WITNESS-Thai elections hinge on village ties, money and fear

Hong Kong correspondent Dominic Whiting left Thailand when he was six but has returned often to live and work as an adult, including in the Reuters office in Bangkok. His British father and Thai mother have retired to his mother's home village in the northeast, and when he paid them a visit this past weekend, he enjoyed a taste of grassroots Thai politics.

By Dominic Whiting

PHANA, Thailand (Reuters) - Campaigners handed out leaflets, babies chewed them, a band twanged a folk song and 200 people waited to hear what Thailand's post-coup election would offer a village where cows and pigs live under stilted wooden houses.

Due on stage in the dusty clearing was my mother's cousin, a supporter of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and a candidate for the newly formed People's Power Party (PPP) in the parliamentary poll due December 23.

His main rival from the Democrat Party would follow -- son of a former justice minister and good friend of my grandfather.

I came along to see what was on offer before I voted. On a coincidental visit to see my Thai mother and British father, I had discovered that as a Hong Kong resident I was eligible to vote a week in advance.

The first, fiery, speaker on stage advocated growing cassava for use as a bio-fuel to beat soaring petrol and diesel prices.

Then Chaisri Keela, the PPP candidate, told me he would draw tourists by publicizing the local monkey forest and a 300-year-old temple, built by the hunters and monks who crossed the Mekong River from what is now Laos to establish the village.

As a former member of parliament for Thaksin's disbanded Thai Rak Thai (Thais love Thais) party, he would also continue its popular policies of giving cheap loans and health care to the rural poor -- ideas now adopted by rivals.

"We were first and people trust us to deliver," Chaisri said.

This Lao-speaking village in the rice-growing "emerald triangle" where Thailand, Laos and Cambodia meet is 650 km (400 miles) northeast of Bangkok.

It's a world away from the rivalry between the old-money aristocracy and a new, entrepreneurial elite that paralyzed politics during Thaksin's rule and led to last year's bloodless army coup.

Here and across the countryside local characters, not national party policies, determine votes, proving that personal loyalties will dictate Thailand's future as it struggles to revive consumer confidence and investor interest.

SCARED

The PPP is expected to become the biggest party in the lower house, but analysts say it will fall short of a majority under a new constitution designed to prevent the kind of electoral dominance Thaksin enjoyed.

Other parties might try to form a coalition government excluding the PPP and its Thaksin loyalists. Some analysts fear violence or another coup if the poll fails to deliver stability.

Chaisri's campaign secretary told me he had been intimidated, told to pull over on a dark road by three men in army uniforms, with one pointing an M16 assault rifle in his face before hitting him on the neck with the gun.

"I'm scared. This isn't like any other election I've worked in," said Sombat Wantong, a 20-year veteran of local politics.

The army denied involvement, local media said at the time.

The military-installed government is warning people off accepting money for votes, fearing the hand of Thaksin, a billionaire tycoon who has stayed in the public eye with his purchase of English football club Manchester City.

Vote buying was a stubborn part of Thailand's patronage politics, said Democrat Party candidate Apiwat Ngeunmeun, who believes only education, not the PPP's "get rich quick" message, would solve long-term problems linked to low farm incomes.

No-one offered me money, though the going rate was apparently 300 baht ($9).

"I hope people don't buy votes, but it's not the U.S.," said Apiwat, 31, who studied business in Washington D.C. "People have to work so hard to get so little here. I'm not sure if in my lifetime things are going to change, but I'll try hard to do it."

My grandfather, a village headman who died a decade ago, had campaigned for Apiwat's father as the politician became a local hero by engineering the spin-off of the area into a new province -- at a stroke allowing more money to be funnelled into road construction and a new branch of a national university.

Brought up in Britain, I only received my Thai identity card five years ago and was thrilled to be exercising my democratic right for the first time at a pivotal time in Thailand's history.

When it came to the vote, with my poor reading of Thai, I marked the numbers my father had suggested -- after all, he was a resident who could be affected by any new policies.

Only later did he realize he'd given me the wrong numbers.

($1=33.58 Baht)

(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)