Business as usual in Thailand - parliamentarians for sale

A group of leading politicians head for a secret meeting with the powerful army chief as part of a plot to form a new government. But their plans go awry when they get lost in the sprawling military compound. They end up stranded at a gas station and wait for further instructions. A lone soldier on a motorcycle is dispatched to meet the motorcade of party bosses and direct them to their rendezvous. By then, there have been witnesses. By then, tongues have started to wag. Soon, the secret meeting is exposed. This is not the plot of a Thai movie; rather one of many behind-the-scenes deals that have come to light during the past days. They grew in intensity by the week's end, ahead of Monday's extraordinary session to choose a new prime minister. For now, the frontrunner for the premier's stakes is Abhisit Vejjajiva, the clean-cut, youthful-looking opposition leader who had a patrician upbringing. The head of the Democrat Party was born in England and studied at such hallowed institutions as Eton, for his secondary education, and Oxford University. His chances of becoming Thailand's 27th premier -- and the third for this year -- have been strengthened by deals brokered between his party and a group of nearly 40 parliamentarians from the former government, who have pledged to defect. Three smaller parties that were part of the former government's coalition have also thrown their weight behind the Democrats, giving it, for now, the support of 240 out of parliament's 438 sitting legislators. A Thai language newspaper reported that large sums of money were being offered to the defectors. The price for parliamentarians has gone up to ''40 million baht (1.2 million US dollars) per person'' to join the Democrat coalition, revealed the 'Matichon'. But the former governing party, now under the name of Puea Thai (For Thai), has also joined in this latest display of Thailand's parliamentarians-for-sale culture. According to 'The Nation', an English-language daily, 55 million baht (1.6 million U.S. dollars) is being offered to the defectors ''to change their mind.'' ''This is so medieval, so backward,'' a well-connected political insider said, with a hint of disgust in his voice. ''It is all because the powerful players behind Thai politics want to win at any cost. Their faces are being revealed in all the scheming that has gone on. Lots of money is on offer. Lots.'' Such bribery, a feature of this country's struggling democracy, reached new highs after the formation, in 1998, of the Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai–TRT) party by Thaksin Shinawatra. A billionaire telecommunications tycoon, Thaksin's capacity to attract potential candidates for the 2001 elections and retain their loyalty through large offers of cash earned the TRT a sobriquet -- the ''Sucking Party.'' The Democrats conceded heavy defeats during the 2001 and the 2005 polls to the TRT. The Thaksin administration's electoral success was built on the range of its pro-poor policies that it implemented, consequently winning loyal support from the rural poor, and the country's largest constituency. Till that period, no Thai premier had completed a full four-year term in office or won back-to-back elections. But Thaksin and the TRT were forced out of power in a 2006 military coup, the country's 18th. A subsequent ruling by a junta-appointed tribunal dissolved the TRT and banned Thaksin and 110 executives of the party from politics for five years. While the former TRT parliamentarians found a new home in the People Power Party (PPP), the reincarnation of the TRT, Thaksin was shut out further. This year the former premier, now living in exile, was served a two-year jail sentence in the first of many corruption cases filed against him. The Democrat's change in fortunes began soon after the Constitutional Court dissolved the PPP and banned scores of its executives in a Dec. 2 ruling. A handful of leaders from the PPP and two smaller coalition partners were found guilty of election malpractices committed at the December 2007 poll, where the PPP-led six-party coalition won comfortably. The Democrats have also profited after the leaders of the PPP, whose members are now in the Puea Thai party, came under mounting criticism and noisy street protests by a right-wing, pro-royalist movement, the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD). The PAD succeeded in crippling the PPP-led government after it forcefully occupied the prime minister's office in August and then took over Thailand's largest international airport for a week in November. Yet such a shift in his favour still does not mean that the 44-year-old Abhisit is certain of victory. ''Things are still very fluid at the moment. Nobody really knows who is who and what their stand is and how many people there are in each faction,'' says Michael Nelson, a German academic who has written extensively about Thai political parties. ''You can see this from the Democrats. They are extremely nervous.'' ''Even after buying MPs, which is standard procedure here, one can never be sure,'' he added during an interview. ''There are rumors that some MPs have been taken to a safe house in Bangkok and have been locked there to prevent them from being influenced or subjected to lobbying by other parties.'' Yet one outcome that money will not be able to buy is stability for the new government to complete the three more years left in the current term. ''Stability will be the last thing the Thai government will have,'' says Thanet Aphornsuvan, a historian at Bangkok's Thammasat University. ''The new coalition government will be very fragile.''