Comments

  1. Peter Chuthar says:

    Thaksin is a liar. He never keeps what he said. He used money to buy the votes in the election. He also bought politicians to join his party. He bought senators, judges and used his influence as a prime mister to ask the government offericers to corrupt and acted for his own benefits including his closed relatives and friends. He is a debit to Thailand and to the country in the long run. Many thinks he promised, he was not able to achieve.

  2. yes says:

    I’m pro him because he did manything for rural thais. It’s joke if he became the tyrant. I’m think that thai people being confront with really tyrant now. They’ll knowing about real propaganda that what is it. It’s being influence thai people now, everyday when I’m wake till I’m sleep the medias’ll shoots about the suff-eco campaign all day long. It’s good…….

  3. Thai TV says:

    Number 1, Number 1…
    In case of an other terrorist attack Thailand could rank lower…

  4. FCCNN says:

    the interview was nonsense. How on earth Rivers had thught about asking this clown those questions. It’s like asking the liar of his involvement in a very serious crime. No one with a clear mind would say yes to this kind of question.

  5. Vichai N. says:

    Democracy with unethical players right at the top is democracy lost. Corruption had always been a perennial issue in any democracy. But corruption carried out by the ‘top man’ himself becomes totally unacceptable and when that ‘top man’ appear intent on carrying out his unethical rule indefinitely come what way, coups occur. Philippines, Indonesia, and now Thailand.

    There will be such reruns in the future unless the cycle is broken. In South Korea they broke the cycle by jailing corrupt Presidents, Chun and Roh, and that established ‘rule of law’ as paramount.

    I am disappointed with PM Surayud/General Sonthi that they are being very slow in bringing Thaksin Shinawatra to justice for his alleged many many crimes, the extra-judicial abuses during Y2003 on top of my list (but may at the bottom of the junta’s priorities). I do not mind if Thaksin is jailed for that shady Rajadipisek land deal or for tax shenanigans.

  6. Srithanonchai says:

    “deuad rawn” does not normally translate as “boil,” but as “worried” or “troubled.”

  7. “Who said people with higher education have a higher [political] morality than rural voters? It’s the same false logic that contends rich politicians aren’t corrupt.\”

    If someone is \”saying\” this it would be nice to see a quotation or citation. Do all higher educated Thais have an official set of beliefs or official spokespeople, like Sonthi? Or do their beliefs stem from old comfortable traditions?

    Does anyone contend that rich politicians aren\’t corrupt? Isn\’t political apathy a better explanation? If things aren\’t that bad, it\’s easier to do nothing.

    In the university I worked at there was certainly no one asking any questions like this. Unthinkable. In fact, the only foreigner that started thinking along these lines was told by his Thai supervisor that the president could \”crush him with one finger.\” Not a very productive line of inquiry.

    \”It was time for the \’educated\’ middle class to stop apologising for it, stop asking others to fix it and start demanding that the electoral process and other democratic checks and balances be respected, he said.\”

    Maybe if the academics studied empirically who exactly this elusive \”educated middle class\” is, they would know better who they are lecturing to and could provide more convincing arguments and solutions.

  8. IMHO It simply hasn’t been worth it for most middle classes in most countries in most situations, South Korea (1980-1987) being a notable exception: “a vocal civil society emerged that led to strong protests against authoritarian rule. Composed primarily of university students and labor unions.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_Korea#Fifth_Republic

    Export driven growth under Park Chung Hee was like putting Korean society in a pressure cooker and turning up the heat.

    The current government seems to be trying to cool society down and return it to some previous comfy status-quo, hardly the material that revolution is made of. (the tv news uses the phrase “tham hai prachachon deuad rawn” , make Thai citizens boil (emotionally?), referring to the effect of Thaksin’s comments and meanderings)

  9. Thanks for the link.

    This should provide historical context.

  10. Srithanonchai says:

    It depends on the conceptions of “farmers” and “poverty,” and the definition of the “poverty line.”

  11. Chut says:

    Sufficiency seemed to be almost everything. Last December, we spottedn a “mama cup instant noodle” with a quote saying Pa Saak Dam is sufficiency economy.

    Royal initiated projects which asked people to grow, out of their faith, avocado, strawberry and raise foreign fish resemble contract farming for me. Who said they would always grow what they eat.

    A list of products that have been distributed and marketedfrom a royal brand include: sprouting brocolli, rainbow trout, savoy cabbage, etc. The project change the pattern of agriculture for community consumption to crash crops contract farming that would feed people in the cities who would consume it.

    At the airport, I always consume fresh garden sald from Chiang Mai at one of the outlet at 25-30 baht a plate, wondering if the farmerswill eatsomething like this. Thing chages, they might eat it, abandoning naam prik for iceberg lettuce and chicory zuckerhut.

  12. Johpa says:

    I stand corrected as to the percentage employed in agriculture if the data above is indeed true. I suppose my perspective was perhaps blinded by my time in Thailand having been spent, for the greater part, amongst a farming population. And we will just have to agree to disagree as to whether the reported 40% includes “relatively few” poor farmers or a significant number of poor farmers.

  13. polo says:

    Unfortunately Yos Santasombat also had this to say in the piece which suggests he himself doesn’t get electoral democracy — that elections (not coups) are the way voters correct errors, even one’s they made at the voting booth:

    “”Suppose we have a new constitution, and there is an election. We may get Chuan [Leekpai] or Abhisit [Vejjajiva], the very same people whom Thais sought to replace with Thaksin six years ago,” said Yos. “What good will that do us?””

    Here Yos is saying that having rejected Chuan and Abhisit in the past, then electing them would be some kind of setback to democracy — only because they are part of the “political elite”. That’s absurd, and even moreso if you believe Thaksin used his money to win office.

    What he is advocating is just middle-calss dreaming of a “Mr Smith Goes to Washington” scenario. Even the new US star Barack Obama has been in politics for over a decade.

  14. Srithanonchai says:

    Really too bad that the academics, journalists, and activists who like to criticize those other goups are not normally any better than they are. They simply are fellow Thais.

  15. Nirut says:

    There is accounting for how the junta, Thaksin or anyone operates on the ground as it is here where the fundamentals of political logic and practice occur in a daily sense and with out the nitty gritty of the daily politicing the rest falls apart. the corporatisiation of local political institutions to Thai Rak Thai and the buyng of support where smaller political bodies join the juggernaught are quite telling in terms of the way they constructed popularity as their catch cry of legitimacy. The Junta is not doing this rather they are muting and suppressing many of these groups and the persuasion of these groups to be still is fundamentally different to how they were brought into the fold with Thai rak thai. I have tried to argue here on numerous occassions for a an interest in the local level wheelings and dealings that are pivotal to the outcome of Thai rak thai or Junta popularity/legitimacy but have failed to arouse much interest except at some stage from James who is interested in migration and labour. The power of the sterotypes of “vote buying and corruption” on the imaginations of th contributers to this blog and the very western centric view of what this is and how it works i sa difficult one to overcome. In fact anything much critical seems to be the exception than the rule to the already preset parameters as to what constitues an issue and what to do about or how to engage with it.

    I thin the constitutions that are a dime a dozen here in Thailand are not particulalry helpful sources of information or mandates of practice as they are touted to be and this is a political reality of Thailand. Power and political relations are structured according to logics and patterns that precede and do not account full for the dictates of constitutions hence the large numer in the past 50 odd years. The a-historical approach to the study of the situation is a concern as a central university site such as this should be more engaged with how thing shave come to be not just how they are. .while I think the site is invaluable in bringing academic and non academic views into discussion and vice versa and vice versa some vigillance is necessary.

    The bette ror not better is a very partial take on things and does limit our appraisal to normative notions leaing little room for appreciating the actualalit of situations.

  16. anon says:

    Nirut, is there any accounting for just how the junta operates on the ground and how they have lied to the people and censored the media?

    You might not call it democracy, and Thaksin and the 1997 constitution might not have been perfect, but they were much better than the junta and the 2006 constitution.

  17. Srithanonchai says:

    P.S. II: Just for a comparison in time > 20 years ago, the picture was quite different. At that time, of the total labor force of 27.6 million people, 66.4% worked in agriculture, 11.4% in industry, and 22.2% in services. These figures are for the wet season (see table 2.3 in Warr, The Thai Economy in Transition).

  18. Srithanonchai says:

    P.S.: The review can be downloaded at http://www.bangkokpost.com/economicreviews.html. The statistics are from the section “Facts and Figures.”

  19. Srithanonchai says:

    Khun Johpa, please have a look at p. 8 of Bangkok Post’s Economic Review, Year-End 2006. There you will find a table on “Employment by Industry.” It lists 35.5 million people as being employed. The agricultural sector accounts for 13.7 million people (39%), while non-agricultural occupations account for 21.8 million people, or 61%.

  20. Jay Johnson says:

    Although the blog is new and posts are a bit scattered, the blog is authentically “Sulak”. Please bare with us as we collect new content. Ajarn Sulak’s blog will eventually be a decent place to follow his ongoing activism, and keep track of events taking place within his organizations.