Former Thaksin loyalists in Thailand's rural heartland count cost of 'lost decades'

Many are disillusioned by recent years of economic stagnation, broken promises

- Philip Wen

KHON KAEN/UDON THANI - For the past two decades, Thailand's north-east rural heartland has been an electoral stronghold for Thaksin Shinawatra, delivering staunch support for the billionaire businessman's brand of populist politics — even in his absence.

Hundreds of so-called "red-shirt" villages in rice-growing regions across provinces such as Khon Kaen and Udon Thani helped form the base of the pro-Thaksin political movement, with many residents travelling to Bangkok to join mass protests in the wake of Thaksin's removal as prime minister in a 2006 military coup.

But such has been the sharp decline in Thaksin's political fortunes — the 76-year-old was on Sept 9 ordered to serve one year in jail, less than two weeks after his daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra was removed as prime minister — that he risks being abandoned by even his most ardent of voter bases.

"I'm reluctant to vote for Pheu Thai again," said Mr Surat Kaephuang, a 62-year-old shopkeeper in Khon Kaen, referring to the Shinawatras' political party.

"I see Thaksin as part of the establishment now because of all of his dealmaking with the conservatives. He has become part of the problem now."

Wielding policies espousing universal healthcare, affordable housing and poverty alleviation, Thaksin cultivated the previously neglected rural vote to great effect, creating an electoral juggernaut that swept to power in 2001.

He would go on to become a highly polarising figure who would alter the Thai political landscape to such a degree that it set in motion a decades-long rivalry with a royalist, pro-military establishment that saw its hold on political power threatened — a struggle that is still playing out today.

POLITICAL TURBULENCE The rise and fall of Thaksin also signposts two decades of political upheaval, military coups and short-term compromises that have inhibited Thailand from reaching its economic potential, economists and analysts say.