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Published on December 6, 2007

 

As they say in science fiction, we have seen the future - and, if most people had a choice, they would rather that tomorrow never comes. 

The irony is that even those most critical of the polls - both in the ways they have been conducted and their results - have somehow been sold on the predictions.

In fact, with such a prevalent pre-election sense of certainty (or, for some, sense of fatalism), the inevitable question, it seems to me, is why hold an election at all?

Not one single ballot has been cast and yet almost anybody you talk to seems to believe that the People Power Party (PPP) will emerge as the top vote-winner with the Democrat Party in second place.

There is even a general belief, regardless of the lack of any clear policy distinctions between the competing parties, that third place in the election will go to Chat Thai and fourth to the Puea Pandin Party.

How that consensus has come about is a great mystery. Even more mysterious is the lack of any contrarian view. The whole country seems resigned to the fact that the next government will be a weak, trouble-plagued coalition that will last somewhere between 18 and 24 months.

Worse, if you believe all the polls, the post-election coalition can only be one of two formulae: 1+3+4 (the party that wins the most seats, along with those in third and fourth) or 2+3+4 (the second, third and fourth largest parties to emerge from the election).

In other words, it's either PPP with Chat Thai and Puea Pandin, or the Democrats plus Chat Thai and Puea Pandin.

Neither formula offers any real hope of political stability, national reconciliation and a break from the current stalemate.

Amidst all the dire predictions about the post-election political scenarios, aren't we tempted to throw convention out of the window and pose some challenging and innovative questions such as:

Why don't the voters shun the two big parties and cast their ballots for the so-called third force - the medium-sized parties - that will form the next coalition government with a genuine agenda for national reconciliation?

It would be an excitingly new phenomenon indeed to see PPP and the Democrats being compelled to work together as an opposition alliance, and would give some fresh new political talent among the current smaller parties a chance to run the country - trying their hand at solving national problems whose solutions have been rendered impossible because of the long-standing, deep-rooted and destructive confrontation between the two big parties.

The other contrarian option would be to vote on policies rather than party affiliations.

In this case, the first round of voting will be decided by a majority vote on a "menu of policy options" that the people want to see implemented. 

Once the chosen agenda has been voted on, the various political parties will compete by proposing - with all the necessary action plans and budgetary formulae - how they can most effectively put those items on the national agenda decided by the people.

Under this system, voters would go to the polling booths in the second round armed with the knowledge of which party can best meet their expectations.

If these two ideas don't catch on - then I propose a much more effective antidote to the ongoing dirty, money-driven brand of Thai politics: voters should cast their votes to decide which party or parties should be in the opposition rather than to decide who's going to get to run the government.

In other words, the party that gets the highest number of votes would become the main opposition party, whose checks and balances against the government (a role imposed upon the party or parties that lose in the election) serves to ensure that the country would progress by leaps and bounds.

If all these democratic alternatives sound freakish at this late juncture, blame it on my growing despair; however hard I have tried to look through the dark tunnel of Thai politics, I don't see any glimmer of light at all.

I am almost certain that the little glow I see in the dark is from a firefly, not any natural light.

By Suthichai Yoon