Thai government admits lack of power to renew troubled rice subsidy
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra faces new protests from unpaid farmers over controversial rice buy-up scheme
Thailand’s caretaker government said on Tuesday it did not have the power to renew a rice subsidy scheme when it expires at the end of the month, risking further alienating farmers angry over late payments for their current crop.
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, assailed since November by a largely urban, middle-class protest movement bent on driving her from office, is now facing unrest among her Puea Thai Party’s natural supporters in the countryside, where many farmers have gone unpaid for their rice for months.
Yingluck has led a caretaker administration since December, when she dissolved parliament and called a snap election in an attempt to end the anti-government street protests. As a result, the government’s spending and borrowing powers are heavily curtailed.
“We are just a caretaker government, which has no power to extend any policy. The rice-buying scheme will end automatically on February 28,” Varathep Rattanakorn, a minister in the prime minister’s office, told reporters.
The rice programme was one of the populist policies associated with Yingluck’s brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister central to a stubborn conflict that has divided Thais since he was toppled by the military in 2006.
The pledge to pay farmers a price way above world rice benchmarks helped sweep Yingluck to power in 2011, but the scheme has become mired in allegations of corruption and growing losses that are making it increasingly hard to fund.
