Political Landscapes Change...

Khun Prasart Pangsopa (depicted above) fits the role model. He is a quiet man with an easy, friendly smile. His skin is tanned a leathery brown from endless days under a tropical sun. He wears a colourful Isan-style krama scarf wrapped around his waist. Khun Prasart looks like the archetypal Northeastern Thai farmer whose life and center of interest is far removed from the drama of Thai politics.

He is, to many here, the 'silent farmer' whose vote is purchased and whose education barely goes beyond reading and writing. He is a political pawn to be purchased and manipulated in Thailand's democratic game.

There are many millions more like Prasart. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of Thailand's population are rural folk just like him, the kind we like to buy postcards of; living in wooden houses amidst lush green paddy fields and chewing on sticky rice.

The idyll of Thailand's passive rural folk is easy to believe. These are the villagers who sell their votes and rally behind the most generous local patron.

Thailand's political landscape has been dominated by two key features: the capital Bangkok, where an educated elite sets the country's course, and the countryside where farmers, like Khun Prasart, trade their votes for a few baht and hand victory to the politicians with the deepest pockets and the most extensive patronage network.

But political landscapes change. The most significant event to have changed the political landscape in Thailand was the advent of Thaksin Shinawatra, the billionaire telecoms tycoon who embodied the aspirations of Bangkok's business class and symbolised the economic pride of Thailand as it emerged from a decade of booming growth (which came to an abrupt end in the crash of 1997). He became the hero of a nation in which success had come to be measured by the size of one's bank account.

When Thaksin ascended to power on a wave of popular support in 2001, he inherited a country where decades of development meant that almost every house in every village had television and electricity. Using well-built roads and modern media, the State could now reach into every household. Campaigns were launched reminding people of their responsibility to vote, of the evils of vote buying. Most importantly, the politicians in Bangkok were now able, more efficiently than ever, to reach deep into the countryside to deliver their message.

Thaksin was a new-style politician who no longer sought to rely solely on local patrons to secure the majority vote in the countryside. Learning the lessons of his business success and applying modern communications techniques to his political campaigns, he set about marketing himself not just to the Bangkok elites but to the country as a whole. For the first time ever, a national politician spoke directly and pointedly to the needs of the rural constituency, while maintaining his image as a champion of the middle class. He promised a CEO approach to politics, restructuring the bureaucracy and at the same time mingled happily with the farmers promising them easy credit and a raft of policies aimed at alleviating poverty.

The result was a landslide victory and a euphoric rise to power.

What followed is well known history. The same instincts which drove Thaksin to accumulate huge wealth pushed him to accumulate ever greater political powers. He placed his cronies in the independent institutions which, under a constitution promulgated in 1997, were designed to maintain checks and balances on his power. Having won the hearts and minds of both the countryside and the city, he became a kind of democratic dictator whose rule, many thought (feared even) would likely remain unchallenged for years.

In accumulating such extensive powers and by garnering the adoration of the rural majority (ensuring his success in future elections), Thaksin also began to challenge the position of Thailand's traditional establishment. His perceived arrogance, and that of his closest collaborators even came, ultimately, to be seen as a marginal threat to Thailand's much revered monarchy.

When Thaksin blithely sold his business to Temasek of Singapore and used legal loopholes to avoid paying some half a billion dollars in taxes, he committed an error of arrogance that turned his urban constituency against him and gave the traditional establishment the opportunity to have him removed.

The coup of september 2006 was the culmination of a popular urban-based movement against Thaksin led by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD). Though the PAD's leaders were an unlikely ensemble of disgruntled right wing former business associates of Thaksin's (like Sondhi Limthongkul) and left wing labour union activists (like Somsak Kosaisuk), the movement had wide appeal, particularly among the middle class, because Thaksin's avoidance of tax and his increasing arrogance were seen as a betrayal of the trust which had been placed in him. His middle class supporters in Bangkok were furious - their passionate opposition to their one-time hero resembled, to me, the fury of a jilted lover, whose anger is in inverse proportion to his adoration.

The coup was an unimaginative return to old habits. It was like using an old tool to fix a new and different problem. The military succeeded, for a year, in putting Thailand's political tensions in the deep freeze while the traditional establishment worked on drawing up a new constitution (which was offered up in a referendum without any other alternatives, leaving people with little choice but to approve it) and on discrediting Thaksin in the hope that when new elections were held his allure (for the rural majority) would have evaporated and the Thai political landscape could return to its original form, with political power being dictated strictly from the center (read Bangkok).

Despite banning Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party and 111 of its members from politics, the coup makers proved unable to inspire the support of the countryside nor to dismantle the aura that Thaksin had created for himself among Thailand's farmers.

Sure enough, using a nominee in the form of Samak Sundaravej, Thaksin's political establishment was returned to power in an election held in January 2008. Once again the rural vote spoke out in favor of Thaksin, flexing their democratic muscle in the face of obvious establishment disapproval. Predictably the PAD resumed its street protests, claiming (with justification) that Thaksin was ruling the country by proxy.

One might be forgiven for thinking that the situation had come full circle. Only this time the war cry of the PAD is not just for a removal of Thaksin-dominated politics but for the creation of whole new political system, one where 70% of the government would be appointed representatives of various sectors of society with the remaining 30% elected by direct suffrage. To many observers this seems strangely undemocratic for a movement that claims to advocate democracy.

The essence of the PAD's campaign is that the country's political future cannot not be left entirely to a democratic system where the majority rural constituency would always carry the day. Rural folk, many in the PAD claim, are poorly educated and simply sell their votes. It is not possible, the argument goes, to leave the country's future in their hands. The farmers will continued to be 'tricked' and 'bought' by corrupt politicians.

Meanwhile the PAD is vague about who the leaders of its 'new political system' will be and on what measures will be put in place to prevent the temptations of power resulting in further corruption.

More recently, their campaign has moved from advocating new politics to warning ominously that Thailand's monarchy is under threat from the present government's leaders and their supporters; a call to battle that resonates profoundly and dangerously in Thailand.

In years gone by it might have been easier to believe the PAD's argument that the rural vote is for sale to the highest bidder. But political landscapes change.

Thaksin Shinawatra opened the pandora's box of the rural Thai vote. Through populist policies, such as offering a million baht to every village and 30 baht healthcare, he spoke directly to the masses in the countryside, who after years of government education about their democratic rights and responsibilities, responded enthusiastically. Freshly enfranchised, and fully aware of their political power, Thailand's farmers are naturally reluctant to return to the passive idyll that made them such a malleable constituency in the past.

Thus while farmer Pengsopa may look like a typical Thai peasant, the two dimensional caricature of him is less valid than ever. "Sure people offer us money for our votes, but it's not like before," said Pengsopa in an interview I helped translate while photographing Pengsopa for the International Herald Tribune. "They used to offer us money for our votes. But last time round nobody even tried to buy our votes and even if they did I'd make my own decision. Nowadays we don't just look to the local headman, we look at the leader of the party at the national level and if we like their policies we vote for them. If they do well, we'll choose them again. If they don't we'll choose someone else."

Other farmers from the same village echoed Pengsopa's views. "It's insulting that the people in the towns look down on as ignorant," asserted one.

Gone are the days when Thailand's farmers could be counted on to simply sell their votes. Nowadays, like voters everywhere, they're looking at policy platforms and saying 'what's in it for me'.

Thailand's political landscape has been profoundly reshaped. Attempts to hammer it back into its old form through the PAD's proposed system of 'new politics' is likely to be wishful thinking.

In future Thai politicians will have to build their power base by reaching out directly to Thailand's rural majority by speaking the to the hearts and minds of men like Prasart Pengsopa.