SamMunich

Don't expect the military to come out in the open with tanks etc.
But I'm pretty sure, there is some "discussion" and "convincing" going on in the back. There are lines still open from the military leaders to both sides and my guess would be, that the military is using these.
A military coup would not help anybody, and the generals know that.

The problem right now is to avoid any "solution", that would bring us all back to square one. Now or even in two or three years. We had that and it didn't work out.

As much as I understand, that everybody wants this situation to end, we have to go through it to the end, else all the hassle in the past was good for nothing and in vain.

SaintLouieNYC believes this:

WOW!!!

It always amazes me the amount of Farang that support the PDRC aka yellow shirts in Thailand since most if not all Farang countries are democracries. Do you ever take into consideration the simple and honest fact that Yingluck was ELECTED PM by the majority of Thai people and was run out of office by a minority of people???

Are you all in favor of over throwing democratically elected officials if you don't agree with their policies?? If you do I suggest you go home and do that with your native government instead of siding with a bunch of people who say that poor persons are too stupid to vote and anyone without a bachelors degree should have no say in who is prime minister....Or maybe that's why you've come to Thailand in the first place, you know to keep those young thai whores in the hole.

Don't worry though because the PDRC and Wealthy Thais have no need for Farangs like the poor working class does. Enjoy it while it last. Continue to watch Blue Sky television instead of any free media that shows the MAJORITY of Thais not even including red shirts that want a DEMOCRATIC country.

Did anybody ever tell you, that elections are not democracy per se but a way and means to get to a democracy? I earlier mentioned the difference between elections and democracy as being like a bottle (= elections) and the beer inside (=democracy). What Taksin and btw most governments in the world try to do is to sell you an empty bottle of beer claiming there is beer inside, while it isn't.

It is unbelievable, how many people fall for that ruse! But agreed, it is easier to let others think and decide for you!

And the "bottle" of Thai elections is damaged as well, with vote-buying, election gifts, promises and brute force. So stop ab-using local elections as a reason to support a thoroughly corrupt regime by a single family and their cronies. If you like it that way, why not going across the boder to Hun Sen???

Moonao believes this:

she was a great PM and really suprised me, i didnt expect she could step up but she did.

her standout and defining moment, apart from her excellent election campaign, was how she handled the protesters. patiently she waited them out, eventually they lost supporters every week and finally there was hardly any left.
compare that to Abhisit and Suthep who gave the order for live ammunition .... and killed almost a hundred.

also the way she dealt with some pretty ugly, fanatical, hate filled opposition groups in the public.... when she responded it was with grace, dignity, unlike the ugliness from her opponents. and im sure some of that will be on display again in the responses to this post.
anyhow, well done Yingluck....

She was a nice puppet, and that sums it about up. Politics is not a beauty contest, as some might think. Else Taksin would have never made it the first time <wg>.

And about that "almost a hundred" being killed by Abhisit & Suthep, stop raping the truth. There were over 20 people killed, that were opposed to the Red Shirts, mostly from grenades and sharpshooters aka Men in Black or "former BPP". The military didn't get the order to kill but to mob up the contested area. If being shot at by young hotheads, they shot back, no wonder. And the military are the more professional ones, not the suburban bullies, who wanted to proof themselves as local heroes...

Better to stick with the facts...

The thing I wonder about is, whether the 10 members of the caretaker cabinet will also get a 5 year ban on poltics? As I understand, that would be pretty much an automatic response, but by court, by EC, by whom?

And the other thing: being a caretaker government, which can not appoint new members to fill in for the 10 people ousted, how many members are there still in this skeleton group? Normally I think the max is around 35 members, incl. dpty ministers.

Let's hope the rain will inundate Aksa Road for a week...

Oh you super-hyper-clever writers here on TV, who are so delighted at poking fun at Suthep's call to arms...

OF COURSE he has to increase the priority, else nobody would think it is necessary to join. Final battle or what else, it doesn't matter, as long as it works out as intended.

After all, it is to our advantage, if a government is finally elected AFTER reforms, that is not or at least less corrupt than the various Taksin-sponsored ones. Even though MY personal oppinion is, that we don't need new laws and regulations, we need another and incorupted police force and (at least at the lower levels) justice staff and judges, who can not be bought. All laws are useless, if the entity to enforce them is useless... as the local police force.

Why not make Chuwit the new Minister of the Interior. He at least knows how to deal with corrupt police. And if a new law is really needed, how about a law, that allows to dismiss without any compensation policemen found to be corrupt. Eventually this will work, slowly first, but then faster and faster.

My two Salueng

Well for the most part good ideas. How ever it makes no difference how honest the police are if there is no real punishment. Also the police should be completely separate from the government. Neutral makes no difference who is in power.

Well I can dream any how. I know it is not going to happen in my or my children's generation perhaps the grandchildren.

My point here is, that there are already penalties in place, BUT they are never enforced.

A neutral police force isn't of much help either, as long as they are corrupt. If you can buy a police guy to investigate in your favour, you can always avoid doing time or whatever is applicable.

The courts are said to be the third power in a state, and the top level courts certainly aren't lapdogs of the present government. But again, if you look at what goes on in lower courts, you might start to vomit, sorry "worry"...

What most Thais fail to understand is that corruption holds back a whole country in it's economic development. This has been researched at nauseam already. No corruption equals faster growth of the overall economy. But the individual person, who collects bribes doesn't give a sh*t about this.

Why doesn't it make me wonder, that in the news as well as here on TV the whole issue is reduced to wages and salaries. That is similar to the reduction of "democracy" to "elections". Both fall far short of the real issue.

Labour issues are about the rights of workers, about the situation and dangers of the workplace, about enough time to recuperate after work WITHOUT the need to do overtime to make a living. Only in that last issue comes the wage up.

Why are there no trade unions or other kind of effective organization of the labour force? Why can workers be locked out and fired, just because they have a demand or request. Why are people dying on the job because safety features were dismantled in order to achieve a higher profit? These things happen all the time and all over the country (and other countries as well...).

So stop reducing things to money, money, money.

Yes, Mr. Surapong, do as Goebbels showed it:
Repeat a lie over and over and eventually people will believe it as the truth. Worked then, will work now,- at least Mr. Surapong hopes.

Too bad, there are also other sources of information, so only the Red Shirts might believe it. But then, they even believe they get their rice payments as well... Oops!

Oh you super-hyper-clever writers here on TV, who are so delighted at poking fun at Suthep's call to arms...

OF COURSE he has to increase the priority, else nobody would think it is necessary to join. Final battle or what else, it doesn't matter, as long as it works out as intended.

After all, it is to our advantage, if a government is finally elected AFTER reforms, that is not or at least less corrupt than the various Taksin-sponsored ones. Even though MY personal oppinion is, that we don't need new laws and regulations, we need another and incorupted police force and (at least at the lower levels) justice staff and judges, who can not be bought. All laws are useless, if the entity to enforce them is useless... as the local police force.

Why not make Chuwit the new Minister of the Interior. He at least knows how to deal with corrupt police. And if a new law is really needed, how about a law, that allows to dismiss without any compensation policemen found to be corrupt. Eventually this will work, slowly first, but then faster and faster.

My two Salueng

BillyBobThai

I'd be feeling stressed too, if I was elected as PM and got removed by a judicial coup.

Moonie, you and your fellow redcoats, just go to prove the saying; you tell a lie often enough and people will start to believe it is true.

And that is the basics of the Nazi propaganda: repeat at nauseam and people will believe it, even if it is the grossest BS. Taksin learned from them, Bobbie Amsterdam did and obviously some more here...

If the Shin clan and their cohorts privatize public organisations like railroad etc, expect to see a lot of money being drawn out of these by filetizing the assets and the profits vanishing in privat pockets.

Though the service is often mediocre, privatizing will not solve such problems. On the opposite, look at the U.K. rail system, which went from bad to worse, AFTER it was turned into private companies... Only speculators are eager to get public assets privatized! Vultures!

Else I can only tell all those, who complain about Suthep taking so much time, it is totally up to Taksin and his puppet sista to get out of politics. The next day Suthep will stop his part of the protest. Sounds easy? It is easy!

What a slap right into the face of the government figures...

Re trash left behind: looks like a lot of those plaids to camp out on were distributed but the folks didn't appreciate them enough to take them home. Beside that, the support for cleanliness is definitely higher in towns than upcountry. Ever gone by orange crusher bus from one place to another? At every stop you will see hundreds of plastic bags from iced drinks, just thrown out of the window.

Re numbers: I could not find any real numbers except the 80,000 red shirts some red shirt leader claimed. WHere are the other numbers from? Not that I think the pure numbers indicate more or less quality.

Re support: Of course the farmers are angry, that they didn't get the promised 15 to 20K Baht for their rice, but come the next elections they will likely vote for the same jerks they elected last time. Why? Because money talks louder and because there will not be any real alternatives on the ballot. To frighten rival candidates is easier (and maybe cheaper) than to buy votes.
Still I miss any policy on the side of the Suthep folks to woe the farmers away from the red shirt leaders. But that is the only way to be successful, by driving a wedge between folks and leaders. Show, how corrupt Nuttawuth and Chatuporn et al are, show, how they BS their followers all the time and lie to them. You can't pry them away with reason, but with emotions and damaged self-esteem.

Re the End-game: I wonder, what will happen, if/when the courts will decide, that the caretakers are to leave. What if they just refuse to leave? If they continue to act as if no judgement has been issued? Who is going to throw them out? The police? a bad joke! The military? They don't dare for fear of being called coup plotters. "The people"? The Red shirts will only be waiting to use their weapons and their training against untrained townsfolk.

For Taksin, he knows this is the make or break issue for his future. If he fails this time, it will be over for a long time, maybe forever. That's why he has no reservations about throwing all into this fight. And let's not forget, this, as well as the 90+ deaths and all the other things that happened in the meantime, all that happened only, because Taksin is too proud to step into a jail even for a second.

Saturday and Sunday please no criticism of Yingluck, the Government or the Redheads. All defendors of those are absent from ThaiVisa as they have been called up as emergency fill-in for the millions of red shirts that were supposed to show up at Aksa Road but never materialised.

Cacruden wrote:

April Fools!

My best guess is the ThaiVisa team made this one up. Funny though, how many Suthep basher and Taksin lovers jumped on this offer...

And that is all I have to say to this.

If I were a Thai I would think it is bad karma that she sprained her ankle: it is to announce, that her days in power are about over.

FakeName asked:

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The fire brigade comes under the police department. Also has to do with the salary issue. Else the fire brigade works like in any other country.

That garbage dump is mostly a recycling area, with different "companies" taking different kind of wast, like scrap, wooden stuff, paper, etc. Next to that is - no wonder - an area, where all the stuff is dumped, that none of these yards can use.

It is along a shortcut from Praek-Sa Road to Bang Poo Industrial Estate Soi 8B. Next to the garbage (and as smelly as well) are several fish restaurants, where you can catch your own fish in the pond of the restaurant. If any fish will be left alive after that fire and the poisoning of the area...

Could be, that the people working in Bang Poo get a day or two off. But then again, who cares for the health of these workers??? The new Benz has already been ordered and needs to be paid...

This whole sh*t taking place down South has nothing to do with religion. It is about a smuggling maffia utilizing the religion for their very own purpose and profit.

As an indication: There are many more Muslim being killed than Buddhist by the "freedon fighters".

ISA replacing SoE,- I still wonder, what the actual difference is...

Factual and on the streets I guess there will be no differerence visible.

Only the tourism can be happy, because SoE severly restricts any kind of insurance for people visiting an area with SoE.

Re the Military: I would really wonder, if the military takes any orders from the likes of Chalerm, their pet enemy since over 20 years...

Sure the images are blurry, but let's not forget, the main issue for using these CCTV cameras is to detect traffic jams etc not to solve crime and mysteries...

And there are some techniques to sharpen an image afterwards, so you can see more.

I like the idea of decentralization in general!

Bring the power back to the people, or at least closer. The nearer power is to the people, the more likely will they take an interest in what is happenig around them... and with them.

Decentralization will not curb corruption, but will make the figures come way down, because the "projects" aren't that super-sized like e.g. under the Shin clan's rule.