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Bangladesh, Thailand

How Bangladesh could influence next month’s Thai election

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They’re both located in south/southeastern Asia, they share female prime ministers, and they share the dubious distinction of being the two troubled elections that kick off 2014’s global election season. thailandbangladesh flag icon

Though there’s little reason otherwise to link Bangladesh’s January 5 general election with Thailand’s February 2 vote, there are uncanny similarities.  In both countries, the main opposition parties are boycotting (or have boycotted) the election, the governing party is set to win the election, leaving each country in a political crisis with no easy apparent solution.  In both cases, the electoral crisis has its roots in a struggle that dates back over a decade, and in both cases, the military hasn’t been shy about intervening in the past.

In Bangladesh over the weekend, prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s governing Bangladesh Awami League (বাংলাদেশ আওয়ামী লীগ) won 232 of the 300 seats in the country’s Jatiyo Sangshad (national parliament).  The opposition, more Islamist Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP, বাংলাদেশ জাতীয়তাবাদী দল) refused to participate in the vote, and it lost all of its seats.  Ostensibly, the BNP and its leader, former prime minister Khaleda Zia refused to take part in the vote due to Hasina’s refusal to appoint a caretaker government to oversee the elections.  But the reality is much more difficult — the BNP has carried out a campaign of attrition through general economic strikes, protests and sometimes violence to protest Hasina’s government.  Hasina (pictured above, top) has responded with an increasingly authoritarian tone, and Zia and other third party leaders have been detained or put under house arrest.  The political violence comes against the backdrop of the controversial execution of Islamist leader Abdul Quader Mollah for war crimes relating to the country’s 1971 war for independence, and unresolved matters from the 1971 war tribunal (including the previous life imprisonment sentence for Quader Mollah) led to massive protests in Dhaka’s Shabagh Square in early 2013.  Violence related to the election has already cost hundreds of lives and unknown damage to the Bangladeshi economy and the garment industry that dominates the country’s exports.

In Thailand, prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra has called snap elections in response to protests against her government that initially sprang from opposition to a proposed amnesty bill that would have pardoned top political leaders from both major parties for political violence over the past decade.  Yingluck’s populist Pheu Thai Party (PTP, ‘For Thais’ Party, พรรคเพื่อไทย), however, holds a nearly unbreakable lock on Thai politics, due to the popularity of Yingluck and her exiled brother, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, in northern and northeastern Thailand.  The opposition Phak Prachathipat (Democrat Party, พรรคประชาธิปัตย์) refused to take part in the elections and is instead calling for an unelected council to govern.

In both cases, the opposition parties are actively banking on military intervention — an outcome that would undermine the fragile democratic institutions and rule of law in both countries, which have each made gains in reducing poverty over the past decade.  The Thai Democrats and its leaders, former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and former deputy prime minister Suthep Thaugsuban, knew they had no chance to win the February election and believe that under a military government, they will have more influence.   Zia, who has been Hasina’s chief political rival since the 1980s, has never much trusted Hasina.  Game theory might teach you that three decades of ‘repeated games’ between the BNP and the Awami League would make a negotiated settlement easier.  But the BNP no longer has any faith in Hasina’s government to carry out fair elections, so the longtime animosity between Zia and Hasina may actually raise the costs of a deal.  So the BNP may actually prefer the military to the Awami League at this point.

What’s next?

The international community is already pressing Hasina hard to call new elections, and there’s even a precedent for how Bangladesh can walk out of the current impasse.  When Zia was prime minister in February 1996, she called snap elections that the Awami League boycotted — voter turnout barely exceeded 20% and the BNP on all 300 seats.  After a period of negotiation between the two parties, however, fresh elections were held in June 1996, the BNP lost power and the Awami League won a minority government.  The Bangladeshi tradition of appointing a caretaker government prior to elections, in fact, comes from the 1996 political settlement between the BNP and the Awami League.  Continue reading How Bangladesh could influence next month’s Thai election →

Thailand

Thailand’s Democrats boycott election in cynical ploy

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With the February 2 general election approaching, Thailand’s opposition has decided that it won’t contest the vote and will instead boycott the elections — a strategy that seems like a bet that the Thai military will intervene on its behalf against current prime minister prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra.thailand

You might assume that an opposition party that boycotts an election is automatically sympathetic — that it’s doing so because the polls will be so rigged against it that it can make a bolder statement by avoiding the polls altogether.  But it’s never really quite that simple.  In the most recent 2011 general elections, Yingluck’s party, the  Pheu Thai Party (PTP, ‘For Thais’ Party, พรรคเพื่อไทย) won an overwhelming victory with 48.41% of the vote and 265 seats in the Thai House of Representatives, the 500-member Ratthasapha (National Assembly of Thailand, รัฐสภา), the lower house of Thailand’s parliament.  By contrast, the opposition Phak Prachathipat (Democrat Party, พรรคประชาธิปัตย์) won just 35.15% and 173 seats.

An aborted attempt by Yingluck’s government to introduce an amnesty bill earlier this autumn backfired severely, leading to protests against her government that have threatened to exacerbate the long-simmering tension between the ‘red shirts’ who support Yingluck and her brother, the self-exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and the ‘yellow shirts’ who oppose them.

Yingluck’s response was to call early elections in February.  But top Democrat leader Suthep Thaugsuban, himself a former deputy prime minister, has demanded that Yingluck also resign as prime minister, a step that Yingluck has refused to do, and earlier this week, Suthep announced that the Democrats would boycott the vote:

“Thai politics is at a failed stage,” party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva, a former prime minister, told reporters in announcing the decision not to run. “The Thai people have lost their faith in the democratic system.”

If Thai politics is at a failed stage, though, it’s as much the fault of the Democrats as anyone else.  They might not like the politics of Thaksin and Yingluck, which have involved massive handouts to the poorest Thais to improve health care and social welfare.  Some of those handouts, most notably rice subsidies, have backfired in ways that hurt the economy in Thailand, which is a top global exporter of rice.  But it’s more honest to say that the Thai people have lost their faith more in the Democrat Party than in the democratic system.

Suthep’s gambit is more a cynical ploy than a legitimate grievance about the election’s fairness.  The Democrats have done nothing since 2011 to expand their appeal to voters outside their stronghold in Bangkok and southern Thailand.  The success of Thaksin and Yingluck lie largely in their hold over voters in the largely rural Thai heartland in the north and in Isan, Thailand’s discrete northeastern region.  That’s one of the reasons that Suthep and the yellow shirts are so insistent that Yingluck be removed from Thai politics — her appeal to northern Thais is so great that the Democrats haven’t been able to break the lock that she and her brother have over northern voters. By calling elections, Yingluck invited Suthep and the Democrats to unseat her at the ballot through politics, not mob rule.  By boycotting those elections, Suthep is admitting that the Democrats don’t have the tools to win an election in Thailand.

It’s even more cynical in that the boycott is essentially a plea to the Thai military for assistance.  The last time that the Democrats boycotted the vote in the 2006 general elections, Thailand’s monarch and the constitutional court declared the results unconstitutional, which only depended fighting between Thailand’s two largest parties and led to a military-led coup to reintroduce order.  But Thaksin’s allies ultimately won the 2007 elections that the military transitional government intro conducted, just like Yingluck won the 2011 elections after a period of military-backed rule under Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva from 2008 to 2011.

So what’s the end game? A military intervention in 2014 that postpones Yingluck’s electoral victory until 2015?

While the military has never been particularly enamored of Thaksin and Yingluck, there are a lot of good reasons why the military might not come to the Democrat Party’s rescue a third time in eight years. Continue reading Thailand’s Democrats boycott election in cynical ploy →

Thailand

Amid anti-government protests, Yingluck calls early February snap elections

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In response to the culmination of a series of protests against her government , Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra dissolved the Thai national assembly and called snap elections yesterday, leaving her opponents flummoxed.thailand

It’s been a difficult month in Thailand, where Yingluck’s opponents started protesting in November over an amnesty bill with roots in the long-term political crisis that began with the election of her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, in January 2001.  The background to today’s political protests in Thailand is long and not always easy to understand — but bear with me, because it establishes the necessary context to understand what’s happening today.

Thaksin’s long shadow

Thaksin, a wealthy mobile phone tycoon, came to power as the founder of the Thai Rak Thai Party (‘Thais Love Thais’ Party, พรรคไทยรักไทย) on a largely populist program of social welfare policies that included the first universal health care program in Thailand.  Thaksin was reelected with an even larger mandate in the February 2005 election, on the strength of poor rural northern Thais who supported Thaksin in massive numbers.  Continue reading Amid anti-government protests, Yingluck calls early February snap elections →