Plus

Well yes ok this is all rational stuff but I don't really see why a strong bureaucracy can't sit side by side a regular electoral democracy where the politicians/lawmakers are chosen by the people.The bureaucrats serve the politicians who in turn are servants of the people.

It's the last part - politicians as servants of the people - that causes all the malfunctioning. Now the politicians cite their mandate to roll over bureaucrats and push for all kinds or outrageous ripoffs. This practice started with Thaksin, when he tried to shift the balance of power towards elected leaders.

But incompetence and corruption are unfortunately all too common common in the bureaucracy so I'm not quite sure why you think it deserves such an elevated reputation.

Relatively speaking, they are far more qualified to run the country than a spa operator as finance minister, for example.

To take one rather obvious example the crimes and excesses of politicians like Thaksin wouldn't get beyond first base without the willing co-operation of officials.Yes resistance could mean transfer or dismissal but isn't that what professioal integrity would require?

Well, Thaksin's bureaucratic reform isn't often discussed here, but it was the biggest reshuffle in their hundred plus year history. It allowed Thaksin to do practically anything he wanted without as much as a squeak from the civil service side.

As to your last point about the test of politicians being to capture votes when their jobs require different skill sets, this is debated the world over and not unique to Thailand.One thing to remember is that most politicians remain back benchers and don't get ministerial jobs so those of indifferent quality don't get selected (in theory, I understand what actually happens in Thai coalition governments!).

I think it is reaching unacceptable proportions. Look at IT ministry, for example - it hasn't had a qualified minister since its inception.

Coalition partners are not going away anytime soon, even if they all get incorporated into one big party ala TRT they'd still demand their cabinet share, and they have all the democratic rights, to, under current system.

The fact is that in the foreseeable future "democracy" won't be delivering "best" governments, and the country will further lose its competitiveness. Telecoms infrastructure is a decade behind the rest of the world already, and so are transport and logistics. The world doesn't wait.

Did I say I support the reds. Did I say I blame the Dems?

You said "As long as this current government sits,"

This is a clear "red" take on things.

Some Cambodian politician accuses Thais of burning kids alive and every one here believes this is exactly what happened.

This version of the story doesn't make much sense - if they really burned him alive, why did they return his body for funeral?

The politician who made the accusation hasn't provided any details as to how that "burning alive" happened. Most posters here assume it was something like medieval witch burning.

They can figure out better ways to protect those girls than stamping WHORE on their ID cards.

I bet there are many many women who never admit working in sex industry, why should they be registered and entered in some database? Next thing you know men will start asking their fiancées to provide a certificate from the whore office that they have never been on their books.

Those girls just need to get contracts from their employees and various guarantee letters to buy motorbikes or apply for social security.

Reality check: Thanong is a widely acknowleged joke and disgrace as a journalist and I don't know anyone who takes him seriously.Find a reputable source if you continue this line, although thanks for the laugh about "his extensive contacts in money circles".

Don't know about the Swiss angle.Any evidence?

Read Thanong's site covering 1997 crisis, there are probably hundreds of articles there with tons of names and numbers. I bet that part of his experience not so widely acknowledged by Bangkok Pundit. Do you think Thanong got business editor position at the Nation for his opinion pieces on Thai culture?

Swiss article was posted on TV.

Create proper laws. Which country are we sitting in right now? When does anyone have anytime to legislate anything these days? Political debate has been reduced to point scoring and finger pointing. What do any of them stand for anymore? Ideology, manifestos. Do those words even translate in modern Thai politics or language?

As long as this current government sits,....

Errmmmm, not trying to offend, but if you blame Democrats for lowering standards of lawmakers work, and support reds idea of putting these same politicians in charge of country's political reform, you are either dangerously naive, or deliberately destructive.

Blaming politicians is what yellows, do, btw. Reds worship them with their electoral democracy.

Just got home and pinged static.thaivisa.com, it went to 203... server, and the browser got "oldie" replay.

Checked DNS - it's set for OpenDNS server, and, as I feared, pretty soon the static images disappeared and on the second try the browser didn't get any response, not hope, not oldie.

Perhaps when I read the board the server detects my location and directs me to Thai static server, 202.., but then it clashes with IP address the browser gets from overseas based DNS server.

The problem disappeared after setting both dns entries to True and clearing cache.

>>>>

People get recommended various alternative dns servers all the time, as local servers are perceived as less reliable. Perhaps the tech guys who set up those "load balanced" servers should keep that in mind.

Interesting.

I've seen both on that Linux machine that wasn't working. Perhaps because there's a mix of DNS servers there, the OpenDNS resolves to Oldie while True resolves to Hope.

..One aspect puzzles me which is why more weight needs to be given to the bureaucracy in Thailand than in other successful countries.

I'm not offering solutions, just describing the problems.

Thaksin has declared bureaucracy the enemy of the country and elected leaders the saviors.

In my view it's the other way around.

As for solutions - they should improve the quality of leaders that come through electoral system. It's not easy because there's fundamental flaw here - the only tests politicians need to pass are collecting votes but the jobs they want to do require completely different sets of skills and knowledge.

Ever thought of converting to LPG instead of NGV?

Expect to pay about a third or at most a half of you current gas expenses, and the installation cost under 40k (with injector heads), so it will recoup itself pretty fast.

Trying to save 150k on gas to recoup NGV installation is a tall order. How much do you spend on fuel anyway?

The ISA will be invoked to contain violence, the demo can go ahead without hindrance.

Abhisit might need ISA to call on the army to provide security, if he can't trust the police. Acting police chief promised to keep it under control, however.

Let's see what the cabinet decides tomorrow.

Re. UK funds freeze - Bangkok pundit e-mailed the arabian editor and got a standard "we can't confirm anything and would rather say we were wrong" reply. The story wasn't officially withdrawn, btw.

A few weeks later Thanong from the Nation wrote a very long article detailing Thaksin's money movements that went far beyond that one line from Arabian News.

Thanong didn't disclose his sources, but he's got extensive contacts in money circles, there's no reason to dismiss his theory as completely groundless.

The money wasn't frozen in the UK, those funds were kept in Swiss banks, acc. to Thanong, and there was a news in European media about Thaksin blowing his fuse off at some Swiss bankers.

What is the current IP address for static.thaivisa.com?

It was 202.170.126.9, on WinXP, when I started this thread, and it was not working.

Now it's reported as

203.174.85.155

according to http://www.ip-adress.com/reverse_ip/static.thaivisa.com

Same website tells that the old address 202.170.126.9 goes to some server in Thailand.

Still the same problem on Linux machine, although Windows got fixed even without clearing the cache.

I sincerely feel that no matter who runs the country it'll make no difference. The rot has set in.

Thailand has been rotting that way for centuries, and yet somehow made progress, too.

During his formative years as a politician Thaksin was probably a victim of prevailing political culture, and once he figured out how to use it he became a victim of his greed, following the dictum about "power corrupts".

His moral compass failed him, he wasn't properly taught in his childhood.

The system that allowed him to rise to the top is utterly corrupt, true, but I think it's just a side effect of introducing democracy, when the bureaucratic way of running the country had to give space to "democratic" leaders, people who had no chance of advancing via traditional means and used electoral shortcuts to power instead. Over decades they formed their own culture on how to cheat, lie, and steal, and call it democracy, and Thaksin swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

The problem with these people is that they are not prepared for leadership, they are not taught about duties and responsibilities, or pitfalls. In traditional civil service structure that knowledge is passed from generation to generation, and if you wanted to advance, you had to learn it from your superiors in order to move up the ladder.

I'm not saying that bureaucracy is perfect, but it assured some sort of quality. It surely didn't allow as many people to advance as electoral democracy does, but maybe that's not such a bad thing, given that politics is now perceived as an utterly corrupt occupation filled with greedy self-serving people who do not care about the country even a bit.

"Democracy" took in too many opportunists, the overall leadership quality slipped, wrong examples have been set, wrong culture has been cast, and now it weeds out all honest candidates on approach.

Sri Racha John is an old member, but not old enough to keep 1991 shots of Thaksin and coup makers in his archive.

What do you think Thaksin thought of democracy in those days? He allegedly gave out a Rolls Royce as a bribe to get that satellite concession.

I see a very inspired young man with the sense of big things to come oozing out of every pore. It's a shame he turned out such a screw up.

I see that at that time he did all his best to achieve "success", and he didn't do anything wrong by the standards he was taught.

I see that he was absolutely sincere in all his endeavors, and a little UBC incident was just a blip, or a foreboding of things to come, if you want.

Just when things all turned so wrong?

Did he really go for PMship to expand his business, or was it a second thought that eventually brought him down?

Was he just a vehicle for big business to enter politics, or did he personally shown them the way? Or did he really wanted to show the country how things should be run, professionally speaking? No one talks about his legacy in that sense - did he really change the ways of bureaucracy?

Just when did it all go so terribly wrong? And did he see this fateful transition himself, or was he too conditioned by his earlier, sincere motives to acknowledge the change?

The man is still torn between his allegiance to monarchy instilled from the birth and his urges for pardon that border on ultimatums.

It's a great case study of human nature. It's got all you can possibly think of, and every feature is manifested in its extremes, comparing to the norms of this country.

I really wish he gathers enough sense to come back, face the jail, and pray for the best. Then he can give some more lessons to all of us.

Actually it's not at all certain that Thaksin's frozen assets will be confiscated after the court ruling next month. So far the AEC won two cases, but it is possible that next scheduled rubber sappling and Thaksin assets could go the other way.

What I find undemocratic is that votes have been cast on the premise that MPs belong to certain parties that have their own agendas/ ideologies. Now, rather then those MPs just joining other parties as they like (after PPP had been ousted) and then these factions forming the government is a bit of a cheat on the voter.

Potentially, yes, in this case, however, only 32 MPs joined switched camps, the rest went to the PTP. Those 32 MPs, "Friends of Newin", might have to answer to their voters, but so far there's no signs of breaking their bond that stretches back for decades. Newin has changed probably a dozen parties in his political life, and they always stood by him. In recent provincial elections Newin's party practically owned lower Isan, btw.

There were reports of more MPs wanting to join Newin's Bhum Jai Thai, but for the moment they are tied up with PTP.

Before 2007 elections PTP was isolated, they had not friends, nobody who'd promise their voters to support PTP, so no one was cheated in that respect, apart from those 32 MPs I mentioned.

Technically Democrats could have formed the coalition right after the elections, but without Newin's defection their numerical advantage would have been too slim and even slightest disagreement between coalition partners would have threatened the govt support. There's also a rule that Cabinet ministers can't vote in Parliament, and there are about 30 of them, so that's another problem for a slim majority coalition.

There were reported rumors this year that Democrats were ready to ditch Bhum Jai Thai and run a minority government, but so far they haven't been substantiated.

I don't understand your point about status quo. The activities you were talking about were going on even with PPP was in power, you can't honestly attribute them to Democrats.

There are no signs of corruption in Democrat side of the govt either, when something comes up, like managing community projects, one of the biggest Democrat names, Kobsak, was promptly removed. The rest of the corruption cases are related to coalition partners.

My point is that it's hard to see Democrat government as self-serving, they are honestly trying to pull the country through the crisis.

So, will the reds move their 19 September demo to Chaisit's house and tell those Shinawatras to stop fuc_king with the country?

Chaisit is not only a former Supreme Commander, he is also in charge of PTP MPs. Can we expect reds to abandon that coup supporting party and switch to Abhisit instead?

What I don't know is where the anti-coup red sympathizers will turn to now.

That video at the top of the page is from government house, not from the airport.

I don't remember news of any armed or unarmed police defending the airport. The security guards simply backed off there when PAD entered the building. Entering the airport is not illegal per se.

"Shooting at unarmed taxi drivers" was not "again and again", it was on the day the main PAD party was on the way to the airport and was ambushed in that area, so some guards turned around and confronted the attackers.

There were some murky cases during the airport saga, and it WAS a no go zone for the police, just as the govt house was a police no go zone earlier.

Still airport was the culmination of six month long protest that in the first few months didn't have any guards at all, until PAD came under constant attacks across the country, and later had grenades thrown in their Bangkok camp at night.

Anyway, it's not related to the current topic, but if some posters feel the need to take a PAD ride, then it goes both ways.

50 red demostrators throwing stuff at the motorcade are rather pathetic and it reflects worse on their own image rather than Abhisit who probably will not dignify them even with a comment. That's just like trying to bully an elephant.

My scenario was not aiming to be undemocratic. Just for the ease of considering the 2 major players without confusing the basic question of who would win (because I'm sure you agree it'd be one of the two).

A bit like when you go to a restaurant. You order Coke or Pepsi right? Not "A glass of the Tesco own brand cola please"

I meant hypothetical, not hypocritical, sorry.

Thailand has never had a run off elections, I have no idea what would supporters of Chart Thai Pattana choose, for example. And when you go to a restaurant there are also ice teas, coffees and what not. Also most restaurants get their sodas from one supplier only - either Coke or Pepsi, not both.

The coalition system means that all problems must be resolved through consensus, there's not "one ring that rules them all".

in the sense that usually the government is representative of the most mainstream ideology after votes have been counted after elections took place (and coalitions have been formed as a result). Hence, the government (coalition) will have 50% + x votes to count on when it comes to passing legislative bills and the "opinion of the majority is represented in parliament". Of course a lot of opinions (surely not all) are represented in parliament, BUT the most mainstream one will succeed. After all, elections are in the statistical sense just held to "sample" the opinions of the whole population and gauge the proportionate distribution of ideologies - based on which the parliament is formed.

Ok, and what is undemocratic about the current parliament? It certainly has a ruling coalition that represents the majority of voters, just as previously PPP led coalition had.

which is an ideology - not in the sense of left, right, center, green, fascist... but the local communities and regions have interests in their local development. Naturally their interests collide with each others as they all are competing for the same pot.

Errm, no, by ideology I meant some nationwide ideas on how the country should be run. Scrambling for funds distributed to the regions is not ideology as I meant it.

So basically you are saying that it doesnt matter which party (or group of factions) is the reigning party as long as it is not Thaksin's? Again, I still wonder though...if MPs truly represent their people and that's what people are only concerned with, how would it matter if Thaksin's party was in power? Since it also doesnt matter which "banner they are flying under"?

I don't fully understand what you were saying.

It doesn't matter if Thaksin's party gets the power. I don't really care, as long as the government works for the country, or at least the majority of voters. There's not so much difference between Thai parties anyway, and a large part of the government is made of coalition partners who will always be there, regardless of what party the PM belongs to.

The problem with PPP was that they were serving Thaksin and not the voters. And that's Thaksin's problem, too - even the friendly government can't help him, his problems are with judiciary and the govt has no control over it, and politically his party didn't have enough votes to push for amnesty all by itself - coalitions, remember? Chart Thai had no problems working with PPP in governing the country, but pushing for Thaksin was not the mandate they got from those who elected them, so PPP couldn't get Chart Thai's cooperation on any Thaksin related matter.

A lot of board images like "no new posts" or smilies are hosted on static.thaivisa.com, which could be on the same server but has a different dns address:203.174.85.146 for thaivisa and 202.170.126.9 for static.thaivisa.

For several days my computer had problems with displaying those images. Sometimes it takes forever to get 1kb images from there, sometimes they never arrive at all.

For example those little squares under posters avatars that show how many posts a user has

http://static.thaivisa.com/forum/style_ima...3049877/pip.gif

took several minutes to download as I'm posting this. On some machines it causes the browsers to timeout and stop waiting.

In another thread on disappearing avatars George said there could be Thailand dns server issue related to server maintenance. This is not the same case for me - I use US located openDNS server on this Win7 system.

Is it the problem with the slow "static" server? I noticed that these images are still available on simple thaivisa.com and are served from there in a second, like that same square on

http://thaivisa.com/forum/style_images/ip....3049877/pip.gif

Are they physically in the same place? Then it could be server problem with processing them if they are requested as static.thaivisa.

I said that democratic is that the opinion of the majority is represented in parliament - nothing further.

What???

The parliament represents ALL people of Thailand. The government represents the majority of parliamentarians. That's ABC of Thai political system for you.

What you are addressing is a problem here in general that MPs jump from one ideology to the other as they see fit, eg which benefits them the most over the near future.

Biggest cause of this problem is that MPs represent people, and people on the ground don't particularly care about ideologies in Bangkok. They want MPs help with local development, how the MPs are going to get those funds out of Bangkok government doesn't matter.

MPs, btw, are supposed to legislate, not govern, but governors are not elected in Thailand and getting those sweet positions is not as easy as winning elections.

Someone said that some local poo yais shifted their attention from getting national MPs to local Provincial elections, 'cos that's where the money is. MPs, in the meantime want to amend the constitution so that they can work as advisors to budget dispersal committees instead of writing laws and pursuing ideology.

You also mentioned switching the camps. That's a problem, but in 2007 elections no party has promised to form a coalition with PPP so you can't talk about betrayal in this particular case.

....

MCA, Thai political system is pluralistic and inclusive. People are free to support any party they want, their choice is not restricted to either Thaksin or Democrats.

The scenario you proposed is not only highly hypocritical but also denies people their choices and so is undemocratic.

If what you say is true that those reds wouldn't be running around trying to save Thaksin's money but demand that their political representatives started doing something useful.

So far I don't see that those protesters care a bit about democracy, not a step beyond fiery rhetorics.

Chunkton, Thaksin didn't invent vote buying, the difference is that he legitimized it.

Just like prostitution has existed since forever but no one presents some whore as an innocent bride.

eeerm...ok. Let's start out on a point we all agree on: democracy basically boils down to the political opinion of the majority being represented and acted in accordance to (to some extent of course).

Ignore the vote buying for now, the red shirts' representatives very voted democratically since the coup, but overthrown each time so that now the ruling party is an undemocratically installed one, by the powers behind the scenes.

So you reduce democracy only to having elections once in a while. Fine, let's start from there.

After PPP was dissolved all their MPs joined some other parties, they all are still there, still representing the same voters in the same Parliament, just under different banners. The places vacated by banned executives were filled via elections, too.

What is so "undemocratic" about it?

And all this talk about would they "win" or not without vote-buying. What is "win". PTP is the biggest party in parliament, and is in coalition with two other parties. They talk about their "win", which means nothing when it comes to voting for the PM in parliament.

The rest of the MPs preferred to choose Abhisit and form a bigger coalition. They've got more MPs, they won. PPP lost.

What's so "undemocratic" about that?

What he as a Professor completely misunderstands that it is not so much about Thaksin, yellow or red shirts, Sondhi or whatsoever - these are just symbols. It's about the inherent unfairness in the Thai system in general and clinging to status quo rather than change for the better that ppl are upset about.

If what you say is true that those reds wouldn't be running around trying to save Thaksin's money but demand that their political representatives started doing something useful.

So far I don't see that those protesters care a bit about democracy, not a step beyond fiery rhetorics.

Chunkton, Thaksin didn't invent vote buying, the difference is that he legitimized it.

Just like prostitution has existed since forever but no one presents some whore as an innocent bride.