Comments

I’m sure wife would agree Vichai N just as the vast bulk of educated and well informed New mandala readers do.

Your hate speech and extremely condescending tone towards the vast majority of Thai people is a mirror image of sutheps utterly one sided and socially destructive vitriol.

These characteristics explain why the vast bulk of Thai people (like new mandala readers) consistently give you and those like you an overwhelming thumbs down either on forums or at the ballot box.

You will no doubt trump up some gibberish that the red vote is entirely bought anyway yada yada but I can assure you that throughout the regions of Issarn that i visited during the last election the democrats were offering exactly the same price per vote as the reds, so at the end of the day “the people” just voted for the party that had the best policy platform for their constituency which is their right.

Personally I detest Thaksin and his cronies for many of the same reasons you do and i would never vote for his team, however because I don’t soak myself in hate and look down condescendingly towards the views and choices of my fellow country men, I’m able to see that the extreme hate filled reds and extreme hate filled yellows like you are both the brainwashed puppets of the elite who can only see one side of every argument. Its people filled with hate and with blinkers on like you that are driving this country towards civil war.

Shame on you Vichai for epitomizing the cliche of a hate filled tunnel visioned one sided political extremist when that is exactly what you claim to be fighting against.

Vichai your right, The Lord Buddha won’t place the country into your hands however he has provided many teachings that can help you shed the hate that has clearly consumed you and turned you into the one sided political extremist that you claim to hate.

The primary lesson should be that, with all its affluence, Singapore does not live in a vacuum and that Singaporeans and the PAP have to re-evaluate the very high bar of achievement and stability they have assigned themselves. They have one of two choices: Lower the bar a little, swallow a little pride, and don’t raise expectations of economic and social equity, harmony and stability beyond what is reasonable; or keep the bar where it is and work even harder at attaining even more economic and social equity, harmony and stability (for all, citizens and guest workers). But a decision
has to be made: Lower the bar slightly or
keep it where it is. I would argue for the former rather than latter as I feel, in the long term, the former approach is more realistic, and will serve Singapore and its citizens better.

Khaosod english has a piece entitled Foreign Governments Urge Peace, Election In Thailand, but reading it I find that few governments are actually supporting elections as the democratic way forward.

I think Thailand is in danger of being treated as was Egypt. The Army is surely behind Suthep, the organ grinder, holding the monkey’s chain.

bang on! SG schools are full of teachers from south asia, all having masters’ degree but being paid the nominal wage of the teachers in general. no promotion, nominal increment, same workload. they are educted foreign nationals but probably they would not make sound as they just leave aft they think enough has been earned. for these construction workers, the problem is, they do have have an assured job in their home land and therefore are caught in a limbo

…and here is the Forbes list of the richest in Thailand. Thaksin is a paltry number 10 on the list.

A rather pessimistic view of Burma, Mr. Ohn, but you do have some valid points, especially about narcotics (drug war-lords like Hsing-han Lo and his son Steven Lo are worshiped as “heroes” in Burma and Singapore!) and about this unhealthy obsession with “tribal/racial warfare” (isn’t Buddha a “Kalar” and Jesus a “Semite”?).
I thought Derek Tonkin can read and speak a bit of Burmese, but maybe not too well. What about people like Bertil Lintner, David Steinberg and Robert Taylor? Lintner was married to a Shan woman, so he might speak Shan and some Burmese. Incidentally, Inge Sargent (the Austrian Shan princess) can still speak Burmese (she was interviewed recently). I think even Thant Myint-U, who grew up outside of Burma, had to learn how to read and write Burmese (which is quite different from just knowing how to speak it) a bit later in his life (I know that from the way he translated Mrauk-U in one of his books!)
I admit that my spoken Burmese is very rusty (with all these new slang words spoken with a sing-song Chinese accent nowadays) but I did learn how to read and write Burmese (and I even got a University degree in Burma!) but I would never ever claim that I am a “Burma-expert” (and I never made any “cash flow” let alone a “university degree” out of the fact that I am from Burma!). As I have often repeated, young (anyone under 50 for me!) Western academics and NGO’s (do-gooders?) have a very limited naive view of Burma and the Burma experts and dissidents have their own agenda (often financial) in influencing or even manipulating the perception of such people with a limited knowledge of Burma (unlike you, Mr. Ohn!), not to mention governments and big corporations.

“…can we then ponder if the last few weeks of events may not have been downstream from the political choices of a few oligarchs?”

Thank you for championing the analytical over the political. A thought-provoking article to be sure.

That the wealthy in any political system have greater access to power is non-unique to the Thai case. However, if an oligarchy is defined in its Aristotelian sense as “the few ruling in the interest of a few,” the evidence in Thailand doesn’t arguably fit. Historically, the oligarchy concept fits the Philippines and many Latin American countries more than it does Thailand.

Rather, I would argue that Thailand’s attempted transition to democracy has historically been dominated by an entrenched aristocracy, which by Aristotelian definition, is “the few ruling in the interest of the general” [or at least claiming to do rule in the interest of the general population]. Thailand’s aristocracy has benefitted by introducing democratic institutions as long as they could control them. But Thaksin changed all of that.

I would argue that Thaksin’s challenge to the traditional aristocracy has put in motion current events, not old oligarchy, or oligarchic in-fighting, or a new oligarchy. A new political consciousness among ruralites, provincial Thais in the North and Northeast, and among the urban poor cannot be ignored. The globalization of wants and needs has accompanied the spread of Thailand’s economic growth. It’s not greater relative inequality in Thailand that is the primary causal factor here. It is the absolute economic rise of a rural/provincial majority that has been causal. Historically speaking, Thailand has more people with more individual and family resources today that it ever has. This new political consciousness and resource base is not going to retreat. Let’s look beyond the financiers and recognize the real motives of people.

For me the question over the past few years through today is whether or not these counter-aristocratic forces will, over time, transform the Thai polity into entrenched populism or representative democracy. Oligarchy will not emerge or be tolerated by the majority. The days of the traditional aristocracy are over. And gone with it are the inequalities between the powerful few and the powerless many. How the ballot box is used to elect representatives, and how those representative choose to govern are open questions. I may be wrong but that’s how I read it.

The failure of the aristocracy hanging on today is to confuse the source of all this change–Thaksin (or now “Thaksin influence”)–with the political reality of all this change–the demand among the up-country electorate for their interests to be formally and constitutionally represented. Even if aristocratic elements are successful in removing Thaksin’s family from positions of leadership, what Thaksin has left in his wake will remain. Thailand’s aristocratic elements, up to this point, have merely tolerated democratic institutions because they used to serve their own interests. Now they have a choice to embrace them today and accept their fate or to extend political instability until they do recognize these forces are not in one man or family, but the numerical majority.

Oh I didn’t notice Jaidee’s New Year’s greetings to Vichai N and thank you. My wife agrees with you about my deficient ‘level of intellect’. But I must take exception to ‘respect of lives’.

The reason I engage at New Mandala is particularly because there are many charlatans, pretending and deceiving groups of Thai people, and succeeding to make sacrificial ‘goats’ of their followers to feed their megalomania and their corrupted cry for their goat-followers to fight to the death for their brand of corrupt and hatred-inspired democracy.

I don’t think there are other people like me, heaven forbid. And Lord Buddha definitely would not allow the country to fall into my hands (the country already belongs to the Shinawatra clan, or have you forgotten?)

A huge amount of text to simply say, “are the Thai super rich manipulating the politics and the demonstrations?” And then not one line of who these people are, what their possible motivations (save Thaksin) could be, how they are aligned. Not one line of defining the now overused “oligarch”.

5 mm baht a day is not much and there are lots of not-so-mega rich who contribute on both sides. Certainly there could and might be manipulation at the top. But Thailand has very many families with wealth counting in the hundreds of millions of US dollars who can be playing this game. If it can be simplified into oligarch vs oligarch, one needs to start presenting evidence before the meme overtakes the evidence.

As a Thai, I would like to welcome all reports and comments about this protest against this corrupted government.
Your report didn’t cover how this protest has begun and stories behind it, you know nothing about how bad the corruption has spread throughout in this country during the past two or three decades (supposed democratic system) beside some little things that you have experienced with the Thai Authority. We as the country will never want to separate the Red Shirts and the other protesters into sides because we all are Thais and we want to be united as a free nation and if we can do anything to get rid of this bad regime, we will do anything to let the world know that we want to set our country free from the endless corruption. If you understand the VOTE buying- you will understand why people are standing up and fight against this government, because the 350+ tickets had been bought them to the seats in the Parliament (we all know this)….. this protest is not the same as the protest which was set by the Red Shirts’ leaders back in 2009 and 2010 when those Red Shirts had set fire in Bangkok and people, police and military personnel got kill bared arms.
Do you know all of the country’s corrupted history? Before leave any comment… Please be sure that you have all of the facts in hand. We respect your country – your leaders and your internal matters. We will not step in to things that are not our business. So let us clean our house so you can enjoy your stay in a very near future.