BANGKOK -- If Thai politics has changed since demonstrators ousted a pro-military government in 1992 and set the stage for democratic reforms, you would hardly know it from watching the campaign for this month's Bangkok gubernatorial election.
Public opinion polls show veteran politician Samak Sundaravej way out in front, and if anyone embodies the old-style politics, it is Samak. He is seen as acerbic, hot-tempered, autocratic and right-wing, and at 65 is much older than the "new generation" politicians running against him. A university lecturer who asked if voters wanted a governor who had "blood on his hands" has publicly accused Samak of inciting and justifying the October 1976 massacre of students demonstrating against dictatorship. As interior minister in the rightist government that the military installed after the massacre, Samak closed down newspapers, the lecturer said. Samak also sacked the popularly elected governor of Bangkok and made the post an appointee of the Interior Ministry, the newspaper Matichon (Public Opinion) recently pointed out. (Popular election was reinstated in 1985, by a different government.)
Also, the Prachakorn Thai Party (Thai People's Party) that Samak leads was part of the pro-military coalition government opposed by demonstrators in the 1992 uprising. Thai newspapers said three of Thailand's most notorious bigwigs are backing Samak's gubernatorial campaign; they include a supporter of a 1991 military coup and a police commander who was removed from his post following the summary executions of six drug trafficking suspects in 1996.