Published on January 31, 2005

In a tape transcript claimed to have been recorded in Songkhla, someone addressed as “minister” proposes “we buy everything everywhere” to overtake poll rivals. He concedes that “sometimes our own relatives cannot be bought”, but urges them to be bold. He will leave Bt100,000 with the governors, and they can pick it up one day after the poll “if we win”. He adds: “We’ll worry about the yellow and red cards later,” and rounds off: “Get the winning votes then come to collect the money from the governors and go celebrate.”

Of course, nothing is proved. Newin Chidchob, alleged to be the minister involved, is threatening lawsuits. The prime minister says: “The opposition appears to be very good at playing politics.” An election commissioner claims he cannot decipher the audio recording even though newspapers have transcribed it word for word. The Democrats have slipped up before by being too hasty to make use of flaky evidence.

But a police colonel, who is also a local election official, was present and is prepared to testify. Moreover, the incident fits a pattern from past elections. Remember a certain Chat Thai minister urging his lieutenants to pile on the “ammunition” in the last days before the 2001 poll?

In truth, there are only two aspects of this incident that are important. The first is the role of the governors. If it is true that the “minister” expected the governors to act as paymasters in this exercise of wholesale vote-buying, it offers a suggestion of how much the bureaucracy has become a department of the ruling TRT party. The second is the role of Newin.

Whether the Songkhla incident is true or a set-up, Newin is the perfect choice for the lead character because of his history. In 1995, police raided a Buri Ram shophouse and found Bt11.3 million in small-denomination notes, some of them stapled to a campaign flyer for the Chat Thai slate, led by Newin. These facts are not in doubt, nor (for most people) is the interpretation. But the election law is rather like the prostitution law. Judges will not convict unless police catch the client both engaged in the act and paying the money at the same time, which is technically a bit difficult for both the client and the police. In the Buri Ram case, judges convicted the shophouse owner but not those who put up the money or profited from its use.

Newin’s name also came up when representatives of a Japanese firm were physically prevented from submitting a bid for a construction contract won by Newin’s father-in-law. Again, Newin was not too embarrassed.

At the foundation of the TRT in 1998, Thaksin said his goal was to rid Thai politics of “professional politicians” who used money to gain political power and who used political power to make money. For many observers, that description would seem to include Newin. Yet over the last few years Newin has become one of Thaksin’s bluest-eyed boys. Newin was lured into defecting from Chat Thai to TRT along with his local faction. Though he was initially excluded from the Cabinet because of his reputation problem, he was eventually awarded a Cabinet post in March 2002. He was at the forefront of the great cover-up of the bird-flu outbreak but was shielded from having to face any consequences. He is not standing for election but is tipped as a ministerial candidate after the coming poll.

In short, over the past four years Thaksin’s patronage has helped to launder Newin’s image, so he has gone from being one of Thailand’s “yuckiest” politicians to being something of an indispensable point man. If the Songkhla allegations are true, it did not happen because Newin’s political ethics have changed. Indeed what is new is that his skills are now being put to work for the TRT party. Was he sent to help the TRT’s campaign in the South, the most difficult region to win for the party, precisely because of what he is good at?

Of course, in politics there is always a tension between what has to be done to gain power and how that power might be used. By the time of the 2001 elections, Thaksin had stopped presenting himself as a new broom sweeping the old trash out of Thai politics and instead started coming across as a man who hoped he could act as “the link between the old generation of politicians and the new”. Things have now gone much farther. The TRT is beginning to look quite “old”.

In 2001 several of the old local boss politicians missed the TRT boat. Perhaps they had failed to predict TRT’s spectacular rise. Perhaps they believed Thaksin’s earlier claims that the party was not for the likes of them. As a result, several of them lost in the 2001 polls. Things are different today. The TRT’s candidate list for 2005 is a roster of the great local bosses, their families and their friends.

Some made it into the TRT before 2001 (Snoh Thienthong’s faction, for example). Some were acquired through the merger of other parties into the TRT. Many others, like Newin, have defected as individuals or in factions. However they arrived, the pattern is now clear. three Thienthong candidates in Sa Kaew, three Kunplome in Chon Buri, Angkinan in Petchburi, Lik in Kamphaeng Phet, Khamprakob in Nakhon Sawan, Wongwan in Phrae, Tancharoen in Chachoengsao, Kitthithanasuan in Nakhon Nayok, Patdamrongjit in Khon Kaen etc etc.

In the Northeast, for example, 109 of the TRT’s 136 candidates are sitting TRT MPs. Of those, 27 defected from another party to the TRT before 2001. Another 41 were acquired through the merger of the New Aspiration, Seritham and Chat Pattana parties. Another eight defected from Chat Thai and one from the Democrats. At least another three lost in the last election under another party banner. The TRT has become a big magnet.

Thaksin probably believes that his personal popularity and his grip on the TRT make him a lion-tamer who can keep all these beasts under control in one big den. But a lion-tamer still has to feed the lions somehow.

Chang Noi

The Nation

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