by NELSON RAND and CHANDLER VANDERGRIFT
Conflict scenarios abound in the run-up to Thailand’s first elections since last year’s bloody unrest. A Puea Thai-led government headed by Yingluck Shinawatra, sister of the ousted prime minister, risks backlash from the military and royalists, while a win by the ruling Democrats could provoke more protests by the “red shirts” of the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship.
Campaigning has begun in earnest for Thailand’s general elections scheduled for July 3. Few observers believe the democratic vote will act to reconcile a prolonged political crisis and rising social divisions.
The polls will be the second since a military coup ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in September 2006. Thaksin remains a significant and polarizing factor in Thai politics despite living in self-imposed exile since 2008 to avoid a two-year jail sentence for a corruption conviction.
The elections come in the wake of over five years of debilitating instability that has at times devolved into street violence. Armed exchanges between a pro-Thaksin protest group and security forces last year resulted in 91 mostly civilian fatalities. Neither side has accepted responsibility for the death and destruction.
“There is no scenario from this election that will work,” said David Streckfuss, an independent academic based in northeast Thailand. “No matter what the result is, Thailand’s political crisis will not be over. Round three is coming.”
The divisions are most noticeable in the highly fractured, color-coded protest movements and their competing stances on the elections. For Thailand’s “red shirts”, formally known as the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD), the early elections are long overdue and have been the group’s main rally cry since it began street protests in 2009.
Mostly Thaksin supporters, the protest group views the incumbent Democrat Party-led government of interim prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva as illegitimate because it came to power in a parliamentary vote following the dissolution of the pro-Thaksin People’s Power Party (PPP)-led administration in December 2008. That vote is widely believed to have been influenced from behind the scenes by the military.
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