Damage control alone won’t
save the Thaksin government
4 December, 2005
I hate to play defensive.
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According to a recent Suan Dusit poll, the popularity
rating of Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra’s government reached its lowest level in eight months in
November.
The PM’s private poll numbers in periodic surveys should have shown a similar
trend, prompting him to formulate a new defensive strategy to try and recapture
the lost ground. |
Thaksin is known to have been a keen reader of polls
ever since founding his
telecom business, which relies heavily on consumer research
for its success. The
key question is, how can Thak Rak Thai communicate with
the public to win back
its confidence?
Prachachart Thurakij reports in its December 57 issue
that the Thaksin
government is now preparing key personnel to shore up
its plummeting
popularity.
The first group of officials, led by Prommin Lertsuridej,
secretarygeneral to the
prime minister, and Commerce Minister Somkid Jatusripitak,
will have its
headquarters at Government House, its main job being
to devise a strategy to
win back confidence among the masses and the middle
class.
The second group, headquartered at the Thai Rak Thai
Party’s offices, will
concentrate on political operations. Deputy Transport
Minister Phumtham
Wechayachai and Agriculture Minister Khunying Sudarat
Keyuraphan will be the
core leaders of this group.
So what will they do, exactly? At Government House,
PM’s Office Minister
Suranand Vejjajiva will implement the strategy devised
by Prommin and Somkid
and get the message to the public through all media
channels controlled by the
government. Now you can see why every government finds
it necessary to
control the broadcast media, which can get their message
across for free.
Natural Resources and Environment Minister Yongyuth
Tiyapairat and Deputy
Prime Minister Wissanu Kreangam will contribute to the
government’s
imagebuilding effort by assigning Thai Rak Thai MPs
to return to the villages to
publicise the success of the government’s populist
policies.
Deputy Prime Minister Suwat Liptapanlop and PM’s
Office Minister Newin
Chidchob will stand by to handle miscellaneous projects
aimed at maximising the
campaign’s impact on the public.
The political operation led by Phumtham and Sudarat
will have to find a way to
communicate with the Bangkok electorate. There are some
one million Bangkok
voters out there who shunned Thai Rak Thai in the last
election. They constitute
an important political factor that could make or break
the government.
The old saying in Thai politics is that the rural people
vote in the government,
while the Bangkok folk unseat it.
After giving the assignments to his two teams, Thaksin
did not have to wait for
Mercury’s realignment to speak out.
He said: “We have to check the reactions of the
people. This is very important.
Once we have checked their reactions, we’ll know
what they like or don’t like.
Democracy is a system that favours the majority. But
if the minority is not happy,
we have to take note and use their reactions to improve
ourselves.”
This marks a rare occasion on which Thaksin has admitted
a blunder and gone
into “full defensive” mode, backed by an
offensive strategy to win back
confidence. From now on you can expect to see lots of
PR campaigns as well as
marketing gimmicks by the government, which is badly
in need of a shakeup.
The Thaksin government has been plagued by corruption
scandals, conflicts of
interest and cronyism, apart from its attempts to silence
the dissenting media.
The maverick Sondhi Limthongkul, head of the Manager
Media Group, has given
Thaksin a shocking wakeup call. He has exposed several
scandals in the Thaksin
government, yet none of his charges have been answered
by the administration.
And we have not seen any evidence that the government
is willing to address
Sondhi’s charges.
If the Thaksin government ignores the corruption charges,
it will find it difficult to
win back confidence with the feelgood PR message alone.
The uproar will
continue.
At this point, few believe the government will stay
and complete its fouryear
term.
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Can he indentify himself
with your gardener?
Meanwhile, does anybody out there believe that Democrat
Party leader Abhisit
Vejjajiva is ready to become prime minister?
Chuan Leekpai has come out in full support of his
protege. He campaigned in
Nakhon Si Thammarat over the weekend, asserting that
Thai Rak Thai has done
irreparable damage to Thailand over the past four
years. In the South,
thousands of people have died because of the mismanagement
of the Thaksin
government, the former party leader said. He predicted
that the Democrats
would make a comeback and that Abhisit would become
prime minister.
However, a Democrat Party member told Bangkokian that
it would be hard for
the Democrats to form a government unless it controls
the MPs in the Northeast.
At present, the MPs in the Northeast account for almost
40 per cent of the total
in the House.
The Democrats currently have just a few MPs there.
For Abhisit to become prime minister, he has to touch
base and identify himself
more with the country’s grassroots people.
One person who recently met Abhisit remarked that
he sounds very much like
an “Etonian”. Eton is an elite school
in the UK, which Abhisit in fact attended.
Abhisit can’t really identify with your gardener,
can he? |
