Forget about ‘Of the people, for the people’

We didn’t create the national divide. We didn’t buy “that plot” in Ratchadapisek. We didn’t roll out the tanks to topple governments. We didn’t violate electoral rules and cause a party to be disbanded. We didn’t order anyone to shoot at anyone. We didn’t pass laws that many deemed biased or self-serving.
Like it or not, next year’s election is all about those problems. We are hearing plenty about economic stagnation, poor education, lack of labour competitiveness, an ageing society, and more, but truth is that the upcoming “democratic exercise” that is exciting many people and various foreign governments will have little to do with any of these. We will be voting to try to solve “their” problems, not get them to solve ours.
Many Thais are happy to help those they like, and they cannot be blamed. A lot of people have been led to believe that an election is also about taking a moral stand. If you abhor conflicts of interest at the highest level of politics, and the nepotism and corruption that usually come with them, you may vote against the party associated with Thaksin Shinawatra. If you think politics at the highest level can never be squeaky clean, and what has happened to him is bad for a democracy struggling to adapt and grow, you may vote for the still-popular party.
There’s nothing wrong with that, except that it banishes the traditional concept of an election and leaves little hope it will return soon. It’s okay to try to solve politicians’ problems first, so that they can help us later, but Thai elections have been too much about the former for most people’s liking.
Thaksin dissolved the House of Representatives in early 2006 after he was accused of corruption. An electoral boycott and controversial manoeuvring to make the snap election “legal” then destabilised his party, leading to its eventual dissolution. A large chunk of Thaksin’s assets were seized in 2010, followed by a red-shirt uprising and another snap election, this time called by the Democrat Party.
That election, like the one in 2006, was also about fixing problems that ordinary Thais did not create. The same goes for the upcoming election. We Thais will go to the polling booths to grapple with problems that, in fact, have absolutely nothing to do with us whatsoever.
We are being be told that our voices will make a difference. The key players will tell us that snubbing Thaksin would make politics cleaner, or that rejecting Prayut Chan-o-cha would send a noble message of liberty and human rights. In the process, we are being made to forget what our real problems are.
And it’s not just about the election. Our Constitution has been written with powerful individuals in mind, not for the sake of ordinary Thai people. Electoral rules have been dictated by a power play, not public interest. Parties are preoccupied with thinking about ways to beat those rules, not trying to find solutions to the drug problem, skilled-labour shortage and backward education standards.
When the government is formed, the focus will turn to whether it’s “legitimate”. If Prayut does become prime minister, he’s unlikely to be given a smooth ride or time to ponder genuine national problems and ways to solve them. Likewise, a “nominee” of Thaksin as PM would have his or her every move scrutinised, with every law and policy put under the microscope.
The rice-pledging scheme implemented by the Yingluck government is a good example. Whether it was plagued with corruption on a grand scale, or whether the government’s rivals politicised the matter and blew it out of proportion, did not matter in this context. The point is that whatever policies are thought up and implemented after next year’s election, half of the country will not trust them, and it’s impossible for policy mistrusted by so many people to succeed.
Optimists call it a “return to democracy”, but pessimists forecast a return to square one. Both have to agree, though, that the election is not about high or low taxes, or whether wi-fi bills are too expensive, or whether Thai students are wasting too much time memorising formulas. The government we get, in all likelihood, will be anything but one that is genuinely “for the people”.