rickirs

the banks labour union is telling the bank how to run it's business . (even if they have a point) sounds like yellow shirt supporters wanting to cause trouble

Permission must be given by the Election Commission for the Government to spend the money for the rice subsidy. What is EC's position? I suspect that if the request is made in the context of preserving peace in the country during these difficult political times, the EC may give permission. The economic alternative is that the BAAC is out of business as the farmers will have insufficient capital to even borrow funds, and the whole rice farming industry faces collapse.

Unbelievable, the PTP is pressuring the BAAC to use up the last of it liquidity and or customers deposits to fund the rice scam, they wont be happy til the bank is insolvent.

Look at it from the bright side. If the bank is bust, they need the government even more. Hence, more power to the Shins.

Another bright side is that if the farmers are not paid, there will be no rice enterprise, no bank to support that enterprise and no labor union. Bank liquidity is only as good as the ability of its customers to have equity to borrow funds.

Seems a waste of time worrying about a waste of state funds, the PTP have been doing just that since they got into power. width=32 alt=cheesy.gif pagespeed_url_hash=3951237149>

If the cost of elections is a real concern, then Suthep has the solution: one man vote (Suthep) instead of the many. A totalitarian system is far cheaper than a democratic system of messy, time consuming, and expensive elections.

Not only is the EC not obliged to follow the OAG's advice, it does not have the authority to cancel or change the election date. A legal hange to a later election date would require either the abdication of Yingluck's interim government, a constitutional amendment, or a coup. None seems realistic.

The army can have its opinion (and most of the negative opinion seems to come from RETIRED army officers) about the election but it is not within the army's authority to oppose or interfer with the parliamentary system of which the elections are a part. It tried that in 2010 and didn't work too well for Thailand and may have embarrassed the Kingdom. Its role in protecting (yes protecting!) the election polls is reasonable and appropriate in the tradition of a democratic process, regardless of the position of political parties supporting or opposing the electorial process. It maintains political nuetrality, and should the police fail in their ability to protect the public and their property as is their role, a widening peacekeeping role for the army to ensure public safety should ensue, again as a nuetral force. Obviously, this is not the army that Suthep wants.

I would hope that Suthep can take her up on her offer and see what she has to offer. At some time people are going to have to settle this situation by talks that might just do something positive for the country, as long the current situation is allowed to drag on, the world looks on in amazement, the tourists stay away, business stays away, the only plus side is the exchange rate for expats is moving up slowly all the time.

Unfortunately for Suthep, his plans to take over the government by force and not by any election in the near future is time sensitive. Kind of like a fruit left out in the sun too long. As Suthep unwisely communicated to the public, he will not negotiate with the Pheu Thai Administration except for its complete capitulation and abdication. Meanwhile the threat of possible warrant for his arrest hangs over him should he fail to heed the nect summons deadline. So Yingluck is allowed the political high ground pleading, offering, asking cooperation, all the things she should do as interim PM - Suthep loses face, political fortitude, and perhaps even his freedom. It was for Suthep a mistake to get Yingluck into the interim PM position that lessened her accountability, allowed her to take a passive government role, and revealing his true political intentions that nuetralized the police and military from any support. Not to mention that he probably didn't gain any more political support than he had when he began the whole insurrection process. And poor Abhisit got swept aside by Suthep's one-man show.

All these plans for backup and shutdown just legitimizes the demonstrators shutown objectives. Then the blame for any resulting property damage. loss of lives, and disruption of services falls not on the demonstrators but on everyone else for not doing enough to anticipate the results. Frankly, everyone should stand aside and if the demonstrators do their worse, destroy property, disrupt services, injure or take lives, declare a state of emergency and dismantle the demonstrations who will be held responsible for their actions.

This dilemna is now a kind of a self-correcting one. The Government can afford now to take slow deliberation on full public reviews having made a quick response to save lives and property from future flooding by approving the current flood control plans. If the public and/or parties with legal standing bring lawsuits drag out the hearing process into years, they will only have themselves to blame for any intervening loss of life and property. The Government's role now is simply to try to moderate, resolve plan opposition, and move the timetable forward. In a democratic process sometimes Government administrative action must be slow and deliberate.

Police would set up checkpoints to block guns and explosives from coming into the protests sites? Unless these are covert, randomly moving checkpoints, all anyone who wants to take weapons into the protest sites has to do is GO AROUND THE CHECKPOINTS. MBK Tokyo has better security than this. Unless you can establish choke points to control entry in and out of the protest sites, police efforts are only window dressing.

The Police seem to operate on a reactive basis than on a proactive basis. Rather than waiting for the first, second, third or how ever number of hand groups to display violence or voluntarily turn themselves in, they should be out on the streets now looking for weapons, going through the demonstration groups investigating and searching for illegal weapons (assuming Suthep's armed guard is legal). Maybe it's a cultural thing not to be too agressive, too forward, but is it better to see lives lost before enforcing peace. No one questions people's right to peaceful demonstrations but that does not trump other people's right to free movement and personal and property safety.

Problems can all be solved within Parliament, and by essential urgent augmentation of the current Parliamentary profile, achieved by high-level State discussion between the various modules of State. There is no further need for reds yellows pinks or greens to 'Hit The Streets'. We all know what everybody wants from each social group. The problem is that the current Parliamentary build is not customised to Thailand's specific problems re; corruption and lopsided underclass voting block. The solution in /macro-sentence ; greatly restricting PM/ruling party powers, making the PM and ruling-party position into an honourable but decorative title, where you get to be Boss and feel all 'Facey' but at the same time you are essentially doing State Events / foreign dinners / hand-shaking - you become the figurehead on the prow of the Democratic ship - but you are not steering it without clear debate-based Parliamentary consensus, and enacting a stricter consensus-directive on all Bills, and creating an external Parliamentary Watchdog run by Legal and other other high-State sovereign modules - this Watchdog's primary objective is the strict monitoring of policy-queueing systems - where policies that are Good For Thailand are green-lighted and go to the front of the line, policies that are okay but not priority are marked with a semi-tick and are put mid-queue and thereupon will eventually receive intense cross-party debate & never leave the floor of debate until there is consensus at which point the Watchdog will re-examine the

A re-examination of the whole Thailand parliamentary system might be a good idea to explore. Perhaps something more akin to Jordon's parliamentray system or a hybrid of parliamentary system such as Russia with the King essentially serving as an unelected President who presides over the constitutional and supreme court and nominates the prime minister confirmed by a partially elected federal assembly.

Interesting court decisions. No cited reasons for the rejection, although this may be an oversight by the reporter and not the court. The court suggested the DSI issue another summonses for the 35 suspects reasoning that they are ready to give testimonies to the DSI officials. So if the accused are not ready, does DSI continue issuing summones until the accused decide they are ready? Like next year.

How about getting that hit and run cop killer to show up for an arraignment? It was reported in this newspaper that the police had served three warrants for his arrest and he failed to show each time. This is a big problem for legal reform in Thailand Privileged evasion of law and order with impunity. Thailand will never change and there will never be peace without legal enforcement regardless of pecking order.

Maybe the cop claimed to be PDRC and needed to be free so he can continue to break the law.

I have no sympathy for obvious police incompetence. Weapons left in unattended vehicles, arrogant stupidity.

On the other hand we should have sympathy to those intended victims of these stolen firearms. I don't think the thieves intend to export them. We may know by the end of next week whether some of these weapons show up in the demonstrations. Police need to be more diligent about securing their firearms, they are not toys.

Does anyone have a problem with private security officers, regardless of whom their employer is, arresting anyone at gun point? Is this allowed under Thailand law? PDRC having their own armed security on public property at public events seems oddly reminiscent of Hitler's Brown Shirts.

Justice seems always perennially tipped in favour of whomever is in power. And that is a problem that engulfs both sides. But until that is rectified, the justice system will be forever tainted with favouritism, where decisions are made as to which cases to pursue, and which are deemed unworthy of being pursued. Can the people, therefore, take any solace with such clear selectivity ? Or is it like everything else that seems to be broken - where a resigned passivity takes hold ?

Since the Pheu Thai Party with Yingluck as the Interim PM is in power, how does the delay in Suthep's appearance before the Court favor them? The delay obviously allows Suthep to continue coordinating his vigilante efforts to remove them from office. In fact Justice seems to be in favor of Suthep in its seemingly blind observation that "Mr. Suthep has no intention to delay the process" and gave him another delay.

So the reporter can google a quote from MacArthur. You think MacArthur made this quote in connection with retreating, giving up, stepping down? Look at some other MacArthur quotes: "In war there is no substutte for victory." And “It is fatal to enter an war without the will to win it.” And the one that Yingluck seems to be planning on is “I Shall Return”.

Isn't the 95 per cent rule history now with at least 5 parties registered?

The EC needs to use this opportunity to demand from the Government verifiable proof of where did all the money go. And require it to provide proof and receipt as such, of the spending if they receive more funds from either a loan or a sale from the stocks. As I read earlier they had requested and received funds for the new election. It seems to me that those funds need to be used to pay their Bill that is 5 MONTHS OLD, not allow them to borrow more money to just satisfy the rice farmers to cling to power.

The role of the EC is not to be an accounting agency.

What diffence does 15000 police make if millions if thai show for this protest! 75 or more people per policeman are not good odds even if they are armed. Sent from my GT-S5310 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

I think the latest news is that it will be 35,000 protesters stationed in seven different locations.

These are the true People of Thailand. May they never be thrown out with the dirty waters of corrput governments.

Wait a minute. The anti-graft panel clears 73 politicians including Yingluck of possible abuse of power in connection with a bid to make the senate fully elected. But then it charges 308 others from the House and Senate for proposing changes to the constitution, which was rejected by the Constitutional Court in accordance with Thailand's due process of law. How are these two events NOT RELATED? It would seem the panel would have to make a finding consistent with both situations. And if it takes the Constitutional Court to determine whether charter changes are constitutional, how can the panel then predetermine the possibility of guilt? It's like accusing someone of fraud to claim innocence because he was found subsequently to be guilty by trial.

Abhisit has never denied the Democratic party platform expressed by Suthep that a one man - one vote" election is undesirable and must be reformed into some voter "quaification" to assure that only an "intelligent" voter is allowed to vote in order to eliminate electing corrupt officials. The underlying intent of this "reform" would be to disqualify the majority of the Pheu Thai Party voters, allowing only the "royalists," "elists," and "educated" (aka the Democrat voter base) to qualify to vote in the national election. The Heckler was correct in his criticism, regardless of what party he favors.

So the hecklers stopping parties from lodging their nominations for the elections, we now have an admission from Abihist that it is unfair.... oh dear will some one please rein in Suthep and Abihist. The reason he wont make it is that in many Thai eyes he now lacks credibility. Oh and they had to remove this seemingly educated person, who stated, I'am not your rival, I'am the people. Well said young son. Respect my vote, now if only all Thai people thought in this educated manner. Spoken in English as well. Hmm, yes one must agree with all the nay sayers on this forum who claim and state that Thais are uneducated and imply they have no grey matter. One voice can make a difference, unfortunately at the moment it is Suthep.

Suthep is behind the current series of protests not Abhisit. He is not the one blocking voter party registration (not the same as blocking a voter by the way, but I can see a connection) nor does he need reigning in as he is not doing anything that needs to be reigned in.

Still at least the protestor said Abhisit was not a rival of the people, if he is not Abhisit's rival and he is the people then Abhisit is not a rival of the people.

If A is not B; and C is not B; that doesn't mean that A = C

It's clear that conspiracy theories are cheaper and dirtier than farmer's rice. I hope all ends well for the farmers to get all their payments and the rice scheme can evolve into a practical means for farmers to garner more its value so they can increase their standard of living.