[…] Comment on Corruption in Thailand by SrithanonchaiAnd Thaksin would even pay the trip out of his own pocket, which is important for the NTSC with its chronic lack of funds. […]
I actually love the fact that people are preoccupied with the personal motivations of the author as to why he would engage in an endeavor such as writing a book which clearly results in tarnishing the reputation of the present Thai monarch. I may not be much of a journalist, but I am a trained scientist, and in our discipline we generally do a risk benefit analysis before we engage in research that has the potential to do more harm than good.
I believe the stability of a Nation and the people’s own right to choose the object of their affection ( and the methodology by which they do so), and it’s reciprocal effect on their paradigm hold much more virtue than a book in which I see clearly a Western epistemological attempt to engage with a reality that is indigenous, existential and altogether unknowable by the author.
By colonizing the indigenous imagination of the Thais, are we not clearly seeking to dominate, subjugate and render their way of life somehow “less than and inferior” to that of the western paradigm?
A sobering view suggests that it takes decades after an incident in order to properly asses the situation and the multiplicity of features that render social, political, or economic models as either good or evil.
I hope that decades from now, Handley’s book doesn’t fall into the latter category.
[…] might be interested in reading Andrew Walker’s excellent recent post over at New Mandala on contract farming, which he has been focusing on for a while now. This was written by Erik. Posted on Monday, […]
Grasshopper and Srithanonchai are too far removed from real-life economics of earning a living for both to conclude ” … that every business person operating in Thailand stole his or her money from the Thai people…”
Maybe both of you can be more intellectually stimulated by my suspicion that “insufficiency economics and vote-buying in Thailand” are closely intertwined.
So I guess based on the empty halls that Peua Pandin Party will be among those political parties that won’t make it to the starting line.
Maybe the price of the Thai vote has gone up . . . really up. What is the price of the Thai vote now Andrew Walker? That should be have been the main subject of your article Andrew Walker . . . and then we can appreciate better what rural constitution is all about.
Thanks Daw Kyi May Kaung, I wasn’t aware of dvb.no. Also thanks for your debate with David Steinberg on fpif which I used in an essay!
Just a few questions/points:
Reportedly, China is equipping the Burmese army and this past week there were reports that the head of the Burmese Air Force was in Moscow, reportedly shopping for drones and other air force planes.
I don’t think you can start waiving the finger at whole nations without observing the irony in that you are trying to promote democracy liberally, yet slandering nationalities and subsequently cultures of people who are not politically engaged to people perhaps even reading this who aren’t going to think about it. Maybe there are corrupt politicians, military officers and so on in these nations, but please – if you are a liberal, why not acknowledge a liberal conception of accountability? ‘Because they don’t observe liberal democracy’ That isn’t good enough. We should be beyond reactionary brinkmanship and Cold War idioms. Do you blame the whole of Saudi Arabia for knocking over two skyscrapers? Why not accuse Sig Sauer or Kalashnikova who historically have had little regard over who is sold what weaponry?
Beyond all this, I do believe the international community should remove the blinkers from its eyes and talk to as many dissident Burmese as they can find outside the country. Be especially careful of those polished people you meet on the circuit who insist its an internal matter, say it is not all negative, say they were just in Burma on Wednesday. After all, even as the Holocaust was taking place, there were Holocaust deniers and they still exist. Why should deniers of the Burmese atrocities be any different? The mind rebels at what it finds too awful, yet we should and we must confront the demons.
The international community consists of 192 self interested nations. I think that talking to dissidents can only make hearts infront of internet and television screens feel some impermanent empathy which reflects the aforementioned national self-interest and level of commitment by the UN. Burma seems to me to be a niche area of study for people in Western academic worlds who savour some sort of explorer/Dr. Livingstone fantasy or journalists who macarbly film human misery almost as if its their ticket into a better correspondence position. Removing the blinkers would mean that we as a species realise that socially we are only as good as our worst – and so do you think people who are safe would be prepared to really admit that their action is to sit and do nothing while our fellow humans are tortured and put to death for feudalistic reason? We are equally as guilty as those deniers you mention. All in the name of sovereignty!
Comrade there is only one kind of economic system worthy of all individuals! The economic system of sufficiency agrarin reform! We must be sufficient to remain social. Otherwise we will be disunified and leaving ourselves wide open to the throngs of paranoid capitalism! I want to see Thaksin working with the farmers he bought!!!
Would have thought there’d be government agricultural extension officers to provide the bigger picture of what is going on science-wise to farmers. Has that function been taken over by corporations with contract farming? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_extension
“Sustainability” or “Socialism”? What kind of economic system is on your mind? By the way, if you approach things from this perspective, Thasksin as a concrete individual cannot be attacked on this ground any longer.
P.S.: It would have been interesting to know what agreement had been reached between the canvassers and the villagers. When Suwit hired the canvassers to hire the villagers, he certainly did not expect to be left alone in such an embarrassing way. Was he originally scheduled to speak in the morning, and the villagers were scheduled to leave after lunch? Why did all of them leave? How many were there, and from where? What were the communications between the canvassers and the villagers when they started to go home? Did they have to board busses? After all, it would make the canvassers look very bad in the eyes of Suwit etc., having arranged the hall, the press, and planned it as a full show of support. Did the villagers act collectively, and was there some coordination between the groups, or was this collective disapperance the result of individual decisions? Was it engineered by the canvassers to pressure Suwit for more money, or was it engineered by the villagers to pressure the canvassers for more money? Or did the canvassers did not pay them as promised? Or was it a collusion between the canvassers and the villagers to show Suwit that he must come up with more money if he wanted their votes? Etc., etc…
I don’t think that “stole it all from the people of Thailand” is empirically sustainable. Except, of course, you mean to say that every bsusiness person operating in Thailand stole his or her money from the Thai people…
IMHO the best way to get a handle on what “vote buying” is and how other similar, more subtle practices which technically aren’t “vote buying” exactly are, is to **master the literature on this subject**, and IMHO the best place to begin is the wonderful little 350 baht book **”Thai Political Parties in the Age of Reform” by Siripan Nogsuan Sawasdee**, Institute of Public policy Studies, Bangkok, December 2006. I’ve been paging through it for weeks and still haven’t absorbed all of it.
[…] week I wrote about the adoption of contract farming by farmers in northern Thailand. In the village where I have been working since late 2002 one of the […]
Republican is right . . ANU should also invite at least one member of the former elected government . . . and who else would qualify to speak on corruption but the Mother of all Thai corruption himself Thaksin Shinawatra . . .
Facebook 
Twitter 
Soundcloud 
Youtube 
Rss
Corruption in Thailand
[…] Comment on Corruption in Thailand by SrithanonchaiAnd Thaksin would even pay the trip out of his own pocket, which is important for the NTSC with its chronic lack of funds. […]
Interview with Paul Handley
I actually love the fact that people are preoccupied with the personal motivations of the author as to why he would engage in an endeavor such as writing a book which clearly results in tarnishing the reputation of the present Thai monarch. I may not be much of a journalist, but I am a trained scientist, and in our discipline we generally do a risk benefit analysis before we engage in research that has the potential to do more harm than good.
I believe the stability of a Nation and the people’s own right to choose the object of their affection ( and the methodology by which they do so), and it’s reciprocal effect on their paradigm hold much more virtue than a book in which I see clearly a Western epistemological attempt to engage with a reality that is indigenous, existential and altogether unknowable by the author.
By colonizing the indigenous imagination of the Thais, are we not clearly seeking to dominate, subjugate and render their way of life somehow “less than and inferior” to that of the western paradigm?
A sobering view suggests that it takes decades after an incident in order to properly asses the situation and the multiplicity of features that render social, political, or economic models as either good or evil.
I hope that decades from now, Handley’s book doesn’t fall into the latter category.
c lus
Contract farming
[…] might be interested in reading Andrew Walker’s excellent recent post over at New Mandala on contract farming, which he has been focusing on for a while now. This was written by Erik. Posted on Monday, […]
Corruption in Thailand
Grasshopper and Srithanonchai are too far removed from real-life economics of earning a living for both to conclude ” … that every business person operating in Thailand stole his or her money from the Thai people…”
Maybe both of you can be more intellectually stimulated by my suspicion that “insufficiency economics and vote-buying in Thailand” are closely intertwined.
The power of vote-buying!
So I guess based on the empty halls that Peua Pandin Party will be among those political parties that won’t make it to the starting line.
Maybe the price of the Thai vote has gone up . . . really up. What is the price of the Thai vote now Andrew Walker? That should be have been the main subject of your article Andrew Walker . . . and then we can appreciate better what rural constitution is all about.
Corruption in Thailand
Oh, I see, you have adopted a stance of satirical-royalist PolPotism! 🙂
Finding out about Burma
Thanks Daw Kyi May Kaung, I wasn’t aware of dvb.no. Also thanks for your debate with David Steinberg on fpif which I used in an essay!
Just a few questions/points:
Reportedly, China is equipping the Burmese army and this past week there were reports that the head of the Burmese Air Force was in Moscow, reportedly shopping for drones and other air force planes.
I don’t think you can start waiving the finger at whole nations without observing the irony in that you are trying to promote democracy liberally, yet slandering nationalities and subsequently cultures of people who are not politically engaged to people perhaps even reading this who aren’t going to think about it. Maybe there are corrupt politicians, military officers and so on in these nations, but please – if you are a liberal, why not acknowledge a liberal conception of accountability? ‘Because they don’t observe liberal democracy’ That isn’t good enough. We should be beyond reactionary brinkmanship and Cold War idioms. Do you blame the whole of Saudi Arabia for knocking over two skyscrapers? Why not accuse Sig Sauer or Kalashnikova who historically have had little regard over who is sold what weaponry?
Beyond all this, I do believe the international community should remove the blinkers from its eyes and talk to as many dissident Burmese as they can find outside the country. Be especially careful of those polished people you meet on the circuit who insist its an internal matter, say it is not all negative, say they were just in Burma on Wednesday. After all, even as the Holocaust was taking place, there were Holocaust deniers and they still exist. Why should deniers of the Burmese atrocities be any different? The mind rebels at what it finds too awful, yet we should and we must confront the demons.
The international community consists of 192 self interested nations. I think that talking to dissidents can only make hearts infront of internet and television screens feel some impermanent empathy which reflects the aforementioned national self-interest and level of commitment by the UN. Burma seems to me to be a niche area of study for people in Western academic worlds who savour some sort of explorer/Dr. Livingstone fantasy or journalists who macarbly film human misery almost as if its their ticket into a better correspondence position. Removing the blinkers would mean that we as a species realise that socially we are only as good as our worst – and so do you think people who are safe would be prepared to really admit that their action is to sit and do nothing while our fellow humans are tortured and put to death for feudalistic reason? We are equally as guilty as those deniers you mention. All in the name of sovereignty!
Corruption in Thailand
Comrade there is only one kind of economic system worthy of all individuals! The economic system of sufficiency agrarin reform! We must be sufficient to remain social. Otherwise we will be disunified and leaving ourselves wide open to the throngs of paranoid capitalism! I want to see Thaksin working with the farmers he bought!!!
*hits fist on podium*
The challenges of garlic cultivation
Would have thought there’d be government agricultural extension officers to provide the bigger picture of what is going on science-wise to farmers. Has that function been taken over by corporations with contract farming?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_extension
Corruption in Thailand
“Sustainability” or “Socialism”? What kind of economic system is on your mind? By the way, if you approach things from this perspective, Thasksin as a concrete individual cannot be attacked on this ground any longer.
Corruption in Thailand
Yes of course. These business people need to look up the word sustainability!
The power of vote-buying!
P.S.: It would have been interesting to know what agreement had been reached between the canvassers and the villagers. When Suwit hired the canvassers to hire the villagers, he certainly did not expect to be left alone in such an embarrassing way. Was he originally scheduled to speak in the morning, and the villagers were scheduled to leave after lunch? Why did all of them leave? How many were there, and from where? What were the communications between the canvassers and the villagers when they started to go home? Did they have to board busses? After all, it would make the canvassers look very bad in the eyes of Suwit etc., having arranged the hall, the press, and planned it as a full show of support. Did the villagers act collectively, and was there some coordination between the groups, or was this collective disapperance the result of individual decisions? Was it engineered by the canvassers to pressure Suwit for more money, or was it engineered by the villagers to pressure the canvassers for more money? Or did the canvassers did not pay them as promised? Or was it a collusion between the canvassers and the villagers to show Suwit that he must come up with more money if he wanted their votes? Etc., etc…
The power of vote-buying!
It would have been even better if those people had turned down the canvassers’ suggestion to be bussed to Mueng Thong Thani…
Corruption in Thailand
I don’t think that “stole it all from the people of Thailand” is empirically sustainable. Except, of course, you mean to say that every bsusiness person operating in Thailand stole his or her money from the Thai people…
The power of vote-buying!
IMHO the best way to get a handle on what “vote buying” is and how other similar, more subtle practices which technically aren’t “vote buying” exactly are, is to **master the literature on this subject**, and IMHO the best place to begin is the wonderful little 350 baht book **”Thai Political Parties in the Age of Reform” by Siripan Nogsuan Sawasdee**, Institute of Public policy Studies, Bangkok, December 2006. I’ve been paging through it for weeks and still haven’t absorbed all of it.
Contract farming
[…] week I wrote about the adoption of contract farming by farmers in northern Thailand. In the village where I have been working since late 2002 one of the […]
Corruption in Thailand
but Srithanonchai, would it really be Thaksin’s money when he stole it all from the people of Thailand?!
Corruption in Thailand
And Thaksin would even pay the trip out of his own pocket, which is important for the NTSC with its chronic lack of funds.
Riding away from common sense in Bangkok
Well, those lanes can be used between 3.30 am and 5.30am as there is less people: well still need to be cautious though ;-p
very useful lanes !
Corruption in Thailand
Republican is right . . ANU should also invite at least one member of the former elected government . . . and who else would qualify to speak on corruption but the Mother of all Thai corruption himself Thaksin Shinawatra . . .