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It is more likely that business and personal conflicts among the Red leaders themselves had provoked the latest assassination attempts, considering their violent streaks.

(http://www.khaosod.co.th/view_newsonline.php?newsid=TVRNNU9EVTVNak0yTWc9PQ==&sectionid=)

“… Yet Wad Rawee, a writer and longtime friend of Mr. Kamol, told Khaosod that he does not believe the poet was killed because of his involvement in anti-lese majeste campaigns…

Yet a number of Redshirt activists who knew Mr. Kamol also privately speculated that Mr. Kamol might have been targeted in revenge for his alleged role in engineering violent attacks on anti-government protesters in recent months …

However, Pol.Lt.Col. Nampetch Sap-udom, a senior investigation officer at Chokechai Police Station, stressed that non-political motives behind the murder have not been ruled out either. According to Pol.Lt.Col. Nampetch, other suspected motives include business conflicts, personal disputes, and a vendetta concerning Mr. Kamol’s alleged adultery; Mr. Kamol was known to be a womaniser, Pol.Lt.Col Nampetch claimed … ”

Just maybe Mr. Kamol’s successful assassination was connected to the ‘unsuccessful’ assassination attempt on Red Leader Kwanchai Praipana ????

CAPO chief Chalerm Yubamrung should quickly be able to make his arrests of people responsible for any lethal or deadly outrage against any prominent Red Shirt figure! Or maybe not . . . for suspicious reasons.

The assassination attempt on Red Leader Kwanchai …. what was that all about?

Thank your for the comments. Some clarification seems to be required:
My question was, in how far commission etc. that are legitimate due to their legality can dissolve the division of powers, thereby undermine the rule of law, which in turn, would result in their illegitimacy. Informal networks are “illegitimate” in the sense that they are outside of legal norms and defined positions. Patronage can be discussed as a special case of traditional systems of domination. The Thai state hardly is such a traditional system. Therefore, the informal networks play a very limited role. As they lack legitimacy, they can only use force outside of the state apparatus’ to initiate changes. However, if such informal personal ties are connected to organisations, the situation is of course different. Organisations have the means to enforce interests. As a mater of fact that is why we have them. The difference is obvious, when looking at a coup d’etat. No informal network of generals can make a coup. To stage a coup, this network has to be in control of the organisation called army! The structure of this organisation has to be in such a way that an informal network can kind of hijack the organisation for its own interests.
The interesting case in Thailand is that we do in fact have a fluidity of many informal networks including the so-called “dark influences”, and that these can structure organisations in such a way that the organisations and commissions can be used according to their interests. This is what I regard as most interesting. The problem is though that “dark influences” are usually less visible (that is why they are called dark), while the structure and network of organisations is visible. From the analysis of the “organisational field” of politics we can draw conclusions about what interests the legal system is serving.
I did not include the monarchy or the privy council in the analysis, although these are certainly highly important organisations. The reason is that the King as Head of State appoints the members of the commission as well as the government etc., but does not make the selection. My focus was on the selection.

The Lady in the film is a glossy version of the real thing. This is a complex lady wrapped in an infinitely complex power structure that I think few outsiders have any idea of. They think since she’s out of confinement and elected to office she can wave a magic wand and overcome the power elite. She has bide her time and bite her lip and say things – like all politicians do — to please certain people. It’s very doubtful she will be able to run for president next year, but there is a chance she will be in the race anyway – as a VP candidate.

This is a fascinating analysis and Max Grömping is to be congratulated for his fastidious research. In short it appears that three major factors above all impaired the quality of the election. 1) The disruption of voting and intimidation of voters by anti-government protesters; 2) the Democrat Party boycott; and 3) the feeble, not to say partial, management of the process by the Election Commission. While there is not much here that we had not already surmised, it is invaluable to have it now so well documented.

Has any similar research been conducted about the July 2011 election? I ask particularly because it has always struck me that, in Bangkok alone, there was a gross disparity between the exit polls (as well as the eve-of -election opinion polls) on the one hand and the actual election result on the other. In the rest of the country any discrepancies appear to have been within acceptable norms. I am not a psephologist but my understanding is that obvious discrepancies between exit polls and election results are a first cause for investigating possible cases of ballot stuffing.

Thais can own 100% of a business in Australia while foreigners in Thailand forced to have a Thai partner. Thais can own land while its virtually impossible for an Aussie to buy any land here. An investigation into the rights of foreigners in Thailand would be nice. The western world is much much more generous to Thais living on its soil in my opinion. How about doing a story on the treatment of Aussies living on Thai soil?

If they are “informal”, how can these networks be proved to exist, much less proved to in reality function as suggested ?

Good read. Apart from K Chettawan’s words I like Scot’s phrase “reheated paternalism”.

A very useful translation, many thanks indeed Scot. The magazine discussed in the Matichon article is the Valentine edition of Praew. You can view the magazine’s website at http://www.praew.com.

I have also shared the photographs from the magazine on my Facebook page, and Chetawan Thuaprakhon has left a comment there, apologizing that he didn’t respond to your email because he’s not confident about his English-language ability. So if you ask somebody to write to him in Thai on your behalf, or comment in the Facebook discussion, I am sure he would be happy to respond. You can view the Facebook post with your article and the Praew photographs here: http://www.facebook.com/zenjournalist/posts/10152365059056154.

Thanks also for your comment about my work. Your choice of the word ferocious was a perceptive one I think. A lot of my journalism is driven by anger which can be both a strength and a weakness, probably more often the latter. I realize that it wasn’t the focus of your article so I’m not trying to get into a long debate on it that takes us off the topic of Thainess, but if you have time to expand slightly on “the appalling collateral damage” that provocative political journalism can inflict in Thailand, I would be really interested to hear your thoughts.

The reason I ask is because, as you can imagine, the question of whether my work might do more harm than good is one I constantly have to think about. My instinct has always been that when writing about a country’s politics and the actions of the powerful, revealing as much accurate information as possible is always a positive thing to do, even if some groups may be offended and even enraged by it.

The issue is more complex when writing about individuals, of course – people have a right to privacy, and publishing information about their personal lives can cause them significant harm and suffering. But the private activities of public figures can affect the lives of countless others, and in these circumstances, I think journalists are justified in revealing information that powerful people want to hide.

While I realize that my work offends and upsets a lot of people, that is something I can live with. I don’t self-censor or restrict my reporting to conform with supposed cultural norms in Thailand. But I do withhold information when I think it will cause real harm to real people.

My biggest fear is that my wife and son could be targeted as a result of my work. That regularly affects my decisions on what to publish and when and how to publish it. Secondly, I also have the professional and moral responsibility to always protect my sources – many people give me information at significant personal risk, and I have to ensure I use it in a way that protects them, and also ensure that they can communicate with me using secure methods that keep their contact with me private. Thirdly, it is quite possible that somebody will be prosecuted and jailed in Thailand sooner or later for sharing one of my articles on social media, and this is something that always troubles me. When people comment on or share my work on social media in a way that I feel places them at potential risk, I contact them privately to ask them whether they have considered the consequences and are comfortable with the risk they have taken. Some people choose to delete their comments after hearing from me. This issue is a constant worry, but I don’t believe that the absurdly draconian enforcement of Article 112 should stop me publishing and sharing my work in ways it can be accessed in Thailand. I just have to do my best to ensure people share it responsibly without putting themselves at undue risk.

Finally, there is always a chance that an incendiary revelation or image leads to something truly terrible happening. The infamous mock-hanging photograph published by Thai newspapers on October 5, 1976, is perhaps the most obvious example. But frankly I think the power of journalism is often overstated in such cases – it may hasten the pace of changes that would have happened anyway, but only in exceptionally rare circumstances does it change the course of history. There surely would have been a terrible massacre at Thammasat in October 1976 even if the photograph had never been published.

Apologies for such a lengthy monologue on the subject, but because it’s an issue that really does keep me awake at night sometimes, it would be great to hear your opinion on whether there are risks of collateral damage that I have failed to consider. Best wishes.