Where did you get the figures? Are they based on exit polls, which I have not seen published? (I was out of touch during the election itself, so I am still catching up!)I take it that the figures refer to constituency seats only, as the proportional vote cannot yet be calculated. That would leave some 84 constituency seats as yet undecided.
Just supposing the result is not overruled by the court, what will be the position of CTP and CPP? They will hardly want to lose their government perks but unless they become part of the opposition that would leave only BJT.
So, if you and your democrat masters are so sure of all this wrong doings – go to polls and convince the farmers. With “hundreds of thousands” not happy with Yingluck, you should have no problem winning the election hands down.
So, why play chicken? – Your drivel is not correct?
“Former Bank of Thailand governor Pridiyathorn Devakula today called for caretaker premier and the government to resign, saying they are failed government.”-Nation
Failed government. Those two words describe rather appropriately PM Yingluck’s caretaker regime. Yingluck, Chalerm and all other ministers are being mocked at coffee shops, social media, barbershops/hair salons, at offices and even at washrooms for comical, awkward and repeatedly failing attempts to regain authority and control. Their showpiece program The Rice Pledge Scheme had impoverished the farming community instead of bettering their lot. And the corruption … the corruption and the ineptitude of the Yingluck astound and outrages.
Yingluck Shinawatra should definitely resign and submit herself to the mercy of the Thai courts for her role in the Rice Program mismanagement and rampant corruption. Or resign and skedaddle, and bolt out of Thailand to escape judicial reckoning and thus demonstrate that Yingluck indeed is a 100% clone of her fugitive brother Thaksin.
Oh, you forgot to mention that your groupie thugs also both intimidate and physically obstruct voters from exercising their rights.
BUT, I guess that’s OK with you, since voters do not actually have rights in your “democratic mini universe”
Seems to be that Thailand’s recent elections results of which had been very dismally negative to Yingluck’s caretaker government. Without pretense or long explanations, Yingluck caretaker legitimacy had been severely corroded because her government had completely lost any ability to impose authority. In short, just about every Thai with a grudge or a grievance could defy Yingluck/Chalerm by blocking a road and hurl insults at the government all day, all week …
In the meantime, Burmese farmers and smugglers are making a killing by shipping ‘chicken feeds’ thru Thailand’s borders ha ha!
Smuggling Burmese rice to Thailand has become so profitable, thanks to Yingluck’s folly, that rice trafficking has more likely already upended upended illicit Myanmar-Thai trade in drugs, guns and gems.
Does anyone really know what is going on with Yingluck’s Rice Pledge? Yingluck’s Rice program is a big dark mysterious cloud. But there had been three rice farmers suicides, hundreds of thousands of farmers are in deep debt and very desperate, rats are feasting on the rotting rice stockpile, illicit trafficking in rice coming from Myanmar/Cambodia/Laos are booming, suspicious govt-to-govt contracts are announced then cancelled, and many crooks/politicians had been enriched but will be investigated.
PM Yingluck for her singular mismanagement of Thailand’s Rice Pledge should indeed be held responsible, investigated and impleached.
This cool and detached piece, with its emphasis on conflict mitigation, is just the kind of thing that is desperately needed.
Conflict mitigation is the key to a working society. The traditional method securing peace between squabbling neighbours in primitive societies is both of them submitting their interests to that of a patron. In feudalism, this process is repeated up the social hierarchy, all the way to an ├Ьberpatron. Feudalism is easily learned, but belief in its effectiveness as a means of conflict mitigation it is an illusion. Patrons are also servants of their selfish genes, and take advantage of the situation to corruptly feather their own nests. Some patrons are better than others, but it’s no good pretending that they are somehow special. The conflict just changes. It becomes stratified with the exploited masses at the bottom. At some stage catastrophic mass conflict between rival ├Ьberpatrons is inevitable (e. g. the European dynastic wars). Stratified patronage systems break down into anarchy when a credible, active ├Ьberpatron can’t be found, then fascism when some lying, hate-filled ethnic supremacist (e. g. Hitler, Mussolini, Phibul, Suthep) jumps into the gap.
History tells us that democracy is a better way, most importantly because it assumes people aren’t perfect. But it needs to be learned. Tragically, instead of teaching democracy, the Thai education system has perpetuated an illusion that has inevitably plunged the country into conflict.
I know that this is all about the lives of real people so pls excuse a further partly’technical’ note. One of the greatest of all forms of inequality is that which is geographical in origin.Where you are born has a very major influence on your opportunities in life; individuals may overcome the disadvantage of their birthplace, but it is much harder to do this if you happen to be born in a region or country where opportunities are hard to come by. Consequently, regional inequality (which is what Andrew is talking about here) is often much harder to overcome than other forms, because major and basic geographical changes have to occur if there is to be improvement. By major geographical change I mean – new resources (sometimes, not always), changes in external circumstances (for example in northern/northeast Thailand’s case it has been a problem for decades – if not centuries – that their neighbours other than central Thailand have been poor and largely closed off from trade; there is some chance of change in this respect) and most importantly changes in access to the rest of the world. The richest areas are those that are most accessible; even places with zero resources but an accessible location can become prosperous (the swamps that were Venice or Singapore) but isolated places, no matter what their ‘natural’ resources, will always have grave difficulty in improving themselves. Peripheral to the Thai heartland and abutting even poorer regions and with what limited transportation routes do exist all centering on Bangkok until recently, it is not surprising that north and northeast Thailand have been poor. The very fact that they did not become even poorer relative to the centre of the country under Thaksinomics has to be seen,as Andrew implies, as ‘not so bad’ an outcome and may even hint at an ongoing and significant change in these regions’ accessibility – in their ‘basic geographies’ as access to Myanmar and China and Vietnam grows.
Of course, in respect of inequality as in so many other aspects of the country, the real elephant (rather, the real herd of elephants) in the room of Thai politics is the history of relations between the country’s centre and its periphery. The conquest of Lanna and Lang Xang (ironically by the other Thaksin and his immediate successors) more than two centuries ago and the resultant mass relocation (ethnic cleansing it would be called today) and immiseration of the populations out of what is now Laos from 1827 onwards, resonates more clearly today than for decades past- to the extent that one might almost see the chaos of the past decade in Thai politics as being a case of ‘the empire striking back’, or the ‘Revenge of the Lao and Lanna’. Am I being too dramatic,or can one see in the repeated, and until now successful, attempts in the last decade to overthrow Thai governments that have won power through overwhelming support from the northern peripheries a sense of dismay among the so-called anti-Thaksin forces that people who for were for so long have been marginalised (even despised) seem to rule the roost? We can all just about stomach the success of people we accept are our ‘superiors’; we find it harder to accept that our peers might meet with more success than we do; but what is most galling and unbearable to us, is when people we have long looked down upon succeed.
Of course, one needs to remember that Nick’s heart-felt account need never have been written if Thaksin hadn’t vetoed the timetable agreed to by the Red Shirt leadership and the Abhisit government for fresh elections. That’s why Thaksin is part of the problem, not the solution.
Krajong, your logic is fundamentally wrong. You say in regards to the rice buying initiative: “However, they are also aware, as the farmers themselves are, that the proximate cause of the government’s inability to pay them is it’s caretaker status and the refusal of the EC to permit issuance of bonds.”
What? The root cause of the program’s failure is, well, the program’s failure by the government. It has to be acknowledged loud and clear that the fault of this program lies squarely with PT. This program was in place well before the current round of protests began. Its intellectually disingenuous to blame the protesters for an extremely bad (to say the least) policy, both in execution, and more importantly, in concept. Even if it was a “legitimate” wealth transfer objective, the program structure was developed and executed in the opposite way. Given Thailand’s labor market conditions, facilitating further dependence of poor people on HUGE government ag subsidies by taxes is a striking example of bad macro-economic policy and pretty blatant vote buying for short-term political gain. But that’s Pua-Thai’s base, and the objective isn’t sound policy (the former), but politics (the latter). And no, this story doesn’t seem to be picked up by the “western analysts” in a meaningful way – there is certainly no mention of this in the above piece, for example. Again, its mind boggling the extent to which analysis of Thaksin’s policies is given such short shrift.
Back to the current situation – Now, you are right in recognizing that Suthep and the extreme nationalists/anti PT groups are ruthlessly exploiting this failure to their gain. I do believe that their actions have revealed themselves to be wrong on so many levels (too many to detail now). My criticism, again, is in response to the neglectful lack of analysis (or unwillingness or inability) of western “analysts” to address the story of the rice buying program and lay proper culpability for it where it belongs – with PT.
By the way none of this is meant as personal attack or criticism of you or the OP. Cheers.
“Crumble at the edges”? I don’t know about that though I do sense the distinct possibility that the result may yet be stamped upon and ruled invalid by activist judges who have a proven track record of so doing. But until we are told the size of the “none-of-these” vote we can not usefully surmise how well Pheu Thai’s support has held up. Nonetheless, judged by the voter turnout in the party’s heartlands, they have grounds for optimism.
An election which has shown support for Peua Thai continues to crumble at a rapid rate and the example I gave is a major factor in the continued erosion of the party’s credibility.
I’m not saying that other players don’t have issues.
The Democrats are 100% undemocratic!
Same with most of the Thai elites and the army hierarchy
many of those who claim a superior right to override democracy do so under King’s name.
They accept coups to overthrow democracy because they can’t win by ballot which they hate.
Under all the circumstances the total turn-out for the election seems quite good. While official figures are still unavailable and anyway incomplete, Bangkok Pundit has assembled details to indicate that some 2O million or over 48% of the total electorate actually voted. This in turn represents some 64% of those who voted in 2011, when turn-out was very high. That is to say that only 36% of likely voters either chose not to vote (“Democrat” voters with nowhere to go?)or, as in a great number of cases, were illegally prevented from doing so. All in all this has to be seen as a positive response under very difficult circumstances from those who believe fervently in free elections.
Of course there will have to be another election – at great and unnecessary public expense – because it is intolerable that so many people should be effectively disfranchised by the anti-democratic machinations of the leadership of the so-called “Democrat” party, without whose support Suthep’s street insurrection would have withered months ago.
I don’t follow this. How has Thaksin’s “reform agenda” been exposed? I accept the need for reform which, in a developing democracy like Thailand’s, really needs to be a continuous process. But the whole reform issue, as it has been used by both sides in the last few months, is a red herring. Nobody has said clearly what they mean by it, least of all Suthep or the “Democrats”. Instead they have simply used it as an excuse to try to thwart a necessary election – an election organised under the same set of rules as in July 2011, which was accepted by all parties at the time and was pronounced “free and fair” by the independent observers.
Is The Nation the Red Shirt’s whipping boy or is it vice versa? It seems to me more like a case of mutual flagellation! But in the whole scheme of things does the English-language Nation actually matter very much, if at all?
And is the Bangkok Post really any different? It does seem that together they may have influence on how the outside world views Thailand. So maybe, yes, they do matter a bit.
“the army is there to ensure that democracy is upheld.” Don’t you mean should be? But that is not how the army sees its role. Ever since Sarit overthrew Plaek, the military has stood first and foremost to defend the monarchy, with reference to protecting the interests of “the people”. The letter is a generally vague term beloved by demagogues long before Suthep but one that need not be defined by anything as inconvenient as electoral democracy.
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Thailand’s election: 2 February 2014
Where did you get the figures? Are they based on exit polls, which I have not seen published? (I was out of touch during the election itself, so I am still catching up!)I take it that the figures refer to constituency seats only, as the proportional vote cannot yet be calculated. That would leave some 84 constituency seats as yet undecided.
Just supposing the result is not overruled by the court, what will be the position of CTP and CPP? They will hardly want to lose their government perks but unless they become part of the opposition that would leave only BJT.
Thailand’s election: 2 February 2014
So, if you and your democrat masters are so sure of all this wrong doings – go to polls and convince the farmers. With “hundreds of thousands” not happy with Yingluck, you should have no problem winning the election hands down.
So, why play chicken? – Your drivel is not correct?
Thailand’s election: 2 February 2014
“Former Bank of Thailand governor Pridiyathorn Devakula today called for caretaker premier and the government to resign, saying they are failed government.”-Nation
Failed government. Those two words describe rather appropriately PM Yingluck’s caretaker regime. Yingluck, Chalerm and all other ministers are being mocked at coffee shops, social media, barbershops/hair salons, at offices and even at washrooms for comical, awkward and repeatedly failing attempts to regain authority and control. Their showpiece program The Rice Pledge Scheme had impoverished the farming community instead of bettering their lot. And the corruption … the corruption and the ineptitude of the Yingluck astound and outrages.
Yingluck Shinawatra should definitely resign and submit herself to the mercy of the Thai courts for her role in the Rice Program mismanagement and rampant corruption. Or resign and skedaddle, and bolt out of Thailand to escape judicial reckoning and thus demonstrate that Yingluck indeed is a 100% clone of her fugitive brother Thaksin.
Thailand’s 3D Conflict
“institutionalised ideas are weapons of mass deconstruction” > and they can be weapons of mass empowerment or oppression
Thailand’s election: 2 February 2014
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304428004579352590377530118?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304428004579352590377530118.html
Thailand’s election: 2 February 2014
Oh, you forgot to mention that your groupie thugs also both intimidate and physically obstruct voters from exercising their rights.
BUT, I guess that’s OK with you, since voters do not actually have rights in your “democratic mini universe”
Thailand’s election: 2 February 2014
Seems to be that Thailand’s recent elections results of which had been very dismally negative to Yingluck’s caretaker government. Without pretense or long explanations, Yingluck caretaker legitimacy had been severely corroded because her government had completely lost any ability to impose authority. In short, just about every Thai with a grudge or a grievance could defy Yingluck/Chalerm by blocking a road and hurl insults at the government all day, all week …
In the meantime, Burmese farmers and smugglers are making a killing by shipping ‘chicken feeds’ thru Thailand’s borders ha ha!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/thailand/10618134/Burmese-smugglers-get-rich-on-Yingluck-Shinawatras-13-billion-Thai-rice-subsidies.html
Smuggling Burmese rice to Thailand has become so profitable, thanks to Yingluck’s folly, that rice trafficking has more likely already upended upended illicit Myanmar-Thai trade in drugs, guns and gems.
Does anyone really know what is going on with Yingluck’s Rice Pledge? Yingluck’s Rice program is a big dark mysterious cloud. But there had been three rice farmers suicides, hundreds of thousands of farmers are in deep debt and very desperate, rats are feasting on the rotting rice stockpile, illicit trafficking in rice coming from Myanmar/Cambodia/Laos are booming, suspicious govt-to-govt contracts are announced then cancelled, and many crooks/politicians had been enriched but will be investigated.
PM Yingluck for her singular mismanagement of Thailand’s Rice Pledge should indeed be held responsible, investigated and impleached.
Thailand’s 3D Conflict
This cool and detached piece, with its emphasis on conflict mitigation, is just the kind of thing that is desperately needed.
Conflict mitigation is the key to a working society. The traditional method securing peace between squabbling neighbours in primitive societies is both of them submitting their interests to that of a patron. In feudalism, this process is repeated up the social hierarchy, all the way to an ├Ьberpatron. Feudalism is easily learned, but belief in its effectiveness as a means of conflict mitigation it is an illusion. Patrons are also servants of their selfish genes, and take advantage of the situation to corruptly feather their own nests. Some patrons are better than others, but it’s no good pretending that they are somehow special. The conflict just changes. It becomes stratified with the exploited masses at the bottom. At some stage catastrophic mass conflict between rival ├Ьberpatrons is inevitable (e. g. the European dynastic wars). Stratified patronage systems break down into anarchy when a credible, active ├Ьberpatron can’t be found, then fascism when some lying, hate-filled ethnic supremacist (e. g. Hitler, Mussolini, Phibul, Suthep) jumps into the gap.
History tells us that democracy is a better way, most importantly because it assumes people aren’t perfect. But it needs to be learned. Tragically, instead of teaching democracy, the Thai education system has perpetuated an illusion that has inevitably plunged the country into conflict.
Thaksinomics, poverty and inequality
I know that this is all about the lives of real people so pls excuse a further partly’technical’ note. One of the greatest of all forms of inequality is that which is geographical in origin.Where you are born has a very major influence on your opportunities in life; individuals may overcome the disadvantage of their birthplace, but it is much harder to do this if you happen to be born in a region or country where opportunities are hard to come by. Consequently, regional inequality (which is what Andrew is talking about here) is often much harder to overcome than other forms, because major and basic geographical changes have to occur if there is to be improvement. By major geographical change I mean – new resources (sometimes, not always), changes in external circumstances (for example in northern/northeast Thailand’s case it has been a problem for decades – if not centuries – that their neighbours other than central Thailand have been poor and largely closed off from trade; there is some chance of change in this respect) and most importantly changes in access to the rest of the world. The richest areas are those that are most accessible; even places with zero resources but an accessible location can become prosperous (the swamps that were Venice or Singapore) but isolated places, no matter what their ‘natural’ resources, will always have grave difficulty in improving themselves. Peripheral to the Thai heartland and abutting even poorer regions and with what limited transportation routes do exist all centering on Bangkok until recently, it is not surprising that north and northeast Thailand have been poor. The very fact that they did not become even poorer relative to the centre of the country under Thaksinomics has to be seen,as Andrew implies, as ‘not so bad’ an outcome and may even hint at an ongoing and significant change in these regions’ accessibility – in their ‘basic geographies’ as access to Myanmar and China and Vietnam grows.
Of course, in respect of inequality as in so many other aspects of the country, the real elephant (rather, the real herd of elephants) in the room of Thai politics is the history of relations between the country’s centre and its periphery. The conquest of Lanna and Lang Xang (ironically by the other Thaksin and his immediate successors) more than two centuries ago and the resultant mass relocation (ethnic cleansing it would be called today) and immiseration of the populations out of what is now Laos from 1827 onwards, resonates more clearly today than for decades past- to the extent that one might almost see the chaos of the past decade in Thai politics as being a case of ‘the empire striking back’, or the ‘Revenge of the Lao and Lanna’. Am I being too dramatic,or can one see in the repeated, and until now successful, attempts in the last decade to overthrow Thai governments that have won power through overwhelming support from the northern peripheries a sense of dismay among the so-called anti-Thaksin forces that people who for were for so long have been marginalised (even despised) seem to rule the roost? We can all just about stomach the success of people we accept are our ‘superiors’; we find it harder to accept that our peers might meet with more success than we do; but what is most galling and unbearable to us, is when people we have long looked down upon succeed.
The crushing of the Red Shirts
Of course, one needs to remember that Nick’s heart-felt account need never have been written if Thaksin hadn’t vetoed the timetable agreed to by the Red Shirt leadership and the Abhisit government for fresh elections. That’s why Thaksin is part of the problem, not the solution.
Thailand’s electorate deserves respect
Krajong, your logic is fundamentally wrong. You say in regards to the rice buying initiative: “However, they are also aware, as the farmers themselves are, that the proximate cause of the government’s inability to pay them is it’s caretaker status and the refusal of the EC to permit issuance of bonds.”
What? The root cause of the program’s failure is, well, the program’s failure by the government. It has to be acknowledged loud and clear that the fault of this program lies squarely with PT. This program was in place well before the current round of protests began. Its intellectually disingenuous to blame the protesters for an extremely bad (to say the least) policy, both in execution, and more importantly, in concept. Even if it was a “legitimate” wealth transfer objective, the program structure was developed and executed in the opposite way. Given Thailand’s labor market conditions, facilitating further dependence of poor people on HUGE government ag subsidies by taxes is a striking example of bad macro-economic policy and pretty blatant vote buying for short-term political gain. But that’s Pua-Thai’s base, and the objective isn’t sound policy (the former), but politics (the latter). And no, this story doesn’t seem to be picked up by the “western analysts” in a meaningful way – there is certainly no mention of this in the above piece, for example. Again, its mind boggling the extent to which analysis of Thaksin’s policies is given such short shrift.
Back to the current situation – Now, you are right in recognizing that Suthep and the extreme nationalists/anti PT groups are ruthlessly exploiting this failure to their gain. I do believe that their actions have revealed themselves to be wrong on so many levels (too many to detail now). My criticism, again, is in response to the neglectful lack of analysis (or unwillingness or inability) of western “analysts” to address the story of the rice buying program and lay proper culpability for it where it belongs – with PT.
By the way none of this is meant as personal attack or criticism of you or the OP. Cheers.
Thailand’s election: 2 February 2014
“Crumble at the edges”? I don’t know about that though I do sense the distinct possibility that the result may yet be stamped upon and ruled invalid by activist judges who have a proven track record of so doing. But until we are told the size of the “none-of-these” vote we can not usefully surmise how well Pheu Thai’s support has held up. Nonetheless, judged by the voter turnout in the party’s heartlands, they have grounds for optimism.
Thailand’s election: 2 February 2014
http://m.thairath.co.th/content/pol/401232
Crown prince’s air force brigade deployed in BKK … in order to protect govt.? I can’t read Thai … google translates to
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=th&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fm.thairath.co.th%2Fcontent%2Fpol%2F401232
Thailand’s 3D Conflict
“Our progress as a nation can be no swifter
than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.” JFK
Thailand’s election: 2 February 2014
An election which has shown support for Peua Thai continues to crumble at a rapid rate and the example I gave is a major factor in the continued erosion of the party’s credibility.
I’m not saying that other players don’t have issues.
Thailand’s election: 2 February 2014
The Democrats are 100% undemocratic!
Same with most of the Thai elites and the army hierarchy
many of those who claim a superior right to override democracy do so under King’s name.
They accept coups to overthrow democracy because they can’t win by ballot which they hate.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/thailand-elections-opposition-are-democrats-in-name-only-20140204-31z12.html#ixzz2sRYLRK8h
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/thailand-elections-opposition-are-democrats-in-name-only-20140204-31z12.html#ixzz2sRXuWV2Q
Thailand’s election: 2 February 2014
Under all the circumstances the total turn-out for the election seems quite good. While official figures are still unavailable and anyway incomplete, Bangkok Pundit has assembled details to indicate that some 2O million or over 48% of the total electorate actually voted. This in turn represents some 64% of those who voted in 2011, when turn-out was very high. That is to say that only 36% of likely voters either chose not to vote (“Democrat” voters with nowhere to go?)or, as in a great number of cases, were illegally prevented from doing so. All in all this has to be seen as a positive response under very difficult circumstances from those who believe fervently in free elections.
Of course there will have to be another election – at great and unnecessary public expense – because it is intolerable that so many people should be effectively disfranchised by the anti-democratic machinations of the leadership of the so-called “Democrat” party, without whose support Suthep’s street insurrection would have withered months ago.
Thailand’s election: 2 February 2014
I don’t follow this. How has Thaksin’s “reform agenda” been exposed? I accept the need for reform which, in a developing democracy like Thailand’s, really needs to be a continuous process. But the whole reform issue, as it has been used by both sides in the last few months, is a red herring. Nobody has said clearly what they mean by it, least of all Suthep or the “Democrats”. Instead they have simply used it as an excuse to try to thwart a necessary election – an election organised under the same set of rules as in July 2011, which was accepted by all parties at the time and was pronounced “free and fair” by the independent observers.
Thailand’s election: 2 February 2014
Is The Nation the Red Shirt’s whipping boy or is it vice versa? It seems to me more like a case of mutual flagellation! But in the whole scheme of things does the English-language Nation actually matter very much, if at all?
And is the Bangkok Post really any different? It does seem that together they may have influence on how the outside world views Thailand. So maybe, yes, they do matter a bit.
Thailand’s election: 2 February 2014
“the army is there to ensure that democracy is upheld.” Don’t you mean should be? But that is not how the army sees its role. Ever since Sarit overthrew Plaek, the military has stood first and foremost to defend the monarchy, with reference to protecting the interests of “the people”. The letter is a generally vague term beloved by demagogues long before Suthep but one that need not be defined by anything as inconvenient as electoral democracy.