Unlocking the potential within

Unlocking the potential within

Transgender candidate Pauline Ngarmpring wants fair deal for all

Campaigning on the Bangkok streets into the night, Mahachon Party transgender candidate stresses the party platform of human rights and gender equality. (AP photo)
Campaigning on the Bangkok streets into the night, Mahachon Party transgender candidate stresses the party platform of human rights and gender equality. (AP photo)

With six million openly LGBT people scattered across the country, the community is large enough to encourage political parties to draw up policy platforms pitched at this group to woo their support.

But Mahachon Party has taken the issue a step further by putting forward a 52-year-old transgender woman Pauline Ngarmpring as one of its prime ministerial candidates and the country's first transgender person to bid for the highest political office.

Ms Pauline, however, insists that while the party expects to appeal to the LGBT community, it is running on a platform of gender equality. She says the issue should be part of every party's policy platform and, in her view, the country needs better laws to safeguard human rights and equality.

"We're working for people across the spectrum. We're not here to protect the rights of transgender or LGBT people alone. We want to push for equality in every aspect, especially economic equality," she said.

According to Ms Pauline, who has helped draft the party's strategies and policies, people are not born equal, so they should be given opportunities or equal access to resources which will help them develop and realise their potential.

The rights and welfare of sex workers are high on Mahachon Party's agenda. The party will push for amendments to the prostitution suppression law to decriminalise sex workers and recognise them as employees.

Sex workers, like other members of society, can pay taxes and join the social security system in which they are protected from abuse and mistreatment by business owners or corrupt state officials, she said.

Mahachon Party has a wide range of policies it wants to push. The party does not support minimum wages, as they regard them as too meagre; it prefers what Ms Pauline calls a "fair wage system".

"Labour is not a cost and employees are more like partners. Minimum wages are not living wages. We have yet to work on the figures but basically, workers should be paid in accordance with their skills," she said.

Decentralisation also needs a bigger push to give local administrative bodies more say in budget planning and spending.

On development and promotion, the party advocates a free education programme from primary schools all the way to colleges with graduates receiving paid job training at government agencies or state enterprises for a year.

As a former sports promoter widely recognised in Thailand, she said there is much that can be done to promote sports and tourism together rather than handling them separately as is the case now. Sport has the potential to bring in tourists and boost the economy.

Asked why she decided to enter politics, Ms Pauline said that as a college student, she alternated between political speeches and football games. Her interest in politics grew more as she became a journalist after graduating.

After graduating from Bangkok University's mass communications faculty, Ms Pauline, then known as Pinit, joined the Bangkok Post as a business reporter. She worked for the newspaper for seven years before moving on to other businesses including advertising and real estate. Her area of expertise was public relations and communications.

Ms Pauline said politicians had approached her when she was still known as Pinit but she decided not to go down that path as a bigger decision in her life was pending -- that was to come out as a transgender person.

After two marriages and two children -- a 24-year-old son and five-year-old daughter -- Ms Pauline started taking hormones in 2013 with the support from ex-spouses and her children. When her restaurant business in Chumphon was good enough for her son to supervise, she went to the US for a sex change operation.

Ms Pauline was recruited last November by Mahachon Party leader Apirak Sirinawin, the only party MP candidate who won the 2011 general election. She was asked to draft strategies and policies and accepted the job without hesitation.

Some parties did ask her about her views on gender diversity but they did not make a formal invitation for her to join them. "I like working for a small party. It gives me an opportunity to try everything and take up challenges," she said.

Ms Pauline also applied as a party-list candidate for the Mahachon Party and she earned the fifth place on the party list, but the Election Commission (EC) did not endorse her MP candidacy. She is appealing against the EC's decision with the Supreme Court's Election Cases Division.

"I am ready for political work. There is no past to hide or stories to uncover. Some politicians may have something to hide, but Pauline has none. All I have is knowledge and expertise I intend to put to good use," she said.

The Mahachon Party, founded by the late deputy prime minister Maj Gen Sanan Kachornprasart, has fielded a total of 199 candidates in the 500-member House. As politics is being divided into the pro-democracy and pro-regime camps, Ms Pauline said Mahachon Party is happy to work with whichever one receives the people's mandate.

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