As the trial of former Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra over an extravagant rice subsidy program winds to a close, her rural supporters are resisting attempts by the ruling junta to silence her family’s political machine.
Yingluck and her Puea Thai Party say the trial is politically motivated, aimed at discrediting a populist movement that has won every Thai election since 2001.
Yingluck’s brother, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra first introduced the rice program before he was ousted in a 2006 coup. However, Yingluck took it a step further by offering to buy rice from farmers at up to 50 per cent more than market prices.
Photo: Reuters
The measure helped her win the 2011 general election. However, government losses from the scheme — which also distorted global rice prices — helped fuel protests that led to her removal from power days before the 2014 coup.
If found guilty, Yingluck, like her brother Thaksin, would be disqualified from becoming the country’s leader again.
Thaksin has been living in self-imposed exile for 11 years to avoid serving a two-year sentence over a corrupt land deal.
That has left political circles guessing who would lead the party in the next election, scheduled for next year, and whether that leader could possibly be someone outside the Shinawatra clan, that has dominated the movement until now.
Farmers from the Shinawatra power base in the country’s northeast told reporters they would vote for the Puea Thai Party again in the next election.
“The Yingluck rice scheme made rice farmers prosperous from having a reliable income that came on time,” said Paisan Pachanda, 59, a rice farmer and co-operative leader in Khon Kaen, a major commercial hub that lies on a plateau in the center of the northeast.
“If there’s an election … people in the northeast will still vote for the Puea Thai Party, even if there is no Shinawatra in the party,” he said.
Even the rival Democrat Party concedes that the Puea Thai Party remains unchallenged in the northeast.
“The Puea Thai Party’s political base, its MPs and politicians, have developed strong networks in the northeast,” Democrat Party Deputy Leader Ong-art Klampaiboon said.
“So even if the party changes its leadership it is unlikely that it will affect its strong bonds on the ground,” he said.
Asked about the Puea Thai Party’s popularity, government spokesman Lieutenant General Sansern Kaewkamnerd said: “The people get to decide who they want to represent them.”
Yingluck, whose government was ousted in a 2014 military coup, faces up to 10 years in jail if found guilty of negligence over her role in the rice program.
The last hearing in her two-year long case is to be at a Bangkok court on Friday. A verdict is expected after closing statements are delivered in a few weeks’ time.
“The rice subsidy scheme was a state policy declared to parliament. Yet the charge has been brought against me alone in a criminal case,” Yingluck told reporters in a written reply to questions. “No other government has been charged over its public policies.”
Yingluck, although banned from politics, remains the unofficial face of the party and toured Thailand extensively last year, meeting with rural supporters.
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has made no secret of his disdain for the Shinawatras. In 2010, he favored a heavy-handed approach to an army crackdown on red-shirted Shinawatra supporters that killed more than 90 people.
The junta’s attempts to repress the Shinawatra clan and its movement, and even introduce its own farm subsidies for the politically powerful farmers, are not working, many in the rice fields of the northeast say.
“The more the military pushes the Puea Thai Party the more sympathy the party gets,” Puea Thai Party member Rotcharin Waratsirisophon told reporters in Khon Kaen. “Puea Thai is even more popular now.”
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