Unprecedented win entails obligations

Suthichai Yoon, The Nation, Asia News Network, Bangkok

A few days before the Feb. 6 general election, a huge poster, in English, was mounted at a few landmark locations in Bangkok: Vote or die.

Most voters apparently took heed of the serious warning. They went out to the polls, and 75 per cent of them cast their ballots to give the incumbent prime minister the authority to lead the country for four more years.

The unprecedented electoral mandate that the voting public handed to Thaksin Shinawatra's Thai Rak Thai Party on Sunday carries with it an unprecedented burden: Deliver or die.

After the initial euphoria died down, reality started setting in. It may now dawn upon Thaksin that winning the election was perhaps the easy part. The greatest test in his political life will be how to manage the overwhelming majority's expectations.

PM Thaksin may find this ironic: He can find any number of people who are willing to sing praises for the "Great, Beloved Leader". But at this critical time, when he has to choose between resisting the temptation of going down the road of one-man, authoritarian rule and the tougher but more honorable path of striving to become a statesman, what he badly needs isn't more kudos. It's sympathy and honest counsel that any man with runaway popularity needs to avoid the dangerous trap of power and arrogance.

On the way up, it might have been challenging and fun. The main idea was: Boost your profile and raise the people's hopes with your promises that you would be able to deliver a better life to them. But now he's arrived there again at the top, with his wish suddenly granted by an electorate desperately awaiting the arrival of a "knight on a white horse", he faces the risk of the fun and the challenge being replaced by narcissism first, and then perhaps paranoia further down the road.

In essence, there are no excuses for not getting things done.

The leader of the TRT made the party's desire for one-party rule his main campaign theme. The electorate has now stated, clearly and unequivocally, something akin to: "You want it? You've got it..." adding, somewhat ominously, albeit draped in the camouflage of the loud cheering noise of the victory celebration: "...and don't you dare let us down."

In other words, the majority of the voters decided, in a move that only be described as quite uncharacteristic of the Thai polity, to take the risk of picking a sole horse in this race, with little or no back-up position.

The unprecedented mandate assumes, logically or not, that the man who rules the one-party government will deliver the goods in a timely, honest and transparent fashion. The staggering majority also dictates that now that he has a free hand to choose the best qualified people to join the Cabinet, the CEO can't say he must cede certain portfolios to some "unknown qualities" to repay "political debts".

The big, loud and decisive vote for Thaksin also means that the bar has been raised for his political judgment in setting the priorities for what issues to tackle. Hard nuts have to be cracked, and difficult choices have to be made without further delay: Education reform, corruption and the violence in the deep South stand out among the great failures in the first term. Conflicts of interest within the ruling circle and high-level nepotism top the list of the government's "dark spots", which have defied solutions in the past four years.

Once the heady celebrations over the big win are over and reality sets in, PM Thaksin may find it illuminating to take a break from all the back-slapping to listen to those outside of his sphere of influence who have been trying to persuade him to seize this once-in-a-life-time opportunity to embark on the great path of a genuine statesman. He is capable of using his massive public mandate to do really great things for this country.

As Prawase Wasi, one of his staunch supporters, said soon after the election results were announced: "We know Khun Thaksin is a very capable and outstanding man. But nobody lives forever. One day, he, too, will go. But Thailand has to survive...his duty is to build the foundation for the future."