Comments

Answer to the above, by buying a complete political faction. Whether PPP and the Wadah Faction really have much in common is very debatable. And Wadah enjoys less support than in some previous elections, as they have partly discredited themselves by clinging to Thaksin during a time in which he made the region’s unrest even worse. But, in fairness, this business of buying out factions and running parties with no real policy (except to exploit) is hardly a PPP/TRT phenomenon alone.

My information about Wadah, from those who have met them, is that they are essentially separatists who voice their support for continuing Thai rule of the deep south for the purposes of cementing their own power and wealth. On that level, they DO have something in common with PPP/TRT.

Taxi Driver & Republican: To continue on your morbid theme – Wouldn’t any assassination attempt be more likely to come from a relative of a victim of one of the massacres under Thaksin’s watch? (eg drug war or Tak Bai)

Chumporn: Perhaps, one should look at Prem and his friends and what they were doing in 1976. Surayud also doesn’t have a blemish free record in 1992 either. Or perhaps the Dems just don’t want to upset their military friends from bringing up past incidents relating to coups?

Yes, assassination would have to be a possibility (I assume you mean Thaksin); the hatred of him among the royalists is so intense. They have overthrown his government, dissolved his party, banned him from politics, seized his assets, censored the media from reporting him, used martial law and other measures to intimidate his voter base, rigged the constitution against him, and he still comes back. So assassination may be the only way to destroy him and the movement he leads.

If they killed Thaksin what would be the likely result? PPP would indeed probably fall apart. At least it would not be the force it is now with Thaksin as de facto leader. Without PPP you remove the biggest threat to the royalists’ hold on power. So that would have to make assassination an attractive option to them.

But the repercussions of an assassination would be huge. Given the way that the anti-Thaksin movement has received such support from the Palace it would be hard for them to escape at least some of the blame. The price of overthrowing Thaksin in 2006 is that the Palace and its allies have had to be much more visible in their political interventions than they would ideally have liked. What would be the result if PPP voters learnt that the Palace was involved in the assassination of their beloved leader? A pretty dangerous scenario for the future of the monarchy. After this king goes, the royalists still need the monarchy to endure to ensure their own political and economic interests. But the more the monarchy is politicized, the more it is revealed as an anti-democratic force, the lesser chance it has of survival. So an assassination might actually accelerate the political defeat of the royalists, not avoid it.

And Thaksin must surely have an insurance policy against assassination. That is, he would have to have made it clear to those who might be entertaining such an idea that the costs to them if he were to be killed would be too great for them to actually carry it out.

wordwallah, But Samak is such a great chef! How can someone be held accountable for suggestions like “kill them all” and “shoot the elephants” as though it is defining of his character. Surely you’ve shouted ‘kill them all’ before. Focus on his cooking, he cooks with love! The democrat party obviously believes in fair play which is why they lost. Would you want a lovely curry full of variation or a cold bowl of noodles that have no dressing? Exactly.

I objected to the “cheap” way a western democrat could ask: who ought a western democrat support in the Thai election? As though western democrats emersed culturally in cosmopolitanism are in anyway able to be on one side or the other. As though being a liberal democrat enables one to be part of a universal club. The main thing for us cheap cosmopolitans is that democracy is back in Thailand.

The link doesn’t work, and the results seem to have disappeared from the ECT web site.

re: #24

Well said, indeed.

As opposed to the “ignorance of his (Samak’s) career” evinced in recent media and blogs, Suriyon’s knowing characterization of Samak as “a bright guy, and one of the finest orators in Thai politics for decades” is both “constructive” and “enlightening”.

Mr. Carr asked an apparently faux naif question about whom a progressive liberal westerner should support in this election and Suriyon “constructed” a thumbnail portrait of Samak that left out such telling (to a western liberal) strokes as his role in the Thammasat massacre, his subsequent attempts to block memorialisation of those who died therein (presumably because they were “Vietnamese”), his comparison of Bangkok homeless to stray dogs during the “street-cleaning” prior to the APEC summit and his suggestion that elephants be shot in order to dissuade their mahouts from parading them down Sukhumvit. Then again, it is doubtful that such a fine orator as Samak composed the memorable lines “Kill them, kill them” that poured out of radios prior to the slaughter in 1973, so there is that.

I hope this attempt to be more “constructive” will contribute to Mr. Carr’s ongoing enlightenment as he continues to read NM, especially the more “constructive” contributors like Suriyon.

Reply to Polo: actually I did’t rule out another coup, but I just think they would be very reluctant to do it any time soon, and it would be a very last resort (unless riots broke out or there were some other emergency – which is not beyond the realms of possiblity). So those speeches by the king could be seen as giving morale to the troops, who must be very demoralized right now. He might even have needed to calm those “hotheads” who might be tempted to think of a coup in order to stop Thaksin coming back. That would be a disaster for the Palace.

The king himself has suffered a loss of face, given the strong public support he gave to the coup and the regime it installed. So he has to try to show to the military that he is still in control. A little pathetic, really. His birthday speech giving his support for military acquisitions was another example of how pathetic he has become: support me and I will reward you with military largesse. Basically you have a situation where the king is promising riches to the military and “sufficiency” to the poor (with the approval of lots of Thai and Western academics!), while Thaksin and PPP are promising an economy in which the poor can benefit, and which at the same time follows modern globalized, economically liberal norms (unlike, say, Chavez’s Venezuela). In a country with a free media the king and his supporters would be publicly ridiculed for saying such things. In Thailand you have academics presenting learned papers at international conferences on the king’s contribution to economic theory.

You seem to see “the military” as united (eg. “…But the military has also made clear it won’t be toyed with…”; “…the past 15 months was this message from the military to the people…”). The last 15 months have actually brought the military to a new low in terms of public opinion. Not only have they failed to destroy a political movement like Thaksin and TRT/PPP when they have had almost total political control and the king behind them, but they can not end a separatist insurgency in the south fought by people who make bombs out of fertilizer. (It’s tempting to ask what the Thai military is in fact good for, except defending the monarchy?) As someone on the Se Daeng blog said, the problem with the military now is that they are run by golfers, not professional officers, who somehow manage to amass huge multi-million baht fortunes when the ordinary rank and file soldiers are struggling. This kind of sentiment in the military would be ideal territory for the PPP to exploit. We know that Thaksin has support in the military. If PPP forms government then one would expect that they will retake control of the key positions in the military by replacing the royalist officers with their own people. This will of course be very controversial, but what will the royalists do? Carry out another coup? Tie the yellow ribbons to the tank turrets and their M16s again? Perhaps actually shoot people in the streets? There would be huge international condemnation, a strong possibility of international media criticism of the Thai monarchy, and comparisons with Nepal. The economy goes from bad to worse. How is that going to help the royalists’ cause?

“…the past 15 months was this message from the military to the people and politicians…” This sentence suggests you’ve misunderstood what happened on 19 September and after. The military were never in control. They were merely the instrument of a royalist alliance, headed by the Palace, the Privy Council, royalist officers with patronage links to Prem, the judiciary and academics. All this linked together by a neo-feudal ideology and some residual Marxist nationalism that still animates the academics and NGOs. The days when the military could call the shots are long gone. The reason for the misunderstanding (shared by many in the media)? Lese majeste, which means we can’t say in public that the king interferes in politics. Instead we blame it on the military.

So to me another coup is not a “threat”, because it would merely hasten the decline in the political fortunes of the royalists and feed into more support for PPP.

It seems quite clear to me that the PPP has the “upper-hand”, at least for now.

Thank you for that website

For me, this is actually a very good result for the country. PPP, as many have expected, have won the most votes – but not enough to govern on their own.

Those needed 7-8 votes (maybe more with the determination of yellow & red cards) will prove to be highly critical (not to mention very expensive). It is also critical that they lost badly in Bangkok (PPP’s Dr.Suebwonglee was visibly frustrated). Those two factors alone will make it extremely difficult (and tricky) for them to deliver their main election-winning promise to the Northerners and Northeasterners – “we will bring PMThaksin back and clean his
record” (at the very least, doing so, may break their second most important promise “we will bring great economic growth”)… Any potential coalition partners (who all have a love-hate relationships with PMThaksin) are well aware of that and the negotiations may take a life of its own independent of PMThaksin (who some commentators on Thai TV mentioned could be “fooled” by PPP
– and Samak-Chalerm will soon reveal their own agendas once vested with state power. PMThaksin may have also played his cards prematurely today, revealing his intention to return to politics in Feb-March as “advisor” to PPP).

Reducing all of PMThaksin’s opponents into “network monarchists” or “sufficiency democrats” may be quite simplistic as articulated by many of the above comments. The only thing they have in common is precisely PMThaksin – while seemingly share little else. Another important reason that the Democrats boycotted the 2005 elections is quite practical – election funding. They have already lost two expensive campaigns in 2001 and 2005; spent 5 years in opposition (no source of ‘income’ of being in power); and have lost many of their financiers in big businesses (and influential provincial families).

Facing another full-blown assault by the invincible, well-oiled TRT electionmachine may more likely lead to political extinction than gaining more parliamentary seats mentioned by Andrew. Money was and still is highly influential in Thai politics and we must factor in PMThaksin’s then unfrozen 73 billion baht from the sale of ShinCorp (he might just bring forward the buying of an English Premiership team or two – or likely wow us with more cool election gimmicks).

The election results also geographically matched the referendum’s. Many of PMThaksin’s opponents already saw this as dire predictions and called for the elections to be pushed further back – into 2008, which was pointedly refused by PMSurayud. Why? Why not take more time to “engineer” a more desirable result? Why not be more ruthless like coup makers are expected to be elsewhere and finish off all nominees of PMThaksin (or even PMThaksin himself!)?

Many Thais who do not like PMThaksin are disappointed with the CNS and Surayud government for precisely that reason, accusing them of being faint-hearted (or even chokers).

Maybe they are (as we all have our skeletons in the closet – an PMThaksin proved skillful in exploiting the “holier than thou” cards) – but this can also be read in another way. They have engineered a ‘Thai compromise’. The 1997 Constitution’s implemented decentralization and TRT’s ‘populism’ has already
forever revolutionalized Thai politics – which is already much more responsive to the local populace with at least two extra layers of elected governments (for the past year nationally Thailand may be under a coup-government, but below that level, the country is democratic – an interesting phenomenon). On the other hand, PMThaksin’s centralization and monopolization of power increasingly led to unaccountability and overt corruption (selling ShinCorp and publicly bragging how clever he was at dodging taxes reflects the degenerated condition the TRT government was in. For Australians, imagine Theresa Rein, PMKevin Rudd’s wife, holding on to her business and seeing it grow exponentially from government contracts, through Rudd’s two terms of 6 years then selling it for hefty profit without paying a dollar of tax – and still maintaining she did no wrong). And that was only the tip of the iceberg of the TRT government corruption – the stories doing rounds in the Thai public service and private sectors bidding for government contracts reveals that the rot is unprecedented. Evidences? With many senior bureaucrats involved, most of these cases will not see the light of day. The best chance to find incriminating evidences seem to be those that involve international partners – and some these have already gone to court… Here, one wonders why PMThaksin wants a verystable PPP coalition in place before he returns to “fight” the cases… With the 1997 Constitution, senior politicians have been tried in court and convicted for corruption. While corruption is still rife, a former prime minister being formerly tried will surely aid in the long term, imperfect fight against corruption, the major Achilles heel of Thai democracy – which ironically, is possible because of the coup (so yes, Thai democracy still have a long tortuous road ahead) .

I think Mr.Abhisit put it aptly on Sunday night when he said he hoped a potential PPP-led government will “put the interests of the Thai people before House #111 and PMThaksin” which drew angry responses from the crowd at PPP headquarters. However, I believe if they do, then the country will have made great progress towards democracy. I am also certain that this is being seriously debated within PPP’s potential coalition partners and also a critical factor on the negotiating table with PPP. With the countries greatest political
price within reach, Samak and Chalerm may cut a ‘deal’ to isolate PMThaksin – but TRT/PPP hardliners will also have their say. These are very interesting 3-4 weeks and the declaration of yellow and red cards on Jan 3rd by the Election Commission will add to the complexity (if PMBanharn’s deft manuever hasn’t already! If he had his way, he would either be a PM in a PPP coalition or taking key ministries in a Democrat led one).