Abhisit’s U.k. Roots May Prompt Distrust From Thai Rural Voters

[Mali1964]

Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- If new Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva wants to keep his job, he will have to draw on his childhood talent as a mediator to win over the poor rural voters who overwhelmingly spurned his party in last year’s election.

Abhisit, 44, became Thailand’s fourth leader since January when lawmakers elected him yesterday. A graduate of Eton College and the University of Oxford, and a friend of London Mayor Boris Johnson, he replaces Somchai Wongsawat, who was ousted when a court dissolved the People Power Party on Dec. 2 for vote- buying.

The former opposition leader must restore investor confidence shattered by six months of anti-government protests that paralyzed the country, culminating in an eight-day seizure of Bangkok’s airports during the peak tourism season. He faces deep divisions between the elite middle class that backs him and poor farmers who have helped elect parties linked to former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra four times in eight years.

“Abhisit’s from a new generation of Thai leaders, but he’s not without limitations,” said Panitan Wattanayagorn, a political science lecturer at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. “He needs to connect more with the grassroots.”

In the 2007 general election, Abhisit’s Democrat Party won only four of 135 seats in the northeast, the country’s poorest region and home to a third of the electorate. During the protests, he sided with well-to-do royalist demonstrators led by the People’s Alliance for Democracy, a force that helped oust Thaksin and his two successors.

Protest Threat

About 30 lawmakers from the dissolved People Power Party defected to Abhisit yesterday, arguing he would make the country more stable. Protesters had vowed to return to the streets if Puea Thai, the successor to People Power and holder of the most seats in Parliament, had formed another government.

Abhisit was a “taciturn” child, said his mother, Sodsai Vejjajiva. He was head of the class at the elite Satit Chula elementary school in Bangkok, where he acted as an intermediary when other children fought, she said.

“I feel more pity for him,” Sodsai, a medical-school professor, said in an interview after his election yesterday. “We don’t know what we are going into. I would imagine some suffering.”

Thailand’s consumer confidence in November, during the airport closures, fell to the lowest in almost six years. The benchmark SET Index fell 55 percent during the 193-day protest campaign. Since Dec. 3, it has risen 11.3 percent. The country’s economy will probably expand at the slowest pace in 11 years in 2009, the World Bank said last week.

‘Opposition Side’

Political calm will be hard to produce as well. Red-shirted supporters of the ousted government protested violently in front of the 480-seat lower house of Parliament after yesterday’s vote.

“Northeastern people look at Abhisit, other Democrats and the PAD as the same group,” Paijit Srivorakhan, a member of Puea Thai, said in an interview yesterday. “We can’t bring ourselves to accept them. They are on the opposition side.”

In one sign toward potential better relations, Abhisit has rejected some of the demonstrators’ more extreme demands, such as calls for a new political system that dilutes Thaksin’s base of rural voters.

A fan of rock groups Radiohead and R.E.M who drives a BMW, he has been criticized in the Thai press for being aloof. Then- Morgan Stanley analyst Daniel Lian called him a “pretty face” in a 2005 letter. Abhisit says he wouldn’t have gotten elected to Parliament if he couldn’t connect with voters.

“When I am not working, I am sleeping,” he said in an interview last year. “I come from an academic-type background - - I’m supposed to make a bad politician.”

Boris Johnson

Born in northeast England because his father was studying there, Abhisit then spent his early years in Thailand. He returned to the U.K. to attend Eton, which has produced 18 British prime ministers. At Oxford, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, politics and economics and a master’s in economics. Johnson attended both with him.

In 1983, his gap year between Eton and Oxford, Abhisit, known as “Mark” to friends in Britain, invited Johnson to visit. The two traveled around Thailand, to Chiang Mai in the north and to the resort island of Phuket.

The new premier is “a man of intense integrity and of high intellectual gifts,” Johnson said in an e-mailed response to questions.

Abhisit joined the Democrat Party in 1992 and won his first seat in Parliament that year at age 27. He became leader in 2005 after the Democrats lost by a three-to-one margin to Thaksin’s party.

Visiting Protesters

During the demonstrations earlier this year, Abhisit refused to expel Somkiat Pongpaiboon, a party member who had led the protests. He also visited demonstrators after they stormed the prime minister’s office on Aug. 26.

In October, Abhisit joined protest leaders and Queen Sirikit at a funeral for a protester killed in clashes with police. At the time, Abhisit said Somchai should resign to take “responsibility” for the 28-year-old woman’s death.

After protesters seized the airports, the opposition leader offered himself as a negotiator and said Somchai should call an early election. Demonstrators left on Dec. 3 after the court- ordered party dissolution, vowing to return if Abhisit didn’t take over.

His critics see him as someone who won’t disturb the forces that helped oust Thaksin, 59, in 2006 and his allies this year.

“Abhisit is mild, lacking in vision,” said Giles Ji Ungpakorn, a political science lecturer at Chulalongkorn University. “He’s just the right kind of guy for the establishment.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Ten Kate in Bangkok at [email protected] Rattaphol Onsanit in Bangkok at [email protected]

Last Updated: December 15, 2008 16:07 EST

[bkkjames]

Tuesdays are cut and paste day i see.

[mrtoad]

Where in the article does it say that his U.K. roots will cause distrust?

A rather misleading title IMO.