[Thailand] ANTI-POVERTY DRIVE: TV show ‘Thaksin vehicle’

From The Nation Thailand

Academics take dim view of PM’s much-trumpeted crusade to the Northeast. A live television broadcast of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra during his five-day anti-poverty mission to At Samat district in Roi Et province next week is no more than a government strategy to promote the prime minister and will get a negative response, academics said on Thursday. Chat Thai Party leader Banharn Silpa-archa said yesterday that Thaksin might be sincere in his anti-poverty efforts but that it was not a simple matter.

When he was the prime minister, Banharn said, he visited four villages in Suphan Buri and asked the people there about their problems but was unable to solve them in a year.

Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva said he questioned the prime minister’s motives for the visit. He said he believed that the televised activities would be staged by government officials who had already visited and prepared the areas, adding that he was not convinced that anti-poverty activities in At Samat could be applied to other areas.

The prime minister said on Thursday he did not care what people said and would just do his work, and the show would be real.

The five-day, 24-hour show will air on UBC channel 16. It is sponsored by the government and Shin Satellite Plc for broadcast on iPSTAR.

Thaksin said those who would benefit from the workshop would be the poor and no other groups, and the benefits were assured. The pilot project will be an example for eradication of poverty in other areas, he said, and the analysis and resolutions from the mission will provide guidelines for others.

Pirongrong Ramasoota Rananand, a lecturer in Chulalongkorn University’s faculty of communication arts, said the programme would be “cheap-shot populism” by a government trying to promote itself.

The government can manipulate the media and it sees this kind of show as being popular, she said, adding that the prime minister saw himself as a popular figure.

She said the prime minister was trying to create political voyeurism, showing that he did not respect people’s rights to privacy and information access. Instead of becoming informed citizens, people will be asked to believe images constructed by the government, she said, which shows Thaksin is willing to exchange his own privacy for popularity.

However, the broadcast will fall short of being a genuine reality show because the prime minister’s actions will not be spontaneous as he will know the cameras are following him, she said and shooting will only be permitted during working hours.

Ubon Ratchathani Senator Nirun Phitakwatchara said that although the government would set out to create a good image, the show would hurt it because educated middle-class people, the only ones watching pay television, would figure out that Thaksin was not solving the problem in the right manner.

Presentation through the media is just superficial promotion that lets people know they’re doing something, he said, whereas society knows that the problem [of poverty] cannot be solved in an instant but needs a continual and systematic process rather than exhibition, fashion and just one workshop.

Darunee Hirunrak, dean of the communication-arts faculty at University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, said the government must have set up the programme on purpose, but the people would be able to see and evaluate the work of the prime minister during and after the workshop.

The Thai Rak Thai government is excellent at developing marketing strategies, she said, and at using the media and promoting the party. The words “reality show” on their own suggest a marketing strategy to attract the attention of both the people and the media, she added, and the anti-poverty policy is a selling point to the grass roots during the government’s popularity downturn, though despite the promotional concept of reality, professional media producers will be able to carefully construct the presentation.

Political scientist Sukhum Nualsakul said people should not criticise the programme before seeing it, and he expected it to do some good because reality shows in the past had introduced more angles on life, as by letting the rich know how the poor lived and letting normal people learn how blind people coped with life.