhothai, Chon Buri, Suphan Buri and Nakhon Pathom, among other enclaves where provincial bosses reign because the inadequate and inept Thai state and bureaucrats are not able to address popular grievances. As the representative of the military’s corporate interests and conservative factions in society, Gen Prayut has made no secret of not ruling out another appointed term after the election. More Thai people are sick and tired of his government than at any time since the military coup in May 2014, but not enough are willing to stand up and stare down the military regime.

Despite new media and communication technologies, local bosses appear out on top, still calling the shots at the end of the day. When the election takes place, it looks to be like the old days. Local villages will be canvassed and mobilized to vote for candidates peddled by vote traders. Money is likely to be spent to buy votes. Those with larger financial war chests are likely to win, and find their way to parliamentary committees and lucrative ministries and departments in Bangkok to recoup their electoral investments. In due time, their corruption and graft will lead to crises and more coups. It is a familiar and vicious cycle.

It is only at a few junctures in modern Thai history that opportunities arose to break out of this cycle. In the mid-1970s new political parties emerged along ideological lines consistent with the Cold War at that time. The most salient was a banner called the “Palang Mai” or “New Force” party. It stood for egalitarianism and a welfare state, advocating a social democracy of sorts. But it was conflated with the communist camp and lumped together with leftists who were crushed by October 1976.

Another breath of fresh air in Thai politics was the Palang Dharma Party in the 1980s, headed by one-time Bangkok governor Chamlong Srimuang. Palang Dharma (Force of Buddhist Dharma) was a Bangkok-based party with progressive ideas. It was for clean government, good governance and environmental preservation against old-style money politics. Its core was a Buddhist religious movement known as “Santi Asoke”, which provided frontline foot soldiers for the party. Palang Dharma was the nearest to what would be a “Green” party in Thailand, its economic growth philosophy broadly consistent with the “sufficiency economy”.

At its height, Palang Dharma won 32 and 23 of 35 Bangkok MP seats in the March and September 1992 elections, respectively. But by the mid-1990s, the party had fizzled. Its agenda was strong and appealing to progressives but it never built party affiliation in the provinces. And it was too connected to the Chamlong Srimuang brand, unable and unwilling to groom new names and party structures.

The next major party breakthrough was Thaksin Shinawatra’s phenomenal Thai Rak Thai. Its name and his name are now seen as and feel divisive and porzing, but they were wildly popular when they rose up from the rubble of the 1997-98 economic crisis. Thai Rak Thai cobbled together old leftist intellectuals, provincial barons, sections of civil society, new capitalist groups and bureaucrats, with police and military to take over the party system. Its focus on rural constituencies and policy innovations on health care and microcredit, among other ideas, won a huge and sustained following. The party won 28 and 32 of 37 Bangkok MP seats in the 2001 and 2005 elections, not to mention huge numbers in all provincial regions save the south.

But then Thai Rak Thai kind of crashed and burned because of abuses of power, conflicts of interest and a political money machine that had spun out of control. Too much electoral power became a monopoly on power. This ultimately led to a long political crisis and turmoil that has lasted to this day, as those who lost to Thai Rak Thai have not been able to win the people’s vote and had to resort to two military coups and judicial maneuvers to take power.

Now a new party called “Anakhot Mai”, or “Future Forward”, has come out to rally. Unlike the established names, Anakhot Mai states outright that it rejects an appointed non-MP as a future prime minister. Headed by Thanathorn Jeungrungruangkit, a scion of a well-known business group, and Piyabutr Saengkanokkul, a Thammasat University law lecturer, this party has become a lightning rod for conservative groups because of its policy ideas, such as a capital gains tax, abolition of military conscription, and undoing and redoing many of the laws and policy results of the current military government, including a revamp of the 2017 constitution. Critics and detractors also accuse the party of not being loyal to the throne.

Another new banner is the “Grin Party”, aka “Firebrands”.  It wants to play the role of spoiler for conservative forces, an electoral jester, not aiming to win MP seats but moving around to make a point about change and progress. It, too, wants to do away with the new charter and opposes an outsider prime minister.

While these parties have a limited following in urban areas, mostly Bangkok, they should be encouraged. And more like them with policy ideas that address issues that matter to the public should be enticed out. It is doubtful that they will do well in numbers at the poll, but the new constitutional rules on mixed-member apportionments may well yield a handful of MPs to them to make their point, giving them limited influence on policymaking.

Yet it is plausible that the new social media technologies can qualitatively change the Thai electoral landscape. If the logic of crowd-funding, for example, can be harnessed and applied to political campaigning and vote-gathering, new parties with new ideas and fresh faces may well have a bigger chance than many think. Certainly, in the elections after the next poll, the patronage networks of the old electoral landscape cannot escape these technological changes.

Technology is a mixed bag of blessing and curse, but it generally bodes well for Thailand’s electoral politics in the longer term.

*Thitinan Pongsudhirak teaches at the Faculty of Political Science and directs the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University.

(first published in The Bangkok Post – https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1437474/can-technology-transform-patronage-politics-)