From the street to the ballot box: the July 2011 elections and the rise of social movements in Thailand.

• Author: Sinpeng, Aim
• Position: Report

Since the September 2006 military coup shattered fourteen uninterrupted years of electoral democracy, Thailand has lurched from one crisis to the next. Recurrent street demonstrations, primarily in Bangkok but also in the provinces, further eroded any lingering sense that Thailand's polity was relatively stable or limited to intra-elite squabbling. With the deaths of 94 people and the injury of over 2,000 in the April-May 2010 crisis, Thailand appeared to have entered terra incognita with social forces deeply polarized. (1)

In this context, the July 2011 parliamentary elections were significant for at least two reasons. First, they presented a crucial opportunity to pull politics out of the street and back into some controlled and manageable institutional framework. Elections allowed ordinary Thais to express their political views at the ballot box and thus test elites' willingness to abide by those preferences. Second, the electoral campaign witnessed mass political participation on both sides of the political divide that was relatively unprecedented. The trend since Thaksin Shinawatra's first electoral triumph in January 2001 has been greater social mobilization, but the extent and sophistication to which social forces engaged qua organization in the political process in these elections was unique. Social mobilization in the 2011 July election was especially notable in terms of the level of popular participation in politics by ordinary people. Thai voters mobilized on their own to ensure that their favoured candidates won, but they also participated actively to ensure a free and fair election. Even those advocating for a democratic roll-back sought to do so via social mobilization and through electoral procedures. Perhaps Thailand has achieved --although in a truly convoluted manner--something the 1997 Constitution was meant to bring about: a more vibrant, more engaged, and more politically aware populace.

What these elections demonstrated is that, after major setbacks, Thailand is again seemingly moving back towards a consolidation trajectory through a return to electoral politics. The Thai electorate is actively involved in the political system--but is also deeply divided. More than any other election, the 2011 polls witnessed social groups openly rallying for political parties. This mobilization of social groups has brought into the political system a real battle over programmes and ideas that are being waged both within the party system and within society. For the first time, social groups are now actively working with parties to champion their economic and political agendas. How far these developments will proceed is difficult to tell. However, most seasoned observers of Thai politics would be hard-pressed to recall a time when the polity was so riven, ordinary citizens (particularly from outside Bangkok) forcefully engaged in politics and ideas about democracy and about social and economic programmes so central to the electoral process.

The aim of this article is two-fold. First, to analyse the results and trends from the July 2011 elections and place them in the broader context of recent electoral results. Second, to discuss the social groups that were at the heart of the electoral campaign. These include the Red Shirts, who have championed Thaksin Shinawatra's party, Phua Thai, and the Yellow Shirts, who began as an anti-Thaksin movement and have now evolved into a force against electoral politics. These two groups have been at the forefront of street demonstrations and it is they who have continued to engage the electoral process in a forceful manner--albeit for very different reasons and in very different ways. The article is based largely on fieldwork observations of the 2011 polls.

Election Results

The 3 July 2011 election of Thailand's Lower House brought back into government a Thaksin Shinawatra-aligned party, Phua Thai. Out of a total of 500 seats in Parliament, Phua Thai swept 265 of them--leaving the runner-up, the Democrat Party, trailing behind by 106 seats (see Table 1). This amounts to more than a 20 per cent lead in the number of seats--significant by any measure.

Since 2001, when Thaksin's party--Thai Rak Thai--first contested in national elections, his parties have consistently won elections by a wide margin. The 2011 elections punctuated further this trend (see Figure 1). Like the 2005 elections, the Thaksin party won an outright majority of seats. In 2001, Thai Rak Thai's seat share accounted for 49.6 per cent of the total. By 2005, when Thaksin's popularity was at its height, his party swept 377 out of 500 seats in Parliament, forming the largest ever majority in Thailand's history. The 2006 coup may have reduced Thaksin's electoral support from a whopping 75.4 per cent of seats in Parliament; nonetheless, his parties still won two subsequent elections by a large margin.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

In 2007, the Thaksin-aligned Palang Prachachon Party (PPP) managed to gain 233 out of 480 seats, which accounted for 48.5 per cent of the seats. In contrast, the Democrat Party trailed by nearly 15 per cent of the seat share at 164 seats. Just to provide some added insurance, Samak Sundaravej, leader of Palang Prachachon, formed a six-party coalition with five other mostly small parties to safeguard against any potential coup threat. This six-party coalition translated into 316 out of 480 seats, accounting for more than 63 per cent of seats in Parliament. Following the 2011 elections, Yingluck Shinawatra, the prime minister-elect of Phua Thai pursued the same strategy as Samak did. She brought in five other parties--Chart Thai Pattana, Chart Pattana Phua Pandin, Palang Chon, Mahachon and New Democracy Party--to form a governing coalition that brought together a grand total of 300 seats, or 60 per cent of seats. This margin ensures that the Phua Thai coalition will be able to govern for a full four-year term.

There are four key features of the 2011 election that are worth noting. First, programmes took on greater significance and meaning for all parties than ever before. The electoral campaign is telling of the state of Thailand's party system: between clientelistic and programmatic types. For a country whose party system has traditionally been based on clientelism and patronage, this change may point to the beginning of some degree of institutionalization of programmatic parties. However, it was still unclear in this election whether Thai parties viewed programmatic campaigns as a marketing tool as opposed to a deeper, concerted attempt to develop any linkages or affinity with voters based on party programmes. Nonetheless, the fact that all parties turned to such a strategy marked a changed attitude towards party platforms in the sense that they are now considered significant aspects of party organization and of electoral campaigns. (2)

A survey of party campaign posters of all large and medium-sized parties in the 2011 election is indicative of how important party platforms have become. As Table 2 illustrates, these parties have moved beyond mere slogans or pictures of candidates to spelling out specific policies on campaign posters. Such a change in electoral strategy should not be dismissed as mere marketing but rather should be viewed as either an attempt to mimic the success of Thaksinaligned parties or a response to maturing electoral constituencies. Thaksin-backed parties have effectively induced a change in the electoral behaviour of parties in their campaign style by placing greater emphasis on policy and platforms. This holds true even for well-established parties like the Democrat Party whose campaign in this election was heavy on policies and less on personalities.

Parties, however, have not completely abandoned the old-style politics of clientelism either. In stronghold areas, where patron-client relations still run deep, we see campaigns that are highly personalistic as well as programmatic. For instance, throughout much of the south of Thailand, the Democrats' heartland, one often finds three types of campaign posters: programmatic (with no photos of candidates nor of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva), candidate-centred with pictures of the candidate (usually alongside Abhisit) with a slogan or personal message such as "please vote for me", and lastly Chuan Leekpai party-list campaign posters. (3) In the past one would hardly find a list of programmes on campaign posters, especially for an area that is a stronghold of a particular party. However, recent research has shown that political parties have become even more sophisticated in employing various campaign and marketing tools to secure an electoral victory. (4)

Moreover, this election also reflects a continued decline of the political influence of "dynastic politics". According to the Thailand Information Center for Civil Rights and Investigative Journalism (TCIJ), 89 members from 42 political families were elected into Parliament, (5) which according to some close observers of Thai politics represents a gradual decline of political families. (6) A survey of 119 MPs conducted in 2011 by Thailand Political Database reveals that 45 per cent of MPs got involved in politics because they were asked by political parties, whereas half of that, at 21 per cent, became politicians because "it runs in the family". (7) The 2011 election saw an embarrassing defeat of several political families: Chaisaeng in Chacheongsao, Tan-Chareon in Chacheongsao, Tiangtham in Suphanburi, and Yoobamrung in Bangkok.

Second, this election solidifies a pattern that had begun to emerge in 2005: elections are no longer competitive between the two largest parties. The landslide victory of Thaksin-aligned parties for the past several consecutive elections has created a significant electoral gap with the Democrat Party. The Democrats have not won an election since 1992 and its electoral performance in 2011 confirms the party's continued failure on...