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Published on October 31, 2007

One of deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's more enduring legacies in Thai politics will be the use of populist policies as vote-grabbing measures. Thaksin and his now-defunct Thai Rak Thai Party so clearly demonstrated how populism, when effectively deployed, could serve as a springboard to political power. Although populism means different things to different people, shrewd politicians use populist policies to manipulate people's expectation of short-term gain. It may be either undeserved or unprincipled, or both, but it is used to gain unfair advantage over competitors.

 Depending on public perception and how they are translated into practice, some policies may start out as populist - appealing to some sections of society - but then become acceptable to the public. The universal healthcare scheme promoted by the Thai Rak Thai Party prior to the 2001 general election is an obvious example of a populist policy that turned out to be good for everyone. That is because the Thaksin government, with the help of public health planners, managed to come up with sound financial arrangements to ensure the sustainability of the policy in providing free healthcare for all.  

But the universal healthcare scheme is the exception to the rule. Most of the populist policies being pushed by parties competing in the December 23 general election belong to the bad variety, which means they pander to the unprincipled wants and needs of the people. What's more, the implementation of bad populist policies could expose the country to unacceptable levels of financial liability.

The problem is that it is quite difficult for many people - particularly those who are not well educated or who belong to the lower rungs of the socio-economic groups - to tell the difference between good and bad policies touted by political parties in the run-up to the election. This is not only because the country's 75-year-old democracy has been too often punctured by periods of authoritarian rule, but also because the quality of public debate in this country has remained poor. People invariably fail to ask really important questions of political parties, such as where they are going to find the money to finance the populist policies they promise to implement if and when they achieve political power and form a government.

A middle-income developing country like Thailand does not have limitless resources to carry out every whimsical populist idea dreamed up by unprincipled and dishonest politicians. People in this country have yet to learn the right lessons from the Thaksin years between 2001 and 2006 - that populist policies and dishonest politicians who promote and implement them are bad news for democracy.

To carry out populist policies, including village funds, low-cost housing projects, debt moratorium for farmers and People's Bank credit programmes, the Thaksin government had to bend rules that were made to ensure sound governance and good economic stewardship. This allowed corruption to happen.

Bad populist policies are implemented with little regard to the facts of unprincipled and wasteful use of the country's resources. The unthinking spending of taxpayer's money and the incurring of excessive public debts by the government must somehow be paid for by future generations of taxpayers. In other words, the entitlements the Thaksin government heaped on the current generation of taxpayers will pose an unacceptable level of risk to Thailand's financial standing, if not also the economic destiny of our children.

The financial mess left behind by the Thaksin government, which is now being cleaned up by the interim Surayud government, will pose a considerable burden to the future government.

That's why it is disturbing to see a new crop of populist policies being promoted by so many political parties whose main concern is to persuade gullible people to vote for them and to put them in power. Any political awareness campaign to be launched by the Election Commission and the Surayud government between now and the election must include teaching people how not to be distracted by grand-sounding populist policies and how to ask the right questions. These must include where the political parties propose to find the money to finance their policies and how to make sure those policies will continue to benefit the public in the long run?

The Nation