Abhisit walks a political tightrope

16 Jan, 2010
Bangkok Post

Delineating ethical standards for his ministers and a transparent industrial policy for Map Ta Phut are proving testing for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is treading a political tightrope as he grapples with two thorny issues which could define his time in office.

He is balancing difficult choices concerning the ethical standards he can expect of ministers in his coalition and competing interests in the Map Ta Phut industrial estate dispute, argues Nongnuch Singhadecha, a Matichon writer.

Get either one of them wrong and he could head for a nasty fall.

Mr Abhisit must try to avoid making enemies or create conditions that jeopardise the stability of the coalition government, Nongnuch said.

Mr Abhisit's insistence that deputy public health minister Manit Nopamornbodee from the Bhumjaithai Party must resign to show responsibility for the irregular procurement of medical equipment under the Thai Khem Khaeng economic stimulus scheme could create problems with coalition partners.

Public Health Minister Witthaya Kaewparadai, a Democrat, resigned last month to show responsibility.
Nongnuch said that after dragging his feet for several weeks, Mr Manit was forced to follow his boss's lead and himself resign, after Mr Abhisit issued an ultimatum to the Bhumjaithai Party.

He said if Bhumjaithai Party did not replace him with a new candidate, Mr Abhisit would leave the position of deputy public health minister vacant when he submitted a new cabinet list to His Majesty the King.

Mr Manit's resignation puts pressure on the Bhumjaithai Party to lift the ethical standards it expects of ministers to match those of the main coalition party, the Democrats.

The Democrat Party was quick to react when the problem of possible corruption emerged.

The Bhumjaithai Party, however, had to be pressured by the Democrat Party to follow Mr Witthaya's lead.

The Bhumjaithai Party relented because it is not ready to face a general election.

Nongnuch argued that the Bhumjaithai Party could take its revenge at the coming no-confidence debate against the government, which is likely to target mainly Democrat ministers.

Bhumjaithai could allow its MPs a free vote rather than requiring them to vote on coalition lines to support censured Democrat ministers.

If such an unlikely event were to take place, unity between the two main coalition partners would be shattered. The coalition would become unworkable and a general election would have to be called.

Demands by the Democrat Party for clean government and transparency could face opposition from coalition partners, who are likely to resort to dirty politics to replenish their war chests for the next election, Nongnuch argued.

However, if the Democrat Party holds firm in its demand for new ethical standards, it will establish a new political benchmark that succeeding governments will feel obliged to follow.

Another difficult issue for Mr Abhisit concerns the Map Ta Phut industrial estate, after the Supreme Administrative Court issued an order to suspend 65 industrial projects pending health and environment impact studies.

This issue affects the confidence of many companies including the giant PTT, which has several projects worth several billions of baht on the suspended list.

PTT, a listed company on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, has the largest capitalisation of any on the market.

If the Abhisit administration fails to solve the problem in a timely manner, the economy and Thailand's image in the eyes of global investors could suffer.

Last week, Jetro (the Japan External Trade Organisation), representing Japanese investors criticised the government for its failure to foresee the problems.

It said the court's injunction had shaken the confidence of Japanese investors who used to regard Thailand as the premier investment destination in Asia.

Political instability, compounded by the Map Ta Phut issue, had put an end to that perception.

Nongnuch said it was not surprising that international investors had raised concerns about their investment projects being temporarily shuttered because they were used to getting better treatment.

Successive Thai governments had courted them to make sure they brought their money here.

Investors from developed countries knew that if they invested at home, they would face stringent measures to ensure the health of the local community was safeguarded.

The high cost of compliance in those countries helped persuade investors to relocate their industrial plants to less developed countries such as Thailand.

Mr Abhisit, she argued, has a difficult task ahead as he tries to balance the welfare of the local community at Map Ta Phut and placate investors affected by the court's injunction.

The prime minister wants the government to solve the problem in the next two to three months.

Mr Abhisit knows that investors are crucial in lifting the country's economy out of the doldrums.

Even though investors might threaten to relocate their developments to other countries in Asia, Nongnuch believes that as long as Thailand has good infrastructure and tax benefits, these should win them over in the end, even if they have to meet more stringent environmental and health regulations as a result of the Map Ta Phut affair.

Online lottery saga drags on

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva was quick to reject claims that he was protecting vested interests with his decision to can the online lottery, a Thai Rath writer said.

The vested interest claims were made by former deputy prime minister and finance minister Pridiyadhorn Devakula in an article in Matichon Online.

He speculated that Mr Abhisit canned the online lottery to protect financial contributions to his Democrat Party by vendors of the traditional lottery.

MR Pridiyadhorn said traditional lottery vendors were afraid that if the Government Lottery Office (GLO) could run the proposed two- and three-digit online lottery, they would lose influence.

The five big wholesalers who monopolise the sale of the government lottery had driven up the lottery price, forcing buyers to pay nearly 10 baht more for an 80-baht lottery ticket issued by the GLO.

If the two- and three-digit lottery went ahead, patrons might demand the government and the GLO tackle overpriced government lottery tickets. For this reason, they wanted the threat posed by the two- and three-digit lottery averted now.

MR Pridiyadhorn asked, if Mr Abhisit was against the online lottery, why did not he say so earlier?

What made the prime minister reluctant to declare his opposition for so long even though several of his ministers had opposed it?

Mr Abhisit said he was not protecting anyone's interests, and he had opposed the lottery consistently for the past year.

He had asked the secretary-general of the National Economic and Social Development Board, the finance minister and permanent secretary to find a way to scrap the online lottery.

When they failed to come up with anything, the only option left was to declare the government's policy against the lottery.

The Thai Rath writer wondered why MR Pridiyadhorn criticised Mr Abhisit's stance against the lottery when it was MR Pridiyadhorn himself who had proposed abolishing the online lottery when he served under the Surayud Chulanont government.

The Council of State had ruled that the lottery, as carried out by the Thaksin Shinawatra government, was illegal as it was not a traditional lottery endorsed by the Lottery Act.

However, the writer agreed with MR Pridiyadhorn that vendors of the traditional lottery vendors did not want the online lottery to go ahead.

He proposed that the government use online lottery vending machines to sell the six-digit traditional lottery.

That should solve the problem of vendors charging too much for traditional lottery tickets, especially those with "good'' numbers.

The six-digit online lottery sold through vending machines would help curb gambling problems while tackling the problem of overpriced lottery tickets at the same time.