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Now I remember. he even wrote some articles for NM. I actually never took him seriously.
You said “he made his point eloquently with an axe to grind”. Wasn’t Hitler like that too?
About “his obvious talent and charms with exotic tales to tell from a unique perspective”. You must be kidding right? Who in his/her right mind would believe in snake charmers and the like. Western academics and NGOs must be extremely naive and young (anyone under 60 for me) to put up these Burmese snake-oil charlatans from Hla Oo to Pascal Khoo Thwe to Thant Myint Oo to … on such high pedestals. Even Wikipedia considers such people “Burma experts” and a lot of Ph.D. students that I know blindly trust whatever Wikipedia says. What a gullible and ignorant world!
By the way, Hla Oo ssys on his blog that he is a day trader. He should specialise in exotic money-laundering perhaps!

very interesting…. makes me feel that deindustrialisation, implies de-unionisation, implies reduction in voters motivations to seriously consider their votes which implies democracy is at risk

which explains why neo-liberals (aka right-wing fascist) elite preferring parties are taking over our “peoples” governments … US leading the way, Australia, etc, etc rushing to follow the US

and what you are suggesting is that developing countries such as Thailand are lacking significant, coordinated. organisational drivers toward democratic government

and the Indonesian presidential election is showing signs their electors are tired of “weak non-dictatorial” competitive democratic governments

will China’s single party model become preferred and generally replace multi-party democracy within the next 20 years …..????

I am a Chinese Indonesian and to be honest I HATE being called chinese by so many people. So what? Yes, my parents’ ethnicity are Chinese, but I have nothing to do with China and all my relatives live in Indonesia. I embrace the culture here and I WAS BORN AND RAISED HERE. I AM AN INDONESIAN and I’m proud of it.

It’s time to fully embrace Bhinneka Tunggal Ika and stop calling people names using their own ethnicity. Batak, chinese, sunda, whatever, we are united in diversity. It’s time to revolutionize our mental, our way of thinking as a nation.

You call me reactionary, I call you idiotic, and this will be all I have to say. Communication is a two way street, and I refuse to play the role of the passive author who let anonymous trolls smear his reputation and call him names. If you want a mature discussion, look how others do it here on this thread, and engage me in a civilized way.

Btw it doesn’t really make you look too good to be unfamiliar with Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach.

And please leave me alone with the junta propaganda of “Thais know best”. Shameful, really.

Mr. Saxer,

Thank you for your explanations. I think we who live in Thailand all sympathize with the difficulties posed by the need to stay within Thai a law that is vague and implemented in strange and cruel ways. Still there seems to be sufficient confusion over the meaning, in Thai context, of key terms like “middle class” and “elite” to warrant more effort of definition. This is hardly your problem alone, but is seen in much of the literature on Thai politics. The failure to define key terms leads to uncertainty and difficulty in assessing.

I did not mean to say that you overlooked the power conflict completely, but that it doesn’t seem to have a place in your schematic diagram. Political self interest and patronage groups clearly play a role in the conflict, so if you can work out how to include that in your diagram, I think it would be helpful. Thai people are not only moved to action by discourses but by personal obligations, connections, benefits and loyalty. These factors often override aspects such as education, wealth, origin and class in deciding who they will side with in conflict.

Even if not agreeing with everything you wrote, Thai people should appreciate your focus on finding ways out of the mess, not just criticizing. Hopefully your Thai language book will come out in time to make a difference in the critical events likely to unfold in the next year or two.

“Full capabilities” refers to Amatya Sen’s conceptif justice. Sen assigns to state and market the task to provide to all members of society all means necessary to explore all potential -eg health care, education, social security, local development, infrastructure. Providing capabilities will allow economies to escape the Middle Income Track and move up the value chain. Socially, it allows all classes to agree on a social contract.

So no, the quick gains does not refer to health care, but to rice pledging. And if you read carefully, all classes have to give and take. The elites have to agree to full democracy- the safeguards are the rule of law and checks and balances – but as in a real democracy, not the patronage infested version of Thailand.

This revealing post prompts the question to what extent the Jokowi-Kalla ticket has been weakened by neither of them being a party chair or fully in control of a party apparatus, unlike both Prabowo and Hatta. If Prabowo wins and does indeed restore MPR-centred presidential elections, this distinction may not matter much.

Let’s hope that Jokowi’s umroh gives him the spiritual or physical solace that he is seeking. One would like to know whether he has taken along with him Muhaimin Iskandar, that lion-hearted defender of Indonesian maids in Saudi Arabia waiting on death row or at least facing milder forms of ill-treatment and exploitation.

This recurring conflict would be boring in its consistency of nurturing as well as its genesis and laughable in its bigoted assumptions were it not for its tragic consequences to life and property every time. Not just an ugly black mark stamped again and again over the country’s troubled history, above all a stubborn cancer recurring in our body politic, sapping its real strength in its inherent diversity.

It is almost hopeless, indeed wet behind the ears ignorant, to talk about living together in peace and harmony when the ruling class habitually uses such divide and rule strategies whenever crisis looms to threaten their own sick and corrupt domination over the nation especially their own selfish survival.

Whereas details and specifics are relevant, it serves the rulers when the rest of us fail to see the wood for the trees.

It makes me wonder if it reflects how he would carry out the job should he be elected as president. Shambolically?