designed to achieve greater transparency. Local authorities are required to
publish annual reports detailing their budgeting, spending, and performance, thus
allowing these aspects to be monitored and scrutinized more systematically.41
The problem of course goes much deeper than these reforms suggest. Political
parties in Thailand, apart from being obliged to conform to certain rules, need to
be allowed to create much greater legitimacy. They need a genuine power base
and policy manifesto allowing them to be able to challenge each other (perhaps
in combinations) as government and opposition on the basis of major differences
in policy rather than personal loyalties. Thai Rak Thai party (TRT) emerged very
rapidly after its foundation by Thaksin in 1998 and it promised a new form of
popular democracy not only by making promises at elections but also by delivering
some tangible benefits, especially to Thailand’s poorest rural communities:
Thaksin promised development funding for every village in Thailand, and a 30
baht health care system, and he delivered on these promises. Despite allegations
of corrupt practices, it is obvious that TRT was able to gain wide support from
sections of the Thai electorate on the basis of the policies that it offered
(McCargo 2002). This may explain the hero-worship
of Thaksin in some parts of
Thailand, mainly the North around his native Chiang Mai and the undeveloped
Eastern provinces.
Thailand’s fluid political culture has proved a major challenge, which has
called into question the status and credibility of political parties, including the
now-dissolved
TRT. For political parties to have established status and stability
they need roots that extend beyond the interests of particular political leaders,
and which do not rely on merely promising voters direct financial benefits.
Moreover, in nearly all successful liberal-democratic
systems, the effectiveness
of parliamentary mechanisms depends on a healthy rather than destructive
tension between government and opposition groupings, which has been so
clearly and indeed dangerously lacking in Thailand since late 2005. In order to
achieve legitimacy, parties need to be established around core principles with a
commitment to achieving political ends. Much has been written in Thailand
about the need to promote a new politics at grass roots level (Phaharathananunth
2002; Nogsuan 2006). In order to overcome the problem of powerful and
rich individuals dominating the agenda of political parties, the issue of
state funding for political parties, under strict control, might be considered.
New parties launched with state funding in the future might be based on the representation
of general interests and socio-economic
policies rather than social
structures embodying client–patron relationships or an “entourage” system. A
well-known Thai academic who has investigated this issue stresses the point in
this way:
Thailand must build a new political culture in which people place the country’s
political future in their own hands, not rotate it among the same elite.
Instead of blaming rural people for electing bad governments, the middle
class should help strengthen grass-roots
politics by supporting political
decentralisation, such as provincial governor elections.42