<![CDATA[Thai election: for voters, any policy you like, as long as it's Thaksinomics]>
Most conspicuous is the absence of any images of former prime ministers Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra. In their heyday, images of the siblings beaming and offering wai greetings would be plastered across the billboards that sprout up across this country of 69 million people come election time. That ubiquity reflected their immense political clout, especially among the country's rural citizens who welcomed the Shinawatras' expansionary - critics would say populist - economic policies known as "Thaksinomics".
Campaign posters in Bangkok, Thailand. Photo: Bloomberg
Today, 19 years since Thaksin kick-started that rural mass movement with his 2001 election victory, the siblings are the kingdom's best known political outcasts. Both were ousted by coups - Thaksin in 2006 and Yingluck in 2014 - and now live in exile. The use of their images and names for campaigning purposes has been barred under laws drawn up by the ruling junta led by Prayuth Chan-Ocha.
But the Shinawatras are by no means spent political forces. If anything, as shown by This Week in Asia interviews with voters, candidates, analysts and Bangkok-based diplomats, their footprint on Thai politics may be increasing. And the reason has to do with the populist economic path on which Thaksin set the country during his 2001-2006 stint as prime minister.
Economists say the political parties of today are hooked on using their own versions of "Thaksinomics" - the promise of ever more government spending - to gain support in a crowded political landscape.
Voters, too, have noticed the game plan. Bangkok native Thitima Putirat sees an uncanny similarity between the campaign promises made by pro-Shinawatra parties in the 2001, 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2014 elections and by parties across the spectrum during this election.
The office worker, 39, said economic promises - some etched on the billboards that line the street near her office in the capital's Phetchaburi district - have the familiar ring of Thaksinomics.
Deposed former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Photo: AFP
"Everyone's promising to make the economy better, to spend more money on the people ... Thaksin and Yingluck did the same thing to win," Thitima said.
Among the most popular schemes of Thaksinomics was a health programme that granted all medical services for 30 baht (US$1) per treatment, cheap loans to agrarian villages and a temporary freeze on farmers' debts. Shinawatra loyalists touted this style of policymaking as a way for the country to expand its economy through a Keynesian multiplier effect.
Detractors, including the royal-military establishment that backed the 2006 and 2014 coups, loathed the Shinawatras' big-spending ways, which they saw as diverting tax dollars raised from urban, middle-class voters to fund pork-barrel programmes in the clan's stronghold in the northeast Isaan region.
The criticism reached fever pitch during Yingluck's turn as prime minister, when a multibillion-dollar rice subsidy scheme backfired, resulting in heavy losses for the government. She was later convicted in absentia on negligence charges.
At this election, detractors have turned admirers, with populist economic policies one of the few areas of agreement among the country's long-warring political factions. Keen observers of Southeast Asia's second biggest economy say the expansionary economic policies touted by a wide range of the 77 parties contesting the March 24 votes shows no end is in sight to the "populism addiction" that Thaksin started.
Thailand's fiscal policy office in February projected that public debt was likely to rise to nearly 49 per cent of gross domestic product, up from 42 per cent at present. The junta government says its cap for public debt is 60 per cent, but earlier this month the central bank governor Veerathai Santiprabhob said the country's "fiscal immunity may be lower than many people think".
Women drive past campaign posters in Thailand's southern province of Narathiwat. Photo: AFP
Kitipong Urapeepatanapong, chairman of the tax and regulation committee of Thailand's Board of Trade, told the Nation newspaper on Thursday that none of the parties were "stating clearly how they will finance their populist policies".
"This means all their economic policies, especially those involving spending for ageing people, lower-income people and children cannot be implemented when they form the government," he said.
Meanwhile, a Bangkok-based Southeast Asian diplomat told This Week in Asia that a senior leader of a major party had privately conceded that some of the big-ticket economic policies his party was touting were aimed at attracting middle income voters, and were unlikely to come to fruition.
One of the backroom architects who crafted the party's economic manifesto told This Week in Asia that its flagship policies involved restructuring debt for small and medium enterprises, and hiking the minimum wage to a yet-to-be-determined amount. The current minimum wage stands at 300 baht per day.
Supporters of the Palang Pracharat Party following a rally in the northeastern Thai province of Nakhon Ratchasima. Photo: AFP
The party's main rival, the Palang Pracharat Party, which is seeking to keep Prayuth in power, is singing a similar tune. That is an about-turn for Prayuth, who began his tenure promising to undo the profligacy of the Shinawatras. Among Palang Pracharat's flagship economic pledges is a three-year deferment of village fund loans, and hefty cash handouts to mothers.
"There is nothing to be ashamed about," said Pheu Thai's Watana Muangsook, a veteran Thaksin loyalist and former commerce minister. "[Thaksinomics] is what the people want. This is what gave us strong growth until the dictatorship came and everything slowed down."
On the opposing side, a Prayuth lieutenant bristled when asked by This Week in Asia why Palang Pracharat was offering economic sweeteners. The pro-junta party is seeking to woo voters with the "Pracharat card", a scheme in which some 14.5 million cardholders - citizens who earn less than 100,000 baht a year - are eligible for a range of cash transfers and subsidies.
The scheme was initiated by the junta so is technically part of current government policy rather than a proposal. Another such plan is the US$45 billion Prayuth's government allocated to its flagship Eastern Economic Corridor development last year, ahead of the planned election. Critics say the junta has effectively given Palang Pracharat an upper hand through these schemes.
"I heard that many parties will extend the cash card programme after the election, when they initially attacked it," said Kobsak Pootrakool, a junta minister contesting the election as a Palang Pracharat candidate. Like Pheu Thai, Kobsak pointed to his administration's track record as evidence his economic platform was sound. Describing the economy as "in the red" in 2014 - when Prayuth seized power from Yingluck - Kobsak said the junta leader "came in and revived the economy".
"Currently we are averaging 4 per cent [economic growth per year]. We can do that because we can maintain peace and order," said Kobsak.
Critics say that argument is tenuous at best. Anusorn Tamajai, dean of economics at Rangsit University, said the kingdom's economy should be growing at 5-6 per cent annually.
Pheu Thai supporters at a campaign rally in Bangkok. Photo: AFP
Traditional fiscal conservatives, meanwhile, feel they need to shift left to capitalise on voter disgruntlement with Prayuth's administration.
"The military government, they were only good at bringing peace and order. For the people, that's not enough. They also want to see economic growth, most importantly wage growth," said Panich Vikitsreth, the deputy leader of the Democrat Party.
The Democrats are the country's oldest party and have long been the chief rival to the Shinawatras. Like its competitors, the party - long the intellectual home of Thailand's fiscal centrists - has offered to decentralise the economy and enhance state welfare.
Then there is the upstart Future Forward Party, led by autocratic billionaire Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, which is keen to distinguish itself from Pheu Thai and also has big spending plans.
Among them is a proposal to build a hyperloop network (in which magnets levitate pods in an airless tube) in lieu of China-backed high speed rail links.
Thanathorn told This Week in Asia that critics needed to straighten out their definition of populism. "We are spending on people's needs, a welfare system, to spur economic growth. If you say that's populism, well," the charismatic politician trailed off with a shrug.
On the campaign trail, voters had few complaints about the various promises on offer - provided they were delivered. Most spoke of increased hardship during the five-year junta rule.
Campaign posters in Thailand's southern province of Narathiwat. Photo: AFP
"Before the coup we made 800 to 1,000 baht a day but now it's 500 to 600 baht," said motorbike-for-hire rider Charlerm Changtongmadan, 53. "Many of us have taken informal loans to cover our monthly expenses."
His woes are shared by noodle seller Jiradech Chinpanlop, whose takings have dropped 40 per cent in recent times. But going by the plans of Prayuth, the junta leader and Palang Pracharat candidate, such worries should soon be a thing of the past.
The victor of the March 24 poll must adhere to a legally binding 20-year "masterplan" his administration drew up that aims for per capita income to rise to US$15,000 from around US$6,000 currently.
The plan also stipulates that future governments must achieve 5 to 6 per cent annual economic growth and leapfrog neighbours to become the second least corrupt Asean country. If that sounds like a tall order, nobody appears to have told Prayuth's opponents, most of whom are making ambitious economic predictions without care for the masterplan.
Still, while it may seem that voters have their pick of appealing, big-spending election promises to choose from, the choice might be illusory.
Prayuth's deputy Prawit Wongsuwan, once Thaksin's army chief, this week suggested the election was a done deal despite polling day still being a week away.
Asked if Prayuth would be able to form the next government, he replied that 250 senators - each of whom have a vote on who becomes prime minister - were "controllable". If all 250 senators pick Prayuth, the junta leader needs only the support of 126 out of the 500 members of parliament.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Copyright (c) 2019. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
