Published on January 31, 2005

Along the railway that traverses the lower northeastern provinces from Ubon Ratchathani to Nakhon Ratchasima, the presence of three things made yesterday different from the usual – the crowds, a train brightly adorned in political party colours, and Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

With its rail caravan, the Thai Rak Thai Party showed it could still apply effective marketing strategies to its campaign to be elected to a second term in office. Thaksin was riding a nine-carriage train stamped with the party’s logo and emblazoned with campaign messages. Thousands of locals flocked to nearby train stations to cheer him on as if he were a movie star.

After his train left Ubon Ratchathani in the morning, he was greeted with ovations and screams everywhere he went. At smaller stations that his train passed en route, people waved frantically and shouted greetings to Thaksin. At provincial stations in Si Sa Ket, Surin and Buri Ram, Thaksin stopped, disembarked, mounted makeshift podiums and spoke. Thousands of people responded with bristling, undulating forests of TRT banners and flags.

“This train No 9 [of ours] needs fuel from you to help us carry on with our tasks for another four years,” Thaksin told supporters gathered in Si Sa Ket. “If you want to be rid of poverty forever, vote for us!”

Although Thaksin campaigned in his TRT shirt, there was no mistaking the fact that he was still the prime minister. His security detail shadowed him every step of the way. Thaksin and other passengers on the campaign train – including ministers, leading TRT members, northeastern candidates as well as reporters – were well guarded alongside him by local police officers manning the 300-kilometre route so as to ensure safety.

“Campaigning on a train is not very beneficial because the train passes by many places too fast,” Thaksin said to reporters. “Yet it doesn’t take much energy and the most important thing is the people are so eager to join us.”

A TRT source, who wanted to remain anonymous, said the party had leased the train for Bt500,000 for three days.

By dusk the train had arrived in Nakhon Ratchasima, where Thaksin addressed more than 50,000 TRT supporters who had waited for him patiently for hours. He promised them that TRT would carry all 16 constituencies in the province.

He made campaign promises, too. Earlier in the morning, Thaksin steamed into Amnat Charoen province, where he promised the more than 30,000 local people who turned up to see him a several-billion-baht budget for hiring more doctors to staff hospitals under the government’s Bt30-per-visit medical scheme. Finances too would be funnelled into education, he said, promising more teachers and computers for every provincial school.

And as his biggest promise of all, he said that after its re-election the TRT-led government would spend Bt200 billion on drought relief and flood prevention by building pipe irrigation systems for every northeastern village.

Thanyaporn Kunakornpaiboonsiri

The Nation

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