I don’t know about you, but “attacks against non- muslims” do not mean “killings”
Please read the Malaysian Newspapers, even main stream BN owned toilet papers would do.
Quote
“Islamic officials raid a church and confiscated 300 Malay Language Bibles. Church leader ordered to report to Islamic council”
“Islamic officials barge into Hindu temple to detain bride, interrupting a marriage ceremony”
Just two recent examples of Non-Muslims under attack. Never mind the threats of violence and threats of “burn down you houses and temples, churches etc” public declarations. The authorities? – “It is not a crime until someone actually got killed or a church is actually burnt down!”
Also, it was not the amnesty which triggered the protests
It was very much so, but I don’t doubt there was a plan to have protests anyway; but would they have been successful or carried such weight? There would not have been any significant support for them, they had used PV several times before without much success.
It dos not explain Thaksin’s amnesty attempt? Was he unaware that they were preparing protests against his/Yingluck’s government? Why would he try his luck on such a contentious issue at that time?
It handed Suthep a massive boost on which he could build his campaign, it was a terrible misjudgement.
PPP out-polled the “Democrats” by some 21%, i.e. by more than 4,500,000 vote
In constituency terms it was about 21,000,000 to the ‘democrats’ and 26,000,000 to the PPP.
The relative ratio being about as you say 20%, the absolute difference was 36% to 30% ie 6%. also with getting 20% more constituency votes led to the PPP getting 40% more parliamentary seats.
How can you with a straight face try twist this into being some kind of gerrymandered result in favour of the ‘democrats’?
64% did not vote for the PPP, but they still ended up with close to 50% of the house seats.
2011 election in fact fairly distributed seats in their correct proportion with votes. These are facts rather than your rather disingenuous spin on the 2 elections.
Lies about elections come from both sides. The election directly after the first coup Thais overwhelmingly voted against the PPP, but their electoral will was not represented in parliament is the true story of that election, the rest is just massaged bs.
Malay proxies for Isma and Perkasa do not interest anyone. If you are unaware of brazen attacks against non-Muslims in Malaysia, it
is because you are part of those attacks and simply a hack for Isma, which is merely Malaysia’s version of the SS. Or really you can’t hide very well behind Ibrahim Ali, and your insecurity about Islam is entirely reflected in your comments. Maybe Najib will save you, which I doubt, as you cannot even save yourself.
That is a very perverse reading of the 2007 election result. It is true that for the 80 seats decided on a proportional basis the “Democrat” party did indeed poll a little under 12,500 votes more than PPP. That difference represented less than one tenth of one per cent of their total. However in the votes for the 400 seats awarded on a constituency basis, PPP out-polled the “Democrats” by some 21%, i.e. by more than 4,500,000 votes! OK, in the peculiar electoral system set up by that junta, in many constituencies electors were able to choose two or three different MPs, but even after making allowance for this, the disparity was pretty huge. It was a very strange voting system indeed which the junta had deliberately gerrymandered in a deliberate attempt to penalise the Thaksinite party, but it backfired almost completely.
Again in 2011, when “Democrat” appointees had effective control of the election, they noticed the disparity in the proportional vote in 2007 and so decided it would be a good idea to increase the number of MPs elected proportionately from 80 to 100. This again backfired when Pheu Thai actually did better in the proportional vote than they did in the constituencies and beat the “Democrats” by more than 4,300,000 votes.
Your argument might be marginally valid if Thaksin’s parties had played any major part in the organisation of either election. They did not and it does not take a seer to notice that the plan on both occasions was to minimise the vote for Thaksinite parties.
Finally it is interesting to note that in both elections the exit polls taken at the polling booths pointed to a bigger win for PPP/Pheu Thai than they actually achieved. In 2007 exit polls predicted PPP would win 256 seats, an outright majority. They actually got 233, which was just under half. In 2011 exit polls predicted Pheu Thai would win by a landslide with 312 seats. They actually got 265, though still an overall majority. The significance of this is that discrepancies between exit polls and results are used as primary indicators of possible ballot stuffing. In particular the discrepancy was marked in Bangkok, where the result was published quite late in the day, while in the rest of the country exit polls were largely in line with actual results. As possible corroboration of this, it was reported that the Election Commission actually printed 13% more ballot papers than the total number of electors. The legal limit was an excess of no more than 7% http://asiancorrespondent.com/56559/why-are-so-many-extra-ballot-papers-being-printed-in-thailand
It is a myth that electoral fraud has significantly influenced the election results. Baker and more or less every other academic who has researched this subject matter came to this conclusion.
There is also no party that has not taken part in vote buying, and that includes the Democrats as well. Nevertheless, the result of elections were not significantly altered by this.
Claims of “most” support the coup are not supported by any data, and such data would be rather hard to come by in the present climate. I think we can only start making such statements when we have elections again, and can see that at the election result. Well, depending when and under which conditions elections will take place, and how the new constitution will look like by then.
Getting rid of constituencies? Would that not result in even less transparency by removing members of parliament from direct contact with their voters? While there is of course an element of locally influential people being elected, but constituencies also ensure that MP’s have to be directly responsible to local voters. That’s why, to my knowledge, most representative parliamentary systems have a mixture of party list and constituency MP’s.
Was a civil war actually prevented, or only postponed? Time will tell.
Actually – it is a myth that a large portion of farmers supported Suthep and the PDRC. Only a few hundred farmers joined in the end, and those never broke the political arty divide. Farmers from the few northern provinces that joined (such as not far from my wife’s area) were almost exclusively from villages of Democrat Party MP’s and were mobilized by the MP’s and Democrat Party vote canvassers. Most farmers in fact blamed Suthep and the PDRC for the delay in payment.
Also, it was not the amnesty which triggered the protests – the amnesty was used as a trigger. Originally the Democrat Party/Yellow Alliance planned to use the Preah Vihaer judgement as a trigger. The protests would have taken place anyhow. It was a situation carefully planned and built over more than 2 years, of patching up a fractured yellow alliance and in mobilizing support. This period was largely ignored by the mass media, most likely as it consisted of very little sexy stories, but relatively small and tedious events.
The internal amnesty rift took place over almost 1 1/2 years, from the time the amnesty idea was first proposed when Thaksin visited Laos and Cambodia, up to the parliamentary vote. But it took then very little time to patch up the differences as Pueah Thai and the Red Shirts were faced with Suthep’s mass protests.
As to readiness for compromise, i think you are not entirely correct. The Pueah Thai government offered many compromises, almost all that were possible under Democracy – shelving the amnesty bill, dissolution of parliament, different proposals of reform committees after elections. The only thing the then government did not compromise was stepping down and making way for “people’s councils” as demanded by the PDRC.
Can you tell me a single compromise Suthep or the PDRC offered? I can’t remember even one.
The PDRC has never even clarified what exact reforms they would propose other than some very broad declarations of intent, such as “getting rid of corruption”, and a few ideas that have been around the block for the past decades, and never considered in earnest, such as decentralization, etc.
“Brazen attacks against non-Muslims”? Source please. You make it sound like whats happening in Myanmar but thats not the case is it? By the way, you seem to be very knowledgeable about the Japanese Foreign Ministry? Do you personally know any Japanese diplomats? Had any experience when dealing with the Gaimusho? Or like any other keyboard warrior expert, are you really don’t know much?
I’d like first of all to point out that I’m absolutely against this coup, and find the analysis of mr. Walker very interesting, although nothing he said is new to me. However, I also would like to read or see an analysis by mr. Walker of the system of corruption setup by Taksin through the years. Taksin was literally buying Thailand at every election, where I live we’ve heard (me and my family) people claiming that they were all going to vote because if they made Taksin win in their district, they’d had 2-300B per person. In such a system, not only the democrats, no one has any chance to win the election, mo matter what political platform they can invent. Taksin (or his sister if you prefer) was destroying this country, the rice pledgin program is a demonstration of how they manage things.
Democracy was already an empty shell before the coup. In some way, something had to be done to end the Taksin way of gaining power. The problem is that this country lack the intitutions that counterbalance a Taksin and in ultimate instance protect democracy. I’m afraid that the military have no intention of setting up these institutions, they just want to make sure that Taksin won’t rule the country ever again.
Thaksin specially, and his puppet Yingluck to a slightly lesser degree, had demonstrated how dysfunctional and how dangerous a corrupted democracy could be easily abused and misused; such that the promise of “calm, reconciliation and reform” from a certain General Prayuth backed up by tanks and bayonets could only be met by a weary “we’re willing to withhold our suspicions and wait to see” from the citizenry.
If General Prayuth succeeds to deliver, that is bad for the Thailand’s forward march to democracy isn’t it? Because that’s an invitation to more coup interventions in Thailand’s future, whatever the excuses.
And yet if General Prayuth fails at reconciliation, and fails to calm the restive violent-prone Isaan Reds, and fails to deliver the elusive undefined ‘reforms’, Thailand would be mired into an even more dangerous volatile divisiveness before the General’s coup intervention.
Damn if the General succeeds and damn if the General fails.
Do you really want to go there?
2007 – election arranged by the 2006 junta, with a primary goal of preventing Thaksin influence. And they failed, even with the whole administration and media control on their side.
“All people want A FORM of democracy”. I agree with that. Some people want it just as window dressing.
Having lived in Thailand for 30 odd years. Some notes. There was no democracy under Thaksin’s regime. He was the elite that people keep referring to. Yes, there is a clique around the King who also have power but it’s less than the people with money. Your article is quite accurate. All people want, a form of, Democracy. The farmers are hugely disappointed with the Thaksin regime. It is also not usual in any democracy that if a party is found to be guilty of electoral fraud, they can just join again under another name. It is even weirder when this happens TWICE! Hence the previous PPP, TRT and now the PTP of Thaksin. Mind you ELECTORAL FRAUD means having cheated the elections. Both sides of the divide need to find common ground. If you look honestly at it both SAY they want the same things: Helping the poor and installing a true democracy. I travel a lot due to my work and speak, read and write Thai. I find the tendency is: “A sigh of relief”. That may sound odd to outsiders, but a civil war was prevented. Now, with the weapons cache finds all over Thailand, it is clear it was leading up to that. No one WANTS military to step in, but MOST (not all) seem happy about it. I do hope a form of democracy can be restored soon. If the big guns stop fighting and exchanging rhetoric. Laws need to be changed such as the law where you can join elections after fraud as well as the constituencies. Look up the results of the 2007 elections. You will find the Democrats WON the popular vote (amount of people overall voting for them) but lost by 63 seats to the Thaksin party. That can’t be right. Respect my vote? YES please but in an honest way. These are the changes they are talking about.
Tell us why vote buying of Newin (notice I said “of” Newin and not “by” Newin) was not as serious as the vote buying you complain of. BTW, we can all agree that Abhisit was/is a hapless dilettante, right? Even the Privy Council agrees, but you already knew that, right?
Nice piece but I think the only way Woravut could have made Thaksin see sense would have been to have blown him to smithereens with one of his own grenades brought back from the future.
By “utterly” I think you mean you disagree. I think my experience of Singapore is different from yours. The country is more developed than Thailand but to say it is a welfare state is putting it too strongly. Have you observed how the lower classes are treated, maids for example in quarters that would make their Thai equivalent look like luxury apartments.
“the predators slaughter each other in an elite conflict over the succession booty, and those of them that survive are utterly discredited.” Hardly a way to conduct a reasonable debate. As always, and as I have pointed out to Walker, articles good, comments become personal flames, encouraging a return in kind.
I said hear Suthep’s message that of reform. Pretty plain to me. As to thaksin, his message is loud and clear – violence towards those against him, as could be seen but overlooked by many on his site: 30 deaths and close to three hundred injured and maimed. Massive corruption – a small example being B500bn in losses and 3mm tons of rice gone missing. What about kidnap and murder of Ekkayuth when it’s now reported that the police investigating the murder destroyed evidence and disallowed a competent autopsy.
Please tell me of your own double standard and dissemination of the truth.
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Dissonance in Malaysia-Japan relations
I don’t know about you, but “attacks against non- muslims” do not mean “killings”
Please read the Malaysian Newspapers, even main stream BN owned toilet papers would do.
Quote
“Islamic officials raid a church and confiscated 300 Malay Language Bibles. Church leader ordered to report to Islamic council”
“Islamic officials barge into Hindu temple to detain bride, interrupting a marriage ceremony”
Just two recent examples of Non-Muslims under attack. Never mind the threats of violence and threats of “burn down you houses and temples, churches etc” public declarations. The authorities? – “It is not a crime until someone actually got killed or a church is actually burnt down!”
Do You Need More?
Who’s who in the Thai coup?
Also, it was not the amnesty which triggered the protests
It was very much so, but I don’t doubt there was a plan to have protests anyway; but would they have been successful or carried such weight? There would not have been any significant support for them, they had used PV several times before without much success.
It dos not explain Thaksin’s amnesty attempt? Was he unaware that they were preparing protests against his/Yingluck’s government? Why would he try his luck on such a contentious issue at that time?
It handed Suthep a massive boost on which he could build his campaign, it was a terrible misjudgement.
Who’s who in the Thai coup?
2007 election result
PPP out-polled the “Democrats” by some 21%, i.e. by more than 4,500,000 vote
In constituency terms it was about 21,000,000 to the ‘democrats’ and 26,000,000 to the PPP.
The relative ratio being about as you say 20%, the absolute difference was 36% to 30% ie 6%. also with getting 20% more constituency votes led to the PPP getting 40% more parliamentary seats.
How can you with a straight face try twist this into being some kind of gerrymandered result in favour of the ‘democrats’?
64% did not vote for the PPP, but they still ended up with close to 50% of the house seats.
2011 election in fact fairly distributed seats in their correct proportion with votes. These are facts rather than your rather disingenuous spin on the 2 elections.
Lies about elections come from both sides. The election directly after the first coup Thais overwhelmingly voted against the PPP, but their electoral will was not represented in parliament is the true story of that election, the rest is just massaged bs.
Dissonance in Malaysia-Japan relations
Mr Yusoff,
Malay proxies for Isma and Perkasa do not interest anyone. If you are unaware of brazen attacks against non-Muslims in Malaysia, it
is because you are part of those attacks and simply a hack for Isma, which is merely Malaysia’s version of the SS. Or really you can’t hide very well behind Ibrahim Ali, and your insecurity about Islam is entirely reflected in your comments. Maybe Najib will save you, which I doubt, as you cannot even save yourself.
Who’s who in the Thai coup?
That is a very perverse reading of the 2007 election result. It is true that for the 80 seats decided on a proportional basis the “Democrat” party did indeed poll a little under 12,500 votes more than PPP. That difference represented less than one tenth of one per cent of their total. However in the votes for the 400 seats awarded on a constituency basis, PPP out-polled the “Democrats” by some 21%, i.e. by more than 4,500,000 votes! OK, in the peculiar electoral system set up by that junta, in many constituencies electors were able to choose two or three different MPs, but even after making allowance for this, the disparity was pretty huge. It was a very strange voting system indeed which the junta had deliberately gerrymandered in a deliberate attempt to penalise the Thaksinite party, but it backfired almost completely.
Again in 2011, when “Democrat” appointees had effective control of the election, they noticed the disparity in the proportional vote in 2007 and so decided it would be a good idea to increase the number of MPs elected proportionately from 80 to 100. This again backfired when Pheu Thai actually did better in the proportional vote than they did in the constituencies and beat the “Democrats” by more than 4,300,000 votes.
Your argument might be marginally valid if Thaksin’s parties had played any major part in the organisation of either election. They did not and it does not take a seer to notice that the plan on both occasions was to minimise the vote for Thaksinite parties.
Finally it is interesting to note that in both elections the exit polls taken at the polling booths pointed to a bigger win for PPP/Pheu Thai than they actually achieved. In 2007 exit polls predicted PPP would win 256 seats, an outright majority. They actually got 233, which was just under half. In 2011 exit polls predicted Pheu Thai would win by a landslide with 312 seats. They actually got 265, though still an overall majority. The significance of this is that discrepancies between exit polls and results are used as primary indicators of possible ballot stuffing. In particular the discrepancy was marked in Bangkok, where the result was published quite late in the day, while in the rest of the country exit polls were largely in line with actual results. As possible corroboration of this, it was reported that the Election Commission actually printed 13% more ballot papers than the total number of electors. The legal limit was an excess of no more than 7% http://asiancorrespondent.com/56559/why-are-so-many-extra-ballot-papers-being-printed-in-thailand
Who’s who in the Thai coup?
It is a myth that electoral fraud has significantly influenced the election results. Baker and more or less every other academic who has researched this subject matter came to this conclusion.
There is also no party that has not taken part in vote buying, and that includes the Democrats as well. Nevertheless, the result of elections were not significantly altered by this.
Claims of “most” support the coup are not supported by any data, and such data would be rather hard to come by in the present climate. I think we can only start making such statements when we have elections again, and can see that at the election result. Well, depending when and under which conditions elections will take place, and how the new constitution will look like by then.
Getting rid of constituencies? Would that not result in even less transparency by removing members of parliament from direct contact with their voters? While there is of course an element of locally influential people being elected, but constituencies also ensure that MP’s have to be directly responsible to local voters. That’s why, to my knowledge, most representative parliamentary systems have a mixture of party list and constituency MP’s.
Was a civil war actually prevented, or only postponed? Time will tell.
Who’s who in the Thai coup?
Actually – it is a myth that a large portion of farmers supported Suthep and the PDRC. Only a few hundred farmers joined in the end, and those never broke the political arty divide. Farmers from the few northern provinces that joined (such as not far from my wife’s area) were almost exclusively from villages of Democrat Party MP’s and were mobilized by the MP’s and Democrat Party vote canvassers. Most farmers in fact blamed Suthep and the PDRC for the delay in payment.
Also, it was not the amnesty which triggered the protests – the amnesty was used as a trigger. Originally the Democrat Party/Yellow Alliance planned to use the Preah Vihaer judgement as a trigger. The protests would have taken place anyhow. It was a situation carefully planned and built over more than 2 years, of patching up a fractured yellow alliance and in mobilizing support. This period was largely ignored by the mass media, most likely as it consisted of very little sexy stories, but relatively small and tedious events.
The internal amnesty rift took place over almost 1 1/2 years, from the time the amnesty idea was first proposed when Thaksin visited Laos and Cambodia, up to the parliamentary vote. But it took then very little time to patch up the differences as Pueah Thai and the Red Shirts were faced with Suthep’s mass protests.
As to readiness for compromise, i think you are not entirely correct. The Pueah Thai government offered many compromises, almost all that were possible under Democracy – shelving the amnesty bill, dissolution of parliament, different proposals of reform committees after elections. The only thing the then government did not compromise was stepping down and making way for “people’s councils” as demanded by the PDRC.
Can you tell me a single compromise Suthep or the PDRC offered? I can’t remember even one.
The PDRC has never even clarified what exact reforms they would propose other than some very broad declarations of intent, such as “getting rid of corruption”, and a few ideas that have been around the block for the past decades, and never considered in earnest, such as decentralization, etc.
Interview with Joe Gordon: Lèse majesté and democracy
“I said hear Suthep’s message that of reform. Pretty plain to me.”
And what is Suthep’s message? “As long as corruption does not benefit TS & Co, it is OK.”
Dissonance in Malaysia-Japan relations
“Brazen attacks against non-Muslims”? Source please. You make it sound like whats happening in Myanmar but thats not the case is it? By the way, you seem to be very knowledgeable about the Japanese Foreign Ministry? Do you personally know any Japanese diplomats? Had any experience when dealing with the Gaimusho? Or like any other keyboard warrior expert, are you really don’t know much?
Video: Andrew Walker on latest Thai coup
I’d like first of all to point out that I’m absolutely against this coup, and find the analysis of mr. Walker very interesting, although nothing he said is new to me. However, I also would like to read or see an analysis by mr. Walker of the system of corruption setup by Taksin through the years. Taksin was literally buying Thailand at every election, where I live we’ve heard (me and my family) people claiming that they were all going to vote because if they made Taksin win in their district, they’d had 2-300B per person. In such a system, not only the democrats, no one has any chance to win the election, mo matter what political platform they can invent. Taksin (or his sister if you prefer) was destroying this country, the rice pledgin program is a demonstration of how they manage things.
Democracy was already an empty shell before the coup. In some way, something had to be done to end the Taksin way of gaining power. The problem is that this country lack the intitutions that counterbalance a Taksin and in ultimate instance protect democracy. I’m afraid that the military have no intention of setting up these institutions, they just want to make sure that Taksin won’t rule the country ever again.
Who’s who in the Thai coup?
Thaksin specially, and his puppet Yingluck to a slightly lesser degree, had demonstrated how dysfunctional and how dangerous a corrupted democracy could be easily abused and misused; such that the promise of “calm, reconciliation and reform” from a certain General Prayuth backed up by tanks and bayonets could only be met by a weary “we’re willing to withhold our suspicions and wait to see” from the citizenry.
If General Prayuth succeeds to deliver, that is bad for the Thailand’s forward march to democracy isn’t it? Because that’s an invitation to more coup interventions in Thailand’s future, whatever the excuses.
And yet if General Prayuth fails at reconciliation, and fails to calm the restive violent-prone Isaan Reds, and fails to deliver the elusive undefined ‘reforms’, Thailand would be mired into an even more dangerous volatile divisiveness before the General’s coup intervention.
Damn if the General succeeds and damn if the General fails.
Who’s who in the Thai coup?
Do you really want to go there?
2007 – election arranged by the 2006 junta, with a primary goal of preventing Thaksin influence. And they failed, even with the whole administration and media control on their side.
“All people want A FORM of democracy”. I agree with that. Some people want it just as window dressing.
Who’s who in the Thai coup?
Having lived in Thailand for 30 odd years. Some notes. There was no democracy under Thaksin’s regime. He was the elite that people keep referring to. Yes, there is a clique around the King who also have power but it’s less than the people with money. Your article is quite accurate. All people want, a form of, Democracy. The farmers are hugely disappointed with the Thaksin regime. It is also not usual in any democracy that if a party is found to be guilty of electoral fraud, they can just join again under another name. It is even weirder when this happens TWICE! Hence the previous PPP, TRT and now the PTP of Thaksin. Mind you ELECTORAL FRAUD means having cheated the elections. Both sides of the divide need to find common ground. If you look honestly at it both SAY they want the same things: Helping the poor and installing a true democracy. I travel a lot due to my work and speak, read and write Thai. I find the tendency is: “A sigh of relief”. That may sound odd to outsiders, but a civil war was prevented. Now, with the weapons cache finds all over Thailand, it is clear it was leading up to that. No one WANTS military to step in, but MOST (not all) seem happy about it. I do hope a form of democracy can be restored soon. If the big guns stop fighting and exchanging rhetoric. Laws need to be changed such as the law where you can join elections after fraud as well as the constituencies. Look up the results of the 2007 elections. You will find the Democrats WON the popular vote (amount of people overall voting for them) but lost by 63 seats to the Thaksin party. That can’t be right. Respect my vote? YES please but in an honest way. These are the changes they are talking about.
Interview with Joe Gordon: Lèse majesté and democracy
Tell us why vote buying of Newin (notice I said “of” Newin and not “by” Newin) was not as serious as the vote buying you complain of. BTW, we can all agree that Abhisit was/is a hapless dilettante, right? Even the Privy Council agrees, but you already knew that, right?
Days of future past in Thailand
I’d rather read “The Windup Girl” by Paolo Bacigalupi.
Days of future past in Thailand
Nice piece but I think the only way Woravut could have made Thaksin see sense would have been to have blown him to smithereens with one of his own grenades brought back from the future.
Bargaining with the PAP
By “utterly” I think you mean you disagree. I think my experience of Singapore is different from yours. The country is more developed than Thailand but to say it is a welfare state is putting it too strongly. Have you observed how the lower classes are treated, maids for example in quarters that would make their Thai equivalent look like luxury apartments.
“the predators slaughter each other in an elite conflict over the succession booty, and those of them that survive are utterly discredited.” Hardly a way to conduct a reasonable debate. As always, and as I have pointed out to Walker, articles good, comments become personal flames, encouraging a return in kind.
Days of future past in Thailand
Excellent humour, out o’ da torture ‘n’ tumour (to put it in rap !).
Interview with Joe Gordon: Lèse majesté and democracy
I said hear Suthep’s message that of reform. Pretty plain to me. As to thaksin, his message is loud and clear – violence towards those against him, as could be seen but overlooked by many on his site: 30 deaths and close to three hundred injured and maimed. Massive corruption – a small example being B500bn in losses and 3mm tons of rice gone missing. What about kidnap and murder of Ekkayuth when it’s now reported that the police investigating the murder destroyed evidence and disallowed a competent autopsy.
Please tell me of your own double standard and dissemination of the truth.
Days of future past in Thailand
Excellent humour.