Battle for Thai agricultural workers' support heats up

By Max Constant

BANGKOK

A former Thai prime minister turned up at a mall parking lot in a Bangkok suburb for a second consecutive week Friday to smile and pose for selfies as she resold rice she recently purchased from the fields.

In doing so, Yingluck Shinawatra ignored requests from the ruling junta to not exploit a situation which has left Thailand's rice farmers financially crippled.

In a festive yet chaotic atmosphere, thousands turned up to buy directly from the hands of Shinawatra, as provincial agricultural workers -- long the country's largest workforce -- looked on.

Several ex-ministers from the government overthrown by the junta in May 2014 -- Shinawatra's -- also participated in the sale, as their one-time leader -- dressed in black out of respect for the country's recently deceased king -- did her bit for "her" farmers.

The harvest season has arrived, yet the market price has dropped to $143 per ton -- the lowest in decades -- as the agricultural sector feels the effects of low global demand.

Although agriculture represents just 12 percent of the country's GDP, it remains the occupation of 40 percent of the population, making farmers a key constituency for politicians.

All governments -- including the military -- have employed schemes to support rice growers, but in 2001 incoming Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra -- Yingluck's brother -- focused his policies on massive help for rural communities, seducing them with condition-free loans, rice-subsidy schemes and almost free health insurance coverage.

Shinawatra picked up where her brother left off when she became premier in 2011, but an ambitious yet financially disastrous rice subsidy scheme her government implemented cost the country 35 billion baht ($997 million).

The scheme saw the government buy rice at prices 50 percent above market price, but falling prices on the world market left it unable to sell. Critics claimed the scheme was riddled with corruption.

Late last month, the junta ordered Shinawatra to reimburse the 35 billion baht to the country, and it has since announced itself extremely uncomfortable with Shinawatra’s latest initiative.

Earlier this month, junta chief-cum-prime minister Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha said that those who helped rice farmers “must really intend to do so, and not only try to boost their image”.

Gen. Prawit Wongsuwan, the deputy-prime minister-cum defense minister, has argued that if Shinawatra “really wanted to help the farmers, she should buy all the grains from them”.

To further complicate matters, Thailand's military rulers have launched rice schemes of their own, to which Shinawatra has cried foul.

On Nov. 4, Shinawatra -- in court to listen to testimony about her government's own rice scheme -- blasted the junta for its perceived hypocrisy.

"The subsidy plan of this government is no different from my government's rice pledging scheme," she told reporters outside the Bangkok courtroom.

Thailand’s military government has launched two rice schemes worth a total of $1 billion.

Farmers of jasmine rice -- Thailand's most famous and plentiful -- can either receive financial help to store their crop until the market price goes up, or they can sell it immediately to the government at market price and then get some financial support.

The second scheme is similar but targets other varieties of rice.

Shinawatra has 45 days to appeal the order that she reimburse the 35 billion baht and has vowed to fight the charges.

She is also facing criminal charges of negligence and malfeasance with regard to the scheme -- launched in October 2011 as part of her Pheu Thai party election promise -- along with other members of her cabinet.

Shortly after the coup, Shinawatra was impeached and banned from politics for five years in relation to the same scheme.