Thaksin's populist policies blamed for rifts in society
The populist policies initiated by fugitive former PM Thaksin Shinawatra are still creating rifts in society and so far, no answers have been found on how to end the increasingly widening gap in Thai politics, key speakers at Thailand Development Research
Academic Nidhi Eawsriwong praised Thaksin at the Thursday evening forum, saying his policies had been left behind for future governments to use to boost their popularity. However, he closed his speech with the ambiguous statement: "Populist policies are appropriate in encouraging total dictatorship, because others will use these policies to achieve total dictatorship."
Nidhi said he was fine that the government run by Thaksin’s sister Yingluck had introduced the controversial rice-pledging scheme even though it yielded colossal losses in the first year. "It is needed to help poor farmers, while rich farmers also benefit from it," he said without elaborating.
Ammar Siamwalla, a TDRI honorary researcher and a staunch critic of Thaksin, said that thoughthe populist policies pushed the country’s democracy forward, they cast a shadow over Thai politics because voters only cared about what they would be given in return for votes.
He criticised the rice-pledging scheme, saying it left the door open for a group of rice traders to monopolise and had changed the marketing mechanism in the industry permanently.
TDRI chairman Somkiat Tangkitvanich said populist measures introduced by Yingluck did not really provide any concrete benefits for the people, unlike policies such as the Bt30 universal healthcare, which are still beneficial. He also alleged that her policy of returning Bt100,000 to first-car buyers was a result of lobbying by Japanese auto-makers after they suffered heavy losses from the 2011 flood crisis.
Thammasat University lecturer Kasian Tejapira said worryingly, political populism and authoritarianism was at the core of the populist policies and if this was not changed, the policies would continue being changed by future governments.
"Technocracy is now powerful enough to counter or replace populism, and as a result populist policies are starting to be considered normal," he added.
"Political populism in Thailand, unlike in other countries, is not backed by political ethics," he said, adding that people who offered populist policies for Thaksin to decide on were his foreign advisers.
"The adoption and implementation of populist policies now have nothing to counterbalance them, as people were seen and treated as a single entity then," Kasian said.
He went on to explain that the Thai people were now divided and the rifts were getting wider over different views on Thaksin and his policies.
