Reviving old politics with a vengeance

Budgets flooding the coffers of parties and politicians to "prepare" the electorate. Nationalistic side-shows to distract attention. Fingers firmly crossed that the press is still so scared of Thaksin that it will not rock the government's flimsy boat.

From the moment of the Faustian "Siamese twins" pact of December last year, there has been one tantalising question: How could this government survive beyond an election? If the electorate acts like it has since 2001, this coalition would be swept away, opening the possibility of a Thaksinite return or another period of turmoil.

In the early months of this year, Plan A for keeping the coalition in power emerged. Its keyword was "reconciliation". Somehow, enough voters and politicians would change their minds so that the prospect of a Thaksinite revival would fade away like a sunset. In Parliament, constitutional reform would smooth away the huge resentment against the coupmakers' patently anti-politician, anti-parliament charter of 2007.

In the countryside, Abhisit's good looks, sincerity and heart-warming commitment to democracy and human rights would lure voters away from old delusions. To make double certain of this, the Army got another big budget for political education, and every month there was a new propaganda campaign urging people to leave conflict behind and, well, ummm, forget politics.

Most important of all, Newin Chidchob was expected to use his skills as a wheeler-dealer to convince enough local politicians, especially in the Northeast, that Thaksin was now finished and that to remain in touch with the nourishment of power these politicians should slide over to his Bhum Jai Thai Party.

Plan A died with Abhisit's Lop Buri tour and the Si Sa Ket bye-election. Even 120 kilometres outside Bangkok in a town dominated by the military, Abhisit was treated almost as badly as Thaksinite politicians were treated by the yellow shirts in the South a few months earlier. Even in Si Sa Ket, next door to Newin's Buri Ram base, a good Bhum Jai Thai candidate got blown away in a bye-election.

With the death of Plan A, the word "reconciliation", which had dominated Abhisit's speeches in his first few months, disappeared from the Democrats' vocabulary. But for a long time there was no sign of a Plan B. The government seemed to be blundering ahead from day to day, apparently trying to ignore the future, even though an election looked more and more like the edge of a cliff.

Plan B has now emerged. And Plan B is based on a much more hard-headed assessment of the political situation, and of the strengths and weaknesses of the coalition of forces behind the government.

The Abhisit tour, Si Sa Ket election, content of community radio stations and other indicators show that the politics of strong emotion still prevails. Not only the red activists but a larger swathe of the electorate resents the coup, the martyrdom of their leader, the bias of the judiciary, and the trickiness of the junta constitution.

Abhisit's good looks, Newin's talent at backroom dealing, and however many millions of baht behind limp propaganda campaigns have no chance against these emotions.

The talents of the coalition forces lie in a different kind of politics, and the essence of Plan B is to make sure that the old, old kind of politics will prevail.

During the 2007 election, the military marshalled by General Sonthi Boonyaratklin made a strenuous effort to influence the result by deploying public money and public resources. They allegedly bankrolled the formation of political parties and their campaigns, openly instructed military and civilian personnel on how to vote and made a big show of force on polling day.

They failed to gain the desired result, but they came very close. If the Democrats had done as well in the constituencies as they did on the party list, the military-backed coalition would have won. In their post-mortems, the military campaign managers concluded they just needed more time and more money.

Hence the importance of Newin. He's a fixer who will work with anyone, even the Democrats he once brought down, and the soldiers who stripped him to his underpants. He is not only the country's most renowned vote-buyer, having been caught twice in the act, but a Teflon practitioner as he escaped retribution both times.

So here's Plan B.

 - Delay an election as long as possible, to the end of term in early 2011 if possible, by stonewalling the process of constitutional amendment.

- Move pliable bureaucrats into key posts, especially in the Interior Ministry, especially among governors and others involved in local administration, that is, elections. 

- Pour lots of money into leaky schemes of government spending so funds can flow into the election war chests of parties and politicians. We have already had the sufficiency economy projects, the medical scheme and the Bangkok NGV bus plan. And we haven't got into the big stimulus spending yet. 

- Crank up nationalist issues to distract people at home, and send Abhisit around the world to distract people overseas. 

- Trust that the press is still so afraid of Thaksin that it will play up stories like the police reshuffle (how many column inches to date?), minor inter-party spats and personality conflicts rather than the big issue. 

- Keep the military on the sidelines by the usual method.

Plan B is ambitious. It's well thought out. It aims to overwhelm the new politics of emotion by reviving the old politics of money, bureaucratic intrigue and power-sharing with a vengeance. It may work. But there are still some risks.

The one force that is not tied down and might

 make trouble is the NGOs. Environmentalists are making trouble over Map Ta Phut. Rural doctors have ripped apart the medical scheme. When will someone take a look at Sino-Thai? And the buses. And the Gripen fighters. And the land distribution schemes. And…