In Southeast Asia, race-based mainstream politics is largely popular in Malaysia. Regardless of their rationale for race-inspired political system and policies of resource-segregation/priority based on race, I see it, simply as apartheid.
wtf! it’s more than two weeks and Yingluck still could not submit a credible accounting of Thailand’s Rice Pledging Scheme losses?
no wonder the Thais are getting very steamed up, getting very suspicious, getting more prone to believe the worse (runaway corruption and sleaze) about how much losses had been incurred and how much more losses are to come.
i suggest to you that the losses will be more than Bht 350 billion by this time. or maybe Baht 450 billion. or maybe Bht 550 billion. wtf … it could in the trillion range by the time Yingluck completes her term.
Well written essay, very accurate post mortem of GE13 and thoroughly depict the current situation. But it is not just this GE13 that UMNO is campaigning in a do or die manner for core malay votes. It has been since Razak’s time. In fact I think UMNO leaders were aware of this political reality and that was also the main reason propagating the separation of Singapore from the Federation of Malaya in 1965.
The prime time battle for core Malays votes was during Tun Mahathir’s tenure….it has always been UMNO and PAS over Malay votes and it is no secret in Malaysia that whoever commands popular sentiments with these voters shall helm political power of the nation.
Just one small correction. UMNO’s 88 seats comprise 74 in Peninsular Malaysia and 14 in Sabah. So Clive’s statistic of UMNO holding 88 out of 100 BN seats in Peninsular Malaysia should actually read 74 out of 86.
Charles F.
hello sir, we spoke at some length in late 2011/early 2012. i was in contact with Dave at the time and managed to meet him in Mae Sot while i was there.
I have been emailing him and was wondering why it was so quiet. This is such a shame. in the very short space of time that i met him he made a very lasting impression. He will be missed by so many. Charles, if you get some free time, i would like to restart conversations with you please. i can be contacted at [email protected]. much love to all of Davids family x
New Mandala readers who want to understand further on how important ethnicity is to electoral politics in Malaysia, should read macro level analysis undertaken by Tom Pepinsky.
– To allow the majority of the people there to participate in a health system – this is populism
– An attempt to make to help the poor out of the debt – that is populism
– To help the farmers – this is populism
– To reform the school system and education to operate in place of sufficiency – that is populism
– To get along with its neighbors and to bury the hatchet – it’s populism
– To improve the infrastructure in order to increase the economic ability – this is populism
– To advertise abroad for the economic strength of his country – that’s populism
– To respect human rights and a democratic process to put in motion – it’s populism
there is good against:
– To hunt Thaksin
– To make war on its neighbors to divert
attention from their own inability
– Shoot peaceful protesters
– To pay homage to the King
– disregarding human rights
– Rake in money and educate others to sufficiency
– Destroy parliament and occupy airports
I’m assuming your comment was directed at me, and you just couldn’t figure out what initials to use. For future reference: AMM.
Are you trying to make the argument that because you found a couple of reasonably accurate paragraphs in a nine paragraph story, my criticism was unfair? If the best defence of the ChannelNews Asia report that collectively be mustered is that at least it didn’t get everything wrong, just almost everything, and that Nich Farrelly learned something from the Thai-language soundbites, I don’t think it’s really doing Anasuya Sanyal any favours to say so. It would be kinder just to observe a tactful silence and move on.
The reason I regard the script as essentially worthless is because it does not make any contribution to understanding what is going on in contemporary Thailand. All the original material it contains – on the Guy Fawkes movement – is wrong. Everything else is just background so there are no prizes for getting that stuff right, and the background provided is incomplete and skewed.
But as I also said in my initial comments, Anasuya is no worse than most of the foreign journalists in Thailand. No other mainstream international media have bothered to cover the Guy Fawkes phenomenon at all. The only international story I have seen apart from the Nick Nostitz article above and Anasuya’s effort is a story yesterday on The Diplomat website, by Steve Finch, a freelancer like Nick (click here to read). It was very good, and well worth reading: unlike Anasuya, Steve Finch wasn’t fooled by the “V For Vendetta” posturing :
“The movement’s spontaneity credentials – a cherished attribute of other masked protests elsewhere in the world, particularly Occupy – have been further fueled by a reported lack of hierarchy… Although the recent, growing street movement appears not to be organized, so far there is every indication that beneath the mask this latest Thai political movement represents a familiar order. Samran Viroj is the self-identified group leader, and formerly a core member of the People’s Alliance for Democracy, formed in early 2006 to oppose the former Thaksin administration in the name of the monarchy. Meanwhile, former chief of the royal court police, Gen Vasit Dejkunjorn, and former senator Kaewsan Atibhodi will together launch an online ‘Thai Spring Forum’ for anti-government voices, in an attempt to fuel momentum behind the mask rallies.”
The story includes enlightening comments from Kaewsan Atibhodi, Thanet Aphornsuvan, Pavin Chachavalpongpun, and even Jakrapob Penkhair, who hits the nail on the head: “The mask is just a part of it… It’s just part of the big game plan, a piece of a jigsaw puzzle.”
Meanwhile the Bangkok Post and Nation, the two main sources where foreign correspondents like Anasuya tend to get most of their information, have been enthusiastically hyping the Guy Fawkes and Thai Spring protests with plenty of propaganda. Even the star Bangkok Post columnist Voranai Vanijaka uncritically reported the bogus claims of the Guy Fawkes protesters (click here to read):
“The novelty, the likeability, of the Guy Fawkes movement is that – as far as we know – it was born entirely from like-minded citizens getting together in a common cause. No charismatic leader. No big bank account. No dubious connections. No declared allegiance to any cult of personality, as yet. Although some say they are just yellow-shirts trying to find a new gimmick. Regardless, only a couple of weeks after making their first appearance on social networks, there they were on Sunday, some 700 in the streets, in masks and in a show of unity and defiance, all started by a group of kids on Facebook, no less – with a rather cute one in a nurse’s uniform.”
But no, the movement was not started by a bunch of kids on Facebook, as Voranai surely knows: whatever one thinks of his columns, he doesn’t appear to be an idiot. The likelihood is that – like the vast majority of Bangkok Post and Nation journalists, he is sympathetic to the royalists and is helping them spin a new set of fairytales around their latest rather desperate plan.
As for whether the shortcomings of Anasuya’s report were due to deliberate bias or ignorance, I have no idea, I would assume the latter, but it really does stagger me that given everything that has happened in Thailand over the past 8 years she would just take at face value the claims that this was a totally new protest movement that had sprung up out of nowhere to challenge the Shinawatras. I mean, seriously?
I know I keep banging on about the fact that the foreign media are failing Thailand and everybody is no doubt sick of my ranting by now. But it seems to me that most mainstream foreign media are so worried about Article 112 that they have essentially given up trying to report accurately and insightfully on Thai politics. Anasuya Sanyal’s story is a depressing example of that trend.
As I recall, one of Thaksin’s cronies, a certain Dr. Thanong (previously CFO at Shinawatra Telecom – later Head of TMB was at the time in a high govt. post where he would have known of the devaluation ahead of time.
As the saying goes, ‘If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck – it’s probably a duck.’
While not a scientific sampling, it is very noticeable around Bangkok that there are thousands of new small motorcycles recently purchased by moto taxi drivers as well as many other ordinary (not middle or upper class) people (most on time-purchase plans). I would suspect the same is true all over Thailand, in every regional city. All an off shoot of the “first buyer” scheme I think.
@nich – Peter Warr has totally failed the issue – it depends on two things populist policies on initial purchase of cars and the rice subsidy.
The PT – but makes a lot of other things “populist” or not, there is the question – – – what is with this fully to large military budget? In the hope that the military stay calm ….
– What’s with the additional 400 million U.S. dollars propaganda for the royal family – in addition to the annual cost of 365 million anyway a year ?
-Who will be the first who benefit of the expansion of the road – and rail system? – the Thai banks and the big thai companies – stuck behind them anyway exuberant one
…if you compares the rice supsidy to the thai farmers with the supsidy of the european union to their farmers — then the thai supsidy is only peanuts…
The beneficiaries of the ‘first-car’ buyer subsidy are not the poor, who have no chance of purchasing a new car, but upper income groups.
Why the absurd over-simplification? Does Warr (an economist) really see nothing between “the poor” and “upper income groups”? So – no lower/middle income groups who can and do benefit from the subsidy? Really?
Readers following this discussion may want to take a look at Professor Peter Warr’s analysis of Thai “populism” over at East Asia Forum. It is available here. It emerges from a recent Thailand Development Research Institute event held in Bangkok.
Think you’d find that pretty much every country that can afford it subsidises farmers, including US, Europe, japan, Korea etc. Keeps the price of food down for everyone…
As for “It’s unethical to be making risky speculative investments with taxpayers’ money” – the Thai taxpayers voted for this policy. I’m sure they’d like more oversight.
What is more unethical are newspapers and “experts” deliberately distorting the evidence for political reasons largely because the political party they are linked to and support (the Democrats) is completely inept at building a coherent opposition.
IIRC, agricultural productivity of the true peasant household, i.e., one not producing for the market but soley for household/family, is higher than that of the semi-peasant mentioned above.
This latter, though, reduces the reproduction cost of labor to capital hence assists the mass and rate of capital accumulation relative to conditions otherwise.
Wages are reduced by the semi-peasants’ -relative- self-sufficiency and, yes, this can induce greater contradiction between production and sales……….
Yes, there are former CPT members on other sides and not just pro-royalist, etc. Part of the reason these particular CPT attendees are out there showing off with the hats and stars is encouragement to do so from those who really feel the status quo is the way to go.
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Malaysia’s GE13: What happened, what now? (part 2)
In Southeast Asia, race-based mainstream politics is largely popular in Malaysia. Regardless of their rationale for race-inspired political system and policies of resource-segregation/priority based on race, I see it, simply as apartheid.
What’s brewing in Thailand?
wtf! it’s more than two weeks and Yingluck still could not submit a credible accounting of Thailand’s Rice Pledging Scheme losses?
no wonder the Thais are getting very steamed up, getting very suspicious, getting more prone to believe the worse (runaway corruption and sleaze) about how much losses had been incurred and how much more losses are to come.
i suggest to you that the losses will be more than Bht 350 billion by this time. or maybe Baht 450 billion. or maybe Bht 550 billion. wtf … it could in the trillion range by the time Yingluck completes her term.
Malaysia’s GE13: What happened, what now? (part 1)
Well written essay, very accurate post mortem of GE13 and thoroughly depict the current situation. But it is not just this GE13 that UMNO is campaigning in a do or die manner for core malay votes. It has been since Razak’s time. In fact I think UMNO leaders were aware of this political reality and that was also the main reason propagating the separation of Singapore from the Federation of Malaya in 1965.
The prime time battle for core Malays votes was during Tun Mahathir’s tenure….it has always been UMNO and PAS over Malay votes and it is no secret in Malaysia that whoever commands popular sentiments with these voters shall helm political power of the nation.
Looking forward to part II.
Malaysia’s GE13: What happened, what now? (part 2)
Just one small correction. UMNO’s 88 seats comprise 74 in Peninsular Malaysia and 14 in Sabah. So Clive’s statistic of UMNO holding 88 out of 100 BN seats in Peninsular Malaysia should actually read 74 out of 86.
Dave Everett and fighting for the KNLA
Charles F.
hello sir, we spoke at some length in late 2011/early 2012. i was in contact with Dave at the time and managed to meet him in Mae Sot while i was there.
I have been emailing him and was wondering why it was so quiet. This is such a shame. in the very short space of time that i met him he made a very lasting impression. He will be missed by so many. Charles, if you get some free time, i would like to restart conversations with you please. i can be contacted at [email protected]. much love to all of Davids family x
Formation of 1Malaysia national culture in the ‘new regime’
New Mandala readers who want to understand further on how important ethnicity is to electoral politics in Malaysia, should read macro level analysis undertaken by Tom Pepinsky.
http://blogs.cornell.edu/indolaysia/2013/05/16/rural-or-malay-contending-perspectives-on-ge13-1/
and
http://blogs.cornell.edu/indolaysia/2013/05/18/rural-or-malay-contending-perspectives-on-ge13-2/
Cheers
Greg
What’s brewing in Thailand?
– To allow the majority of the people there to participate in a health system – this is populism
– An attempt to make to help the poor out of the debt – that is populism
– To help the farmers – this is populism
– To reform the school system and education to operate in place of sufficiency – that is populism
– To get along with its neighbors and to bury the hatchet – it’s populism
– To improve the infrastructure in order to increase the economic ability – this is populism
– To advertise abroad for the economic strength of his country – that’s populism
– To respect human rights and a democratic process to put in motion – it’s populism
there is good against:
– To hunt Thaksin
– To make war on its neighbors to divert
attention from their own inability
– Shoot peaceful protesters
– To pay homage to the King
– disregarding human rights
– Rake in money and educate others to sufficiency
– Destroy parliament and occupy airports
White masks, red masks and royalist communists
“longway” #8
I’m assuming your comment was directed at me, and you just couldn’t figure out what initials to use. For future reference: AMM.
Are you trying to make the argument that because you found a couple of reasonably accurate paragraphs in a nine paragraph story, my criticism was unfair? If the best defence of the ChannelNews Asia report that collectively be mustered is that at least it didn’t get everything wrong, just almost everything, and that Nich Farrelly learned something from the Thai-language soundbites, I don’t think it’s really doing Anasuya Sanyal any favours to say so. It would be kinder just to observe a tactful silence and move on.
The reason I regard the script as essentially worthless is because it does not make any contribution to understanding what is going on in contemporary Thailand. All the original material it contains – on the Guy Fawkes movement – is wrong. Everything else is just background so there are no prizes for getting that stuff right, and the background provided is incomplete and skewed.
But as I also said in my initial comments, Anasuya is no worse than most of the foreign journalists in Thailand. No other mainstream international media have bothered to cover the Guy Fawkes phenomenon at all. The only international story I have seen apart from the Nick Nostitz article above and Anasuya’s effort is a story yesterday on The Diplomat website, by Steve Finch, a freelancer like Nick (click here to read). It was very good, and well worth reading: unlike Anasuya, Steve Finch wasn’t fooled by the “V For Vendetta” posturing :
“The movement’s spontaneity credentials – a cherished attribute of other masked protests elsewhere in the world, particularly Occupy – have been further fueled by a reported lack of hierarchy… Although the recent, growing street movement appears not to be organized, so far there is every indication that beneath the mask this latest Thai political movement represents a familiar order. Samran Viroj is the self-identified group leader, and formerly a core member of the People’s Alliance for Democracy, formed in early 2006 to oppose the former Thaksin administration in the name of the monarchy. Meanwhile, former chief of the royal court police, Gen Vasit Dejkunjorn, and former senator Kaewsan Atibhodi will together launch an online ‘Thai Spring Forum’ for anti-government voices, in an attempt to fuel momentum behind the mask rallies.”
The story includes enlightening comments from Kaewsan Atibhodi, Thanet Aphornsuvan, Pavin Chachavalpongpun, and even Jakrapob Penkhair, who hits the nail on the head: “The mask is just a part of it… It’s just part of the big game plan, a piece of a jigsaw puzzle.”
Meanwhile the Bangkok Post and Nation, the two main sources where foreign correspondents like Anasuya tend to get most of their information, have been enthusiastically hyping the Guy Fawkes and Thai Spring protests with plenty of propaganda. Even the star Bangkok Post columnist Voranai Vanijaka uncritically reported the bogus claims of the Guy Fawkes protesters (click here to read):
“The novelty, the likeability, of the Guy Fawkes movement is that – as far as we know – it was born entirely from like-minded citizens getting together in a common cause. No charismatic leader. No big bank account. No dubious connections. No declared allegiance to any cult of personality, as yet. Although some say they are just yellow-shirts trying to find a new gimmick. Regardless, only a couple of weeks after making their first appearance on social networks, there they were on Sunday, some 700 in the streets, in masks and in a show of unity and defiance, all started by a group of kids on Facebook, no less – with a rather cute one in a nurse’s uniform.”
But no, the movement was not started by a bunch of kids on Facebook, as Voranai surely knows: whatever one thinks of his columns, he doesn’t appear to be an idiot. The likelihood is that – like the vast majority of Bangkok Post and Nation journalists, he is sympathetic to the royalists and is helping them spin a new set of fairytales around their latest rather desperate plan.
As for whether the shortcomings of Anasuya’s report were due to deliberate bias or ignorance, I have no idea, I would assume the latter, but it really does stagger me that given everything that has happened in Thailand over the past 8 years she would just take at face value the claims that this was a totally new protest movement that had sprung up out of nowhere to challenge the Shinawatras. I mean, seriously?
I know I keep banging on about the fact that the foreign media are failing Thailand and everybody is no doubt sick of my ranting by now. But it seems to me that most mainstream foreign media are so worried about Article 112 that they have essentially given up trying to report accurately and insightfully on Thai politics. Anasuya Sanyal’s story is a depressing example of that trend.
What’s brewing in Thailand?
As I recall, one of Thaksin’s cronies, a certain Dr. Thanong (previously CFO at Shinawatra Telecom – later Head of TMB was at the time in a high govt. post where he would have known of the devaluation ahead of time.
As the saying goes, ‘If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck – it’s probably a duck.’
What’s brewing in Thailand?
How does artificially creating demand for rice keep prices down? LOL
They voted for a lot of policies, not just this one – nor even just this one specifically. But the few who reap the most benefit probably did.
What you imply is that I belong to one or both of thee groups because I criticize the government of Yingluck Shinawatra.
Bottom Line: A sorry mix of mistaken assumptions, half truths, specious logic and dodgy statistics.
What’s brewing in Thailand?
While not a scientific sampling, it is very noticeable around Bangkok that there are thousands of new small motorcycles recently purchased by moto taxi drivers as well as many other ordinary (not middle or upper class) people (most on time-purchase plans). I would suspect the same is true all over Thailand, in every regional city. All an off shoot of the “first buyer” scheme I think.
What’s brewing in Thailand?
some more about rice pedging scheme:
bangkok pundit : http://asiancorrespondent.com/105941/bloomberg-on-the-pros-and-cons-of-the-rice-pledging-scheme/
and
http://asiancorrespondent.com/87168/thailands-rice-pledging-scheme-comes-under-fire-part-ii-survey-of-farmers-on-pledging/
and
http://asiancorrespondent.com/108912/moodys-rice-pledging-and-crisis-in-communication-for-the-thai-government-pt-1/
What’s brewing in Thailand?
@nich – Peter Warr has totally failed the issue – it depends on two things populist policies on initial purchase of cars and the rice subsidy.
The PT – but makes a lot of other things “populist” or not, there is the question – – – what is with this fully to large military budget? In the hope that the military stay calm ….
– What’s with the additional 400 million U.S. dollars propaganda for the royal family – in addition to the annual cost of 365 million anyway a year ?
-Who will be the first who benefit of the expansion of the road – and rail system? – the Thai banks and the big thai companies – stuck behind them anyway exuberant one
…if you compares the rice supsidy to the thai farmers with the supsidy of the european union to their farmers — then the thai supsidy is only peanuts…
What’s brewing in Thailand?
Which contains the following:
The beneficiaries of the ‘first-car’ buyer subsidy are not the poor, who have no chance of purchasing a new car, but upper income groups.
Why the absurd over-simplification? Does Warr (an economist) really see nothing between “the poor” and “upper income groups”? So – no lower/middle income groups who can and do benefit from the subsidy? Really?
White masks, red masks and royalist communists
[…] White masks, red masks and royalist communists (asiapacific.anu.edu.au) […]
White masks, red masks and royalist communists
[…] White masks, red masks and royalist communists (asiapacific.anu.edu.au) […]
What’s brewing in Thailand?
Readers following this discussion may want to take a look at Professor Peter Warr’s analysis of Thai “populism” over at East Asia Forum. It is available here. It emerges from a recent Thailand Development Research Institute event held in Bangkok.
Best wishes to all,
Nich
What’s brewing in Thailand?
Thaifarang
Think you’d find that pretty much every country that can afford it subsidises farmers, including US, Europe, japan, Korea etc. Keeps the price of food down for everyone…
As for “It’s unethical to be making risky speculative investments with taxpayers’ money” – the Thai taxpayers voted for this policy. I’m sure they’d like more oversight.
What is more unethical are newspapers and “experts” deliberately distorting the evidence for political reasons largely because the political party they are linked to and support (the Democrats) is completely inept at building a coherent opposition.
Peasants and productivity
IIRC, agricultural productivity of the true peasant household, i.e., one not producing for the market but soley for household/family, is higher than that of the semi-peasant mentioned above.
This latter, though, reduces the reproduction cost of labor to capital hence assists the mass and rate of capital accumulation relative to conditions otherwise.
Wages are reduced by the semi-peasants’ -relative- self-sufficiency and, yes, this can induce greater contradiction between production and sales……….
White masks, red masks and royalist communists
Yes, there are former CPT members on other sides and not just pro-royalist, etc. Part of the reason these particular CPT attendees are out there showing off with the hats and stars is encouragement to do so from those who really feel the status quo is the way to go.