While they are there they might look at the August 2009 post on solidarity building with trades unions abroad. I will confess to being a little disappointed with a New Mandala readership that can spawn 58 comments on this topic but raise only two for the 17 June 2010 posting by Andrew Brown on the unions.
Trades unions have got to be a major force in the eventual transformation of Thai society and I know that practical comments on this and other issues are appreciated by the players in the drama.
I have a friend who was a student at the Technical College (High School) in Trad city.
On the first day of the airport sit-in, by the yellow shirts, buses arrived and students were told that they would get free food, round trip bus transport, and 500 baht a day for the sit-in. Several busloads left from the technical college for the airport.
He went. He did not really care about the rally or politics. But he said the 500 baht a day pretty much paid for his next semester tuition bill at the college. (Around 4000 baht).
Trad is a yellow city probably owing to the close proximity to Cambodia and the influence of the military in the area.
The content of the article aside, I don’t think this title (even from Pink Floyd) belongs here. It doesn’t lift up the higher ideals and promote the kind of exchange we are seeking here.
Thank you so much. For those of us who live in Thailand(Isarn) and are subjected to the lies and hypocrisy of the Thai media,you are a voice desperately needed. May you go from strength to strength .
What I wrote earlier deleted from my mobile. Well the killing and maiming were done by both sides. Can’t the watermelon sniper be s shooting for reward like in Thai temple fair. The Nation photographer looked like he was aiming his rifle with scope when shooting pictures. Cres said the soldiers are shooting legs. He was hit there. This was the first time soldiers had to fight a equally well-armed force and getting killed during a crackdown on Apr 10. For Thaksin stooges they have been selling snake oil from day one.
Most of my Issarn friends live for to-day. They told me they will vote for Thaksin if he was ten as rotten. His network of ‘hua kanen’ or canvassers always bid highest. The cash comes like lottery win ie. post ballot count.
He is up to his monkey business again. Top monkey gets all the sex. He seems to agree with de facto leader of Chart Thai Pattana Party China-born Banharn Silapacha who once said: “You will starve to death if you’re not on the govt bench.!” And Newin Chidchob holds the key to the backdoor of Thaksin crucial NE votes. The Democrats has keys to Newin’s secret chambers. Banharn and Newin’s balls are in the Democrats’ hands with Rakesh Saxena back in town for the Bangkok Bank of Commerce case.
Thaksin has to face the music if there is concrete evidence that he paid for the tune in the billions of ‘baths’
He is the poor monkey trying to get back the top. All his firebrand leader are micro managing for him. While his outside spin doctor writes and gives interviews to cover up for him.
You can’t deny the fact he is a great politician. But, if you are not against him like his followers, then he is a stateman. I never bend the law! Total allegation! Righteous indignation?
Reds made their entrance some nine months after the coup in a grand manner – tens of thousands bussed in with a big stage and Thaksin first phone in as the main draw, and the leaders recruited from his cabinet were all lined up already.
The question is whether they graduated into a genuine people movement or not. I don’t think they did even though they made big efforts to encourage bottom up sentiments.
So far the agenda, financing and leadership are still top-down and foot soldiers still think and talk strictly along party lines on every popular issue.
Here from the (Plainfield, C.T.) US on 23 June 2010, I called Thai Pol. Lt. Sattamete at Phahol Yothin police station (mobile Mobile: 0817748023, to ask about progress of my case, as I had earlier been told it had been referred to the prosecutor’s office. This case is the original Akbar Khan “he defamed me online” allegation against me, where neither Khan nor police once contacted me in objection to the presence of the material.
Police have confirmed they have recommended that the prosecutor send the case to court for prosecution. My son and wife are representing me temporarily on July 5 for a meeting with the prosecutor for what is supposedly a “rap saab” meeting. I am not sure whether the prosecutor will inform them I will be prosecuted, or that the case has gotten this far and the next step is yet to be decided.
Amazing how police in Thailand can’t solve mysteries of how prisoners hang themselves with shoe laces while in police custody, but can spend a year tracing down complaints by two of Thailand’s amazing personalities.
This question has already been answered several times. Your “test” for legitimacy is logically flawed because it already assumes that people are being primarily motivated by money when it is really just a hygiene factor.
OK Kaiser I will go along with it. So –
In what other Thai protest or anywhere in the world has a legitimate pro-democracy movement paid a hygiene factor to its supporters to protest for weeks on end with the money coming from, in the main, one man and his family?
I’m willing to be convinced, but the problem is I visited the rally in May so I saw who was there, I read the letter from the priest in Klong Toey, which so far nobody has accused of being a fake, and I heard what was said, or rather what Jataporn didn’t say, during the recent no confidence debate.
Comment 39 : “Third, it was always publicly announced on the stage who donated what. There is nothing to hide about this. ”
Are you saying you are credulous enough to believe the veracity of this announcement?
That said, having both 1) a grievance and 2) being paid to voice that grievance are not mutually exclusive.
But when the ‘paymaster’ has a different objective than that of the ‘grieved party’ in having the grievance heard, that is a pretty big conflict-of-interest to an objective observer. The objective observer might even be calling for a serious gut-check by the paid protester with the grievance, asking the grieved party whether this is the correct means to his or her end?
>But a test would be when in Thailand, or where else in the world, has a legitimate pro-democracy movement paid its supporters to protest for weeks on end with the money coming from, in the main, one man and his family?
particularly…
1) Affirming The Consequent
2) Moving The Goalposts
3) Argument By Repetition
This question has already been answered several times. Your “test” for legitimacy is logically flawed because it already assumes that people are being primarily motivated by money when it is really just a hygiene factor.
Pink Floyd aside, Andrew, aren’t you getting a little overheated with your complaint and your language? You sound shocked yourself at the government action, and that’s strange, after all that has gone on for the past five years. Shock at the obvious from a seasoned academic?
How can you “find it hard to see the point” of the government’s actions and expressions? Why do you find it necessary to analyse the costs of rallies and campaigns?
“The point” is exceedingly obvious, as commenters have shown. It’s not an issue of the numbers at all. They could be millions, they could be billions of baht. Who cares?
What’s important, and obvious, is that the government is building its case against Thaksin et al, but mainly Thaksin. How it is doing it is obvious. Why it is doing it is obvious. (How it might get away with this, not so obvious — since it requires to some extent Thailand convincing other governments that terrorism was involved. )
Not hard to see the point… unless you’ve lost the ability to observe the whole playing field.
Individual votes are probably impossible to verify in every vote buying case but the canvassers operate with large numbers.
They know how many voters they are responsible for, they know how much they spend and on how many people, and, with experience, they should know how many votes will turn up eventually, discounting for smart assess who take the money but vote differently.
In some places they don’t even bother, in some places they spend the money just to keep up with the Joneses – other political parties.
I agree with those who claim that significance of this traditional vote buying is diminishing and Thaksin played an important part in it but he also invented, adopted or perfected other, more effective and more expensive ways to influence the election results.
Andrew (no number)
Now I actually carried out a small experiment, hypothetically of course, on the amount of money the red shirts could have collected from donations during the rally, all monies collected before that would have been cream. I’m also a bit conservative in many areas, but here’s what I came up with: I wrote a fictitious list of Thai names with amounts ranging from 100 to 1,000 baht next to their names with 200 being the mean. I then read the list aloud for 1 minute. The result was a total of 3,600 baht, so I multiplied that by 60 to get money per hour. Total so far 216,000 baht. Now the readings went for 24 hours a day, but being conservative, let’s say 20 hours, that will give time for the speakers to make mistakes, catch their breath etc. So now the total is 4,320,000 a day at the very conservative mean of 3,600 baht a minute.
Now the protest ran for 70 days, or so says Andrew, but me being conservative, let’s say for 60 days (allowing for off air time, bullets flying, etc). Now here I struck a problem, my calculator doesn’t have that many numbers, but me being old and having been taught maths the right way I came up with the following figure 259,200,000 and that is just from donations with a mean of 200 baht per person.
Allowing for large donations, and there were many, allowing for donated food, and there was much, allowing for additional expenses such as petrol bombs, shanghais (catapults) – ammunition for said shanghais, used tyres, free for the taking, that really is an impressive figure.
In fact my figures are very very conservative. I recall some “farangs” saying they gave between 5,000 to 10,000 baht and didn’t want any publicity at all, not even the “anonymous” acknowledgement.
So Andrew, matching your 500 baht with my figures, I think we may have paid for the rally without Thaksin’s money being used.
If this is the case, then Andrew and I will accept jointly, with great modesty, the Nobel Prize for economics (political protest funding).
Tarrin – my aim in asking you how it works is not to discredit you but to deepen the discussion. How it works is crucial. There is a big difference between (1) giving someone money in the hope that they will then do something in return and (2) actually buying something. Just think about various transactions in your own life and the distinction should be clear. (If I can be a bit technical – anthropologists call this the distinction between gift exchange and commodity exchange). So it is important that we know, somewhat precisely, how these transactions operate in particular contexts (especially in the context of a secret ballot). Is it really “buying”?
Are you implying that Pongpat was PAID to deliver his reception speech?
Or do you want me to acknowledge that Thai famous loyalty to the king-religion-nation didn’t come free?
Of course it didn’t.
That’s just diverting the discussion, though.
Reds WERE indoctrinated and it DID cost a lot of money.
Now DSI is going for the financiers, using the law amendment that was originally designed to deal with PAD – those who pay for actions that lead to big financial losses etc should be tried, too.
That’s how they plan to formulate their terrorism charges.
I got that from the interview with DSI, no independent confirmation yet.
I have seen a couple of suggestions in this forum alone as to how it happens, I shouldn’t need to answer such a question that its sole purpose is to discredit myself. There are many ways it happens and to ask how I think it happens is cocky and arrogant and basically saying you don’t know shit compared to myself and you are not even worth replying to.
To discredit me with the answering of a question with a question, ignores the fact that vote buying is rampant in Thailand.
I asked a question about Andrew being skeptical of seeing any proof of headmen being able to sway votes. Politicians have been banned on allegations of vote buying, so I would actually put the onus on anyone who discredits it as irrelevant and untrue.
If they refuse, then they must condone or selectively ignore the fact that it is seen as acceptable by the politicians in charge of the country. I personally know people who have voted based on payment, I can’t give the armchair experts the reports or pie charts to back this up.
Andrew,
I will read your article.
In the meantime, vote buy accusations have been thrown by both sides and both sides have been penalised with bannings.
The problem is that it is not an means to an end. It is exploiting the poor by way of their lack of education and hand to mouth attitude, of course not all are like this and I know many who are very alert to it and try to not fall for the cheap sell out. There are also many who would vote for the party/person anyway and just take the money or alcohol regardless as a face gesture.
Ask yourself, would you accept a days or even a weeks wage to vote for a political party you normally would not? I know people here in Australia that would. It is straight up and down exploitation of the marginal difference of those who are indifferent to the political spectrum, wherever it happens.
It reads like “1001 easy ways to buy votes in Thailand”.
If big money can manipulate the elections it’s pointless to talk about results as the “will of the people”, and even if the public at large accepts the results, warts-and-all, many can’t stand when this “electoral legitimacy” is being used as a defense of personal corruption, as was the case with Thaksin.
Andrew refuses to even acknowledge the question of vote buying swaying national elections, is he refusing to acknowledge it as a factor of Thai politics?
Have a look at my article on the “rural constitution” which attempts to put the issue of “vote buying” (a very imprecise term) into context. In terms of its impact on Thai politics – I have no doubt that cash distributions are one of the factors that voters take into consideration when they cast their vote. But by far the most important, and disturbing, impact of the “vote buying” discourse is that it is consistently being used to justify the overturning of electoral decisions. Those who consistently shout “vote buying” to undermine the validity of people’s choices seem determined to drive people towards more radical forms of action. The constant belittling of voters with the charge of vote buying is serving the interests of extremists. If you are not willing to accept the warts-and-all way people vote in Thailand then what form of political participation will you accept?
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Money – don’t give me that do goody good bullshit
Anyone who responds to Nganadeeleg’s post 28 by following up
http://timeupthailand.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-i-dont-love-king.html will be amply rewarded.
While they are there they might look at the August 2009 post on solidarity building with trades unions abroad. I will confess to being a little disappointed with a New Mandala readership that can spawn 58 comments on this topic but raise only two for the 17 June 2010 posting by Andrew Brown on the unions.
Trades unions have got to be a major force in the eventual transformation of Thai society and I know that practical comments on this and other issues are appreciated by the players in the drama.
Money – don’t give me that do goody good bullshit
I have a friend who was a student at the Technical College (High School) in Trad city.
On the first day of the airport sit-in, by the yellow shirts, buses arrived and students were told that they would get free food, round trip bus transport, and 500 baht a day for the sit-in. Several busloads left from the technical college for the airport.
He went. He did not really care about the rally or politics. But he said the 500 baht a day pretty much paid for his next semester tuition bill at the college. (Around 4000 baht).
Trad is a yellow city probably owing to the close proximity to Cambodia and the influence of the military in the area.
Money – don’t give me that do goody good bullshit
The content of the article aside, I don’t think this title (even from Pink Floyd) belongs here. It doesn’t lift up the higher ideals and promote the kind of exchange we are seeking here.
We can use that language after work! 🙂
New Mandala turns four
Thank you so much. For those of us who live in Thailand(Isarn) and are subjected to the lies and hypocrisy of the Thai media,you are a voice desperately needed. May you go from strength to strength .
Money – don’t give me that do goody good bullshit
What I wrote earlier deleted from my mobile. Well the killing and maiming were done by both sides. Can’t the watermelon sniper be s shooting for reward like in Thai temple fair. The Nation photographer looked like he was aiming his rifle with scope when shooting pictures. Cres said the soldiers are shooting legs. He was hit there. This was the first time soldiers had to fight a equally well-armed force and getting killed during a crackdown on Apr 10. For Thaksin stooges they have been selling snake oil from day one.
Most of my Issarn friends live for to-day. They told me they will vote for Thaksin if he was ten as rotten. His network of ‘hua kanen’ or canvassers always bid highest. The cash comes like lottery win ie. post ballot count.
He is up to his monkey business again. Top monkey gets all the sex. He seems to agree with de facto leader of Chart Thai Pattana Party China-born Banharn Silapacha who once said: “You will starve to death if you’re not on the govt bench.!” And Newin Chidchob holds the key to the backdoor of Thaksin crucial NE votes. The Democrats has keys to Newin’s secret chambers. Banharn and Newin’s balls are in the Democrats’ hands with Rakesh Saxena back in town for the Bangkok Bank of Commerce case.
Thaksin has to face the music if there is concrete evidence that he paid for the tune in the billions of ‘baths’
He is the poor monkey trying to get back the top. All his firebrand leader are micro managing for him. While his outside spin doctor writes and gives interviews to cover up for him.
You can’t deny the fact he is a great politician. But, if you are not against him like his followers, then he is a stateman. I never bend the law! Total allegation! Righteous indignation?
Money – don’t give me that do goody good bullshit
Wester #56,
Reds made their entrance some nine months after the coup in a grand manner – tens of thousands bussed in with a big stage and Thaksin first phone in as the main draw, and the leaders recruited from his cabinet were all lined up already.
The question is whether they graduated into a genuine people movement or not. I don’t think they did even though they made big efforts to encourage bottom up sentiments.
So far the agenda, financing and leadership are still top-down and foot soldiers still think and talk strictly along party lines on every popular issue.
Thailand in crisis: Episode 4
Update on my case
Here from the (Plainfield, C.T.) US on 23 June 2010, I called Thai Pol. Lt. Sattamete at Phahol Yothin police station (mobile Mobile: 0817748023, to ask about progress of my case, as I had earlier been told it had been referred to the prosecutor’s office. This case is the original Akbar Khan “he defamed me online” allegation against me, where neither Khan nor police once contacted me in objection to the presence of the material.
Police have confirmed they have recommended that the prosecutor send the case to court for prosecution. My son and wife are representing me temporarily on July 5 for a meeting with the prosecutor for what is supposedly a “rap saab” meeting. I am not sure whether the prosecutor will inform them I will be prosecuted, or that the case has gotten this far and the next step is yet to be decided.
Amazing how police in Thailand can’t solve mysteries of how prisoners hang themselves with shoe laces while in police custody, but can spend a year tracing down complaints by two of Thailand’s amazing personalities.
Frank G Anderson
6/24/2010
Money – don’t give me that do goody good bullshit
Jim Taylor #45: Your Thaienews link must be worth reading! How do I know? “Did you mean: www. mict. go. th”
Money – don’t give me that do goody good bullshit
Kaiser – 57
This question has already been answered several times. Your “test” for legitimacy is logically flawed because it already assumes that people are being primarily motivated by money when it is really just a hygiene factor.
OK Kaiser I will go along with it. So –
In what other Thai protest or anywhere in the world has a legitimate pro-democracy movement paid a hygiene factor to its supporters to protest for weeks on end with the money coming from, in the main, one man and his family?
I’m willing to be convinced, but the problem is I visited the rally in May so I saw who was there, I read the letter from the priest in Klong Toey, which so far nobody has accused of being a fake, and I heard what was said, or rather what Jataporn didn’t say, during the recent no confidence debate.
Money – don’t give me that do goody good bullshit
Comment 39 : “Third, it was always publicly announced on the stage who donated what. There is nothing to hide about this. ”
Are you saying you are credulous enough to believe the veracity of this announcement?
That said, having both 1) a grievance and 2) being paid to voice that grievance are not mutually exclusive.
But when the ‘paymaster’ has a different objective than that of the ‘grieved party’ in having the grievance heard, that is a pretty big conflict-of-interest to an objective observer. The objective observer might even be calling for a serious gut-check by the paid protester with the grievance, asking the grieved party whether this is the correct means to his or her end?
Money – don’t give me that do goody good bullshit
>But a test would be when in Thailand, or where else in the world, has a legitimate pro-democracy movement paid its supporters to protest for weeks on end with the money coming from, in the main, one man and his family?
Les you need to study http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html
particularly…
1) Affirming The Consequent
2) Moving The Goalposts
3) Argument By Repetition
This question has already been answered several times. Your “test” for legitimacy is logically flawed because it already assumes that people are being primarily motivated by money when it is really just a hygiene factor.
Money – don’t give me that do goody good bullshit
To think that the reds are a movement created out of whole cloth and financed from scratch is delusional.
What planet are these people living on?
Money – don’t give me that do goody good bullshit
Pink Floyd aside, Andrew, aren’t you getting a little overheated with your complaint and your language? You sound shocked yourself at the government action, and that’s strange, after all that has gone on for the past five years. Shock at the obvious from a seasoned academic?
How can you “find it hard to see the point” of the government’s actions and expressions? Why do you find it necessary to analyse the costs of rallies and campaigns?
“The point” is exceedingly obvious, as commenters have shown. It’s not an issue of the numbers at all. They could be millions, they could be billions of baht. Who cares?
What’s important, and obvious, is that the government is building its case against Thaksin et al, but mainly Thaksin. How it is doing it is obvious. Why it is doing it is obvious. (How it might get away with this, not so obvious — since it requires to some extent Thailand convincing other governments that terrorism was involved. )
Not hard to see the point… unless you’ve lost the ability to observe the whole playing field.
Thailand in crisis: Episode 4
Individual votes are probably impossible to verify in every vote buying case but the canvassers operate with large numbers.
They know how many voters they are responsible for, they know how much they spend and on how many people, and, with experience, they should know how many votes will turn up eventually, discounting for smart assess who take the money but vote differently.
In some places they don’t even bother, in some places they spend the money just to keep up with the Joneses – other political parties.
I agree with those who claim that significance of this traditional vote buying is diminishing and Thaksin played an important part in it but he also invented, adopted or perfected other, more effective and more expensive ways to influence the election results.
Money – don’t give me that do goody good bullshit
Andrew (no number)
Now I actually carried out a small experiment, hypothetically of course, on the amount of money the red shirts could have collected from donations during the rally, all monies collected before that would have been cream. I’m also a bit conservative in many areas, but here’s what I came up with: I wrote a fictitious list of Thai names with amounts ranging from 100 to 1,000 baht next to their names with 200 being the mean. I then read the list aloud for 1 minute. The result was a total of 3,600 baht, so I multiplied that by 60 to get money per hour. Total so far 216,000 baht. Now the readings went for 24 hours a day, but being conservative, let’s say 20 hours, that will give time for the speakers to make mistakes, catch their breath etc. So now the total is 4,320,000 a day at the very conservative mean of 3,600 baht a minute.
Now the protest ran for 70 days, or so says Andrew, but me being conservative, let’s say for 60 days (allowing for off air time, bullets flying, etc). Now here I struck a problem, my calculator doesn’t have that many numbers, but me being old and having been taught maths the right way I came up with the following figure 259,200,000 and that is just from donations with a mean of 200 baht per person.
Allowing for large donations, and there were many, allowing for donated food, and there was much, allowing for additional expenses such as petrol bombs, shanghais (catapults) – ammunition for said shanghais, used tyres, free for the taking, that really is an impressive figure.
In fact my figures are very very conservative. I recall some “farangs” saying they gave between 5,000 to 10,000 baht and didn’t want any publicity at all, not even the “anonymous” acknowledgement.
So Andrew, matching your 500 baht with my figures, I think we may have paid for the rally without Thaksin’s money being used.
If this is the case, then Andrew and I will accept jointly, with great modesty, the Nobel Prize for economics (political protest funding).
Thailand in crisis: Episode 4
Tarrin – my aim in asking you how it works is not to discredit you but to deepen the discussion. How it works is crucial. There is a big difference between (1) giving someone money in the hope that they will then do something in return and (2) actually buying something. Just think about various transactions in your own life and the distinction should be clear. (If I can be a bit technical – anthropologists call this the distinction between gift exchange and commodity exchange). So it is important that we know, somewhat precisely, how these transactions operate in particular contexts (especially in the context of a secret ballot). Is it really “buying”?
Money – don’t give me that do goody good bullshit
Tarrin #48,
Are you implying that Pongpat was PAID to deliver his reception speech?
Or do you want me to acknowledge that Thai famous loyalty to the king-religion-nation didn’t come free?
Of course it didn’t.
That’s just diverting the discussion, though.
Reds WERE indoctrinated and it DID cost a lot of money.
Now DSI is going for the financiers, using the law amendment that was originally designed to deal with PAD – those who pay for actions that lead to big financial losses etc should be tried, too.
That’s how they plan to formulate their terrorism charges.
I got that from the interview with DSI, no independent confirmation yet.
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/2010/06/23/politics/Terrorism-charges-financing-case-put-justice-syste-30132234.html
Thailand in crisis: Episode 4
Tarrin,
I have seen a couple of suggestions in this forum alone as to how it happens, I shouldn’t need to answer such a question that its sole purpose is to discredit myself. There are many ways it happens and to ask how I think it happens is cocky and arrogant and basically saying you don’t know shit compared to myself and you are not even worth replying to.
To discredit me with the answering of a question with a question, ignores the fact that vote buying is rampant in Thailand.
I asked a question about Andrew being skeptical of seeing any proof of headmen being able to sway votes. Politicians have been banned on allegations of vote buying, so I would actually put the onus on anyone who discredits it as irrelevant and untrue.
If they refuse, then they must condone or selectively ignore the fact that it is seen as acceptable by the politicians in charge of the country. I personally know people who have voted based on payment, I can’t give the armchair experts the reports or pie charts to back this up.
Andrew,
I will read your article.
In the meantime, vote buy accusations have been thrown by both sides and both sides have been penalised with bannings.
The problem is that it is not an means to an end. It is exploiting the poor by way of their lack of education and hand to mouth attitude, of course not all are like this and I know many who are very alert to it and try to not fall for the cheap sell out. There are also many who would vote for the party/person anyway and just take the money or alcohol regardless as a face gesture.
Ask yourself, would you accept a days or even a weeks wage to vote for a political party you normally would not? I know people here in Australia that would. It is straight up and down exploitation of the marginal difference of those who are indifferent to the political spectrum, wherever it happens.
Thailand in crisis: Episode 4
Tarrin #32
Old 2001 report is from Anfrel, actually, Pnet being their big contributor.
http://www.anfrel.org/report/thailand/Thai_2001/thailand_2001.pdf
It reads like “1001 easy ways to buy votes in Thailand”.
If big money can manipulate the elections it’s pointless to talk about results as the “will of the people”, and even if the public at large accepts the results, warts-and-all, many can’t stand when this “electoral legitimacy” is being used as a defense of personal corruption, as was the case with Thaksin.
Thailand in crisis: Episode 4
Andrew refuses to even acknowledge the question of vote buying swaying national elections, is he refusing to acknowledge it as a factor of Thai politics?
Have a look at my article on the “rural constitution” which attempts to put the issue of “vote buying” (a very imprecise term) into context. In terms of its impact on Thai politics – I have no doubt that cash distributions are one of the factors that voters take into consideration when they cast their vote. But by far the most important, and disturbing, impact of the “vote buying” discourse is that it is consistently being used to justify the overturning of electoral decisions. Those who consistently shout “vote buying” to undermine the validity of people’s choices seem determined to drive people towards more radical forms of action. The constant belittling of voters with the charge of vote buying is serving the interests of extremists. If you are not willing to accept the warts-and-all way people vote in Thailand then what form of political participation will you accept?