Published on May 08, 2005

The government has been pushing its electoral mandate to the limit in recent months

All of a sudden, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s landslide election victory in February seems like a distant memory. If there was a honeymoon this time around, it wasn’t noticeable. His choice of Cabinet members belied his great poll triumph and sent the first waves of disillusionment crashing on the political landscape. Then came the bribery scandal involving the new international airport. And hot on its heels of that story were fresh allegations that MPs had been abusing Government Lottery Office (GLO) donations and an uproar among the Thai business community regarding the free-trade agreement negotiations with Japan.

On other fronts, the media – both here and abroad – have decried this administration’s attitude towards press freedom. Rumours persist about how politics has interfered with the fierce competition in the telecom sector, in which Thaksin’s family business empire has a major stake. The deep South is still burning, with the Songkhla bomb attacks signalling the higher level of the terrorist threat the Kingdom faces. Economic projections are being downgraded virtually every week, and warnings of a major downturn are getting louder. The dubious decision to raise the diesel price immediately after the election proved highly unpopular. And unity within the faction-laden ruling Thai Rak Thai party has become rare.

These are political factors that could easily turn Thaksin’s overwhelming parliamentary strength into a liability. People want a strong and stable government when things are going well. However, when corruption charges surface virtually every day, and it looks like there is nothing anyone can do to stop them, the public’s tolerance is strained to its limits. This makes the airport bribery scandal a major test, for if the prime minister tries to sweep everything under the carpet, the already widespread sense of despair over the plague of graft could turn into anger.

Voters naturally want to see their country prosper and grow in strength and stability in proportion with the political party that leads it. The problem with the Thai Rak Thai is that the “gap” between its fortunes and those of the public is threatening to widen. Populist approaches, effective political marketing, a strong economy and the impressive response to the tsunami helped tamp down the disparity, as the election results showed. The prime minister has always defended his family business empire by saying that what critics described as an obscene increase in its wealth is in fact a result of the overall improvement in the Thai economy. This explanation worked, but it will surely need a lot of reinforcements the next time it is trotted out.

Without proper checks and balances – the country’s already shaky anti-graft mechanism has all but sputtered since the February election – Thailand’s situation is scary. Conflicts of interest involving politicians have continued unabated, and their relatives and associates are grabbing lucrative projects so often it’s not even newsworthy anymore. Worse still, even in areas where Thaksin does not want corruption to take place, things may be beyond his control now.

The last thing Thaksin needs is for his popular welfare programmes to be plagued by graft allegations. But the lottery-donations scandal may prove the theory that absolute power not only corrupts absolutely, but also makes corruption uncontrollably infectious. The alleged embezzlement of GLO donations has reportedly taken place in many provinces and involved government MPs or their aides. The pattern is simple: the politicians have allegedly acted as “brokers” for the temples and schools applying for financial assistance from the GLO, and then deducted some money as their “commission fees”.

It would be politically dangerous for Thaksin to be seen as being busy expanding his empire while ignoring pressing national issues. That perception must already have been magnified by reports that the Thai Rak Thai party is plotting to send its men to seize control of the upper house in the next senatorial election.

Whether this alleged ambition will become the straw that breaks the intriguing bond between Thaksin and millions of voters, remains to be seen. But when this kind of report coincides with comments by the prime minister that local business leaders critical of the on-going free-trade negotiations with Japan are “cartels” fearful of foreign competition, the whole government risks alienating more key sectors in society, beyond those already disillusioned.

It’s too soon to say that the seemingly invincible government is facing a crisis, but the fact that such ominous signs have appeared this early has made earlier predictions that the second term of Thaksin would be stable sound very premature.

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