It's election season in Thailand and a campaign truck is rolling at the crack of dawn through the streets of the northeastern town of Phimai, blaring the slogan "Vote Thaksin, Get Thaksin."
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It's a bit disconcerting, since the Thaksin everyone in Thailand knows is former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted by a 2006 military coup and living in self-imposed exile since 2008 to avoid serving a prison term for a conviction on a conflict of interest charge.
This small-town Thaksin, distributing campaign handbills as he walks ahead of the truck, is a 46-year-old schoolteacher.
He happily explains that sharing his name with the 69-year-old former prime minister is no coincidence, and that he changed his former name - Veerawit Chuajunud - to Thaksin Chuajunud as a vote-getting tactic.
Phimai, in Nakhon Ratchasima province, is in Thailand's poor rural region known as Isan, the heartland of the neglected farmers and villagers who represent the original and still largely loyal base of the former prime minister, a billionaire now living in Dubai.
"I want to grab the attention of the people, making sure that my name is easy to remember. I only have one to two months to campaign, so I decided to change my name to be symbolic," said the candidate in Sunday's general election.
The name-changing tactic may be tricky, but it's not insincere. Phimai's Thaksin is running as a candidate for Pheu Chart, one of several small parties established by allies and supporters of the former prime minister.
There is an established flagship pro-Thaksin party, Pheu Thai, but election laws established by the anti-Thaksin military government targeting the former leader's political machine are aimed at keeping any large party from obtaining a legislative majority. So the pro-Thaksin strategy is to splinter the machine into separate parties that could unite forces after the election.
Name-changing is a tactic to help overcome confusion over political brands, especially for the new, lesser-known satellite parties. It also helps to stand out in a large field of candidates. More than 11,000 are registered for Sunday's vote, compared to just over 2,800 in the last election.
Thaksin Chuajunud is one of 15 candidates from his party who made opportunistic name changes. Most took on the name "Thaksin," but four adopted the name of Thaksin's sister, Yingluck, who became prime minister in 2011 and was forced from office by a controversial court decision just before the military ousted her government in another coup. She also has faced court cases that supporters charge amount to political persecution, and likewise fled into exile.
Australian Associated Press
