Thai election a cause for caution

In the wake of the recent Thai general election, the argument is once again being heard that military coups are a thing of the past. While there are some positive signs emerging from the polls, The Jakarta Post's Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin suggests it is too soon to assume that a longstanding cyclical pattern has finally been broken. This is the first of two installments.

HONG KONG (JP): As every visitor to Bangkok knows from bitter experience, the Thai capital plays host to probably the worst unsolved traffic problems in Asia, if not the world.

The traffic jams are horrendous, disrupting life in many ways. Businessmen driving to their offices require portable toilets and cellular telephones as an essential counter to the lengthy, predictable delays.

So, on the surface, it seemed a clear sign of democratic progress when two of the political parties which are part of the prospective post-election coalition started squabbling over which of them should be given the task of ending all the snarl-ups.

Were the politicians finally taking responsibility for the crises caused by past neglect? Were Thai democrats at last primarily concerned with solving problems? It seemed too good to be true.

It was. As nearly all right-thinking politically conscious Thais knew in their bones, the reason for the squabble lay elsewhere. After years of procrastination, some large road- building and mass transit schemes are finally due for construction.

Crudely put, the politicians spent so much money on winning seats in parliament that they needed to recoup their losses through the kickbacks they would undoubtedly earn when large contracts were awarded.

For a brief moment, amid the squabble, the new government appeared stillborn. In the end, coalition harmony was sustained as one party was given power over traffic in inner Bangkok, while the other secured the right to supervise outer Bangkok. Sales of portable toilets and cellular phones are not expected to decline anytime soon.

In like vein, the general election had a contradictory conclusion. It can be argued that the overall result shows that, at long last, Thai democracy is developing in a positive way, freed from fears of the perennial military coup just around the corner.

But another perspective is that the election clearly hoists a danger signal--a flag marked with the letters "S-L-E-A-Z-E". The risk is that Thai politics are one again enmeshed in the negative cyclical pattern which has persisted ever since the overthrow of the absolute monarchy in 1932.

A convenient starting point is what the general election did not achieve.

First, as was to be expected, no strong nationwide party emerged from the polls (See Table One). The lack of such a party has long been the bane of Thai democracy, and explains why so many democratic experiments have foundered amid factional acrimony.

In fact the Democrat party, which led the last coalition government of outgoing Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, was the only party to win seats in all five regions of Thailand--Bangkok, Central provinces, the Northeast, the North and the South. (See Table Two)

Chuan, who had dissolved parliament amid numerous votes of no- confidence, had an election success in that his party increased its number of seats from 79 to 86, but over half of these (46) were won in the South. Still, the Democrats, second in seats won in the whole nation, emerged as the third largest party in Bangkok, the second largest in the central region, the third largest in the North, and the fourth in the Northeast.

The "winner" of the election, the Chart Thai (Thai Nation) party of Prime Minister-designate Banharn Silpa-archa, by contrast, failed to win any seats in either the South or in Bangkok. Chart Thai was the largest party by far in the Central provinces (with 44 seats), the largest in the North (19), and the second largest in the Northeast (29).

The largest party in the Northeast (36 seats) was New Aspiration which was the only party to win seats in four regions, missing out only in Bangkok. For the rest, most won a handful of seats in three out of five regions.

Second, it follows that, once more, no party has emerged from the election in a dominant position overall. The "winner" of the election, Chart Thai, (92 seats), still ended up 104 seats short of winning a majority in the 391-seat House of Representatives. The Democrats are even further removed.

But the instability easily engendered by the need for complex coalition-building was well illustrated as the leader of the small Seritham (Liberal) party (11 seats), Dr. Arthit Ourairat, talked openly of merging with the Democrats. Such a merger would increase Democrat strength to 97, still 99 short of a majority, but would bestow the technical right to be the lead party in any new coalition-building.

"We will not merge now, just for the sake of forming a government, because it is politically immoral to do so," Arthit said, thereby reminding all how the politically expedient might be perfectly acceptable at some later date.

On the statistical surface, of course, Thailand appears ready for the development of a viable two-party system. The new coalition has a healthy but not overriding majority of 233 seats. The opposition is equally well poised to be an effective force with 158 seats.

But a two-party system would only come about if the desirability of pervasive merger was widely recognized. But it is not. To the contrary, retention of individual factional identities is at the heart of the coalition-building process.