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County and country are different things. County comissioners are probably the lowest species in the government pyramid. Try purging top one hundred FBI officers instead.

Its too bad Thai politicians cannot be controlled/monitored like we are on TV. The mods would not allow a topic with out quoting a source, to continue. If Sinchok or anyone else has or is given evidence it should be given to someone of responsibility and legal proceeding started.

Without going public that legal proceeding will stop at the first hurdle - police investigation, if they even accept charges against their superiors.

Sirichok's been clear - he doesn't want culprits to be tried and prosecuted, he just wants to stop the bribery that is going on. A practical and sensible thing to do.

You can't possibly have half the senior police being on trial, justice system is not designed to handle cases of such magnitude. Prevention in this case is better than deterrent.

if the 50 000 that signed the petition were willing to put in $10 - $100 each we could hire mercenaries to send into Myanmar or buy weapons to give to the ethnic groups fighting the Burmese. Or perhaps go there.

Now you are talking. Why bother with petition in the first place if your real goal is armed rebellion against Burmese state?

History teaches us that brutal despotic regimes cannot last, and can fall suddenly.

You mean like Sucharto in Indonesia?

The reality is that nothing will radically change until next generation takes over. The only change will come after junta's "road map" starts working full time - elections and all, and NLD won't be a part of that. People and the junta will try to manage it together, sans Aung San Suu Kyi.

Many Asian policy makers think that Aung San Suu Kyi has become a problem herself and don't support her cause anymore.

In their view she can't claim power because she won elections almost twenty years ago and she should have participated in political process instead of being so uncompromising.

Reds want to help Thaksin to avoid serving his sentence. What else it is if not helping a convict to avoid his punishment?

Reds do not accept the court's decision. What else it is if not contempt?

Which one of Thaksin/red supporters here would claim otherwise?

Is PAD charge going to work? Not in Thailand at this moment, but the point has been made - the petition can be considered unlawful and prosecutable. Lots of people have been saying this all along, just no one pointed the exact reasons. Now PAD went public with it.

With allegedly millions of signatures it is impossible to act on and everybody outside red circle already knows they have gone completely mad. The question was always about what to do about alleged millions of brain dead idiots who signed this nonsensical petition.

Why this petiton doesn't make any sense has been explained millions of times already, from asking forgivenss for crimes they don't admit, to asking the King to fix the economy.

So they got (alleged) millions signing on, but even if everybody in a loony house uses a fork to pick up his/her nose, it still doesn't make it right.

Now the Interior Minister claims 4 million signed against it, or withdrew their signatures. It is probably no more true that 5 million red signatures no one has ever seen. PR numbers for the gullible.

There's no "they" here. The military is divided in at least three ways and they all want different things, and a coup wouldn't benefit any of them.

The only possible coup is pro-Thaksin generals taking power on the wave of red shirt protests.

Those "they" don't give a fuc_k about FDI tourism or whatever, they need to reinstall Thaksin. Period.

the law that says no tax was to be paid on stock market transactions was created by Thaksin himself and enacted by his executive power four days before the ShinCorp sale.

No no no, that law was to allow sale of more than 25% of Shin to a foreign buyer, it wasn't about taxes.

Tax was due not on sale of Shin Corp to Temasek, as Koo assumes. Tax was due on profits made by Thaksin kids when they got shares from various companies and listed them on stock exchange. It was charged on the difference between them buying at off the market price (1 baht per share) and the current market value at that time (50 baht).

I don't see anyone relying on the USA to police anything in this part of the world. Thailand has got dragged into this case it has absolutely no stake in.

Latest Clinton visit could have had influence on the extradition case, and it could have gone either way, depending on what that "change" actually is.

The "majority" voted for PPP, so Khun Samak was PM.

I don't know how you count, but I count like this: after election, PPP got 233 and Democrats got 145. That was 88 more than Democrats.

PPPs's 233 seats is NOT a majority of 480. A majorty would be more than 50% - 240 seats.

And Democrats got 165 seats, not 145.

Currently PTP has 187 MPs, Democrats 173.

there are a hard core group of members , plus, jdinasia, srirachajohn, jingthing and there underlings who have been

lobbying

under an anti thaksin agenda, through bias polls, one sided new reports, bullying, snide remarks, and a deliberate hate and smear campaign, against both Thaksin himself and his perceived supporters, in an effort to manipulate expat opinion.

Lobbying to do what, exactly? Come to the streets and start a revolution? Sign a petition? Go and vote in a certain way?

Or is Mc2 saying that "we" have influnced his opinion to a degree where our posts break TV rules and qualify as lobbying?

There's an article somewhere in the Nation.

Dems blame it on people who can't accept their rising popularity and winning election after election in that area. This is not the first attack either.

Rkasa - no one knows who did it, but the issue is with reds who justify political violence, including killings. Not long ago Koo was advocating throwing grenades into a group of sleeping yellows, now another pro-red poster saying bloodshed is necessary, and now you come and say "yellows did too", like a three year old arguing in a sandbox.

It says the people who sign have big problems and the only man they hope can solve their problems is Khun Thaksin, so they seek Royal pardon for Khun Thaksin.

Look at the highlighted part - constitutionally it is outside of King's duty. It's not Sukhotai era anymore. There are no provisions in the constitution to petition the King to solve economic problems. In these matters the King acts through the Parliament, and it stated so in the Constitution.

The King can grant a pardon, however the petition must be submitted first, and that process must follow some rules. In TRT days there were two cases when the laws passed by parliament didn't reach the King because his office found errors and mistakes in them - that's a precedent for you. Royal signature and endorsement is not a rubber stamp.

Various reds came out defending the legality of the petition by citing cases from the past, but none explained consitutional status of the current version. Far more people have been saying it has no legal legs to stand on all along.

True "freedom of a nation" always came with bloodshed.

Yeah, those pesky people who disagree with your democratic agenda need to be shot. Then democracy will prevail. There is no other way.

Oh, hold on, you could also agree to live with other people in peace... Not very democratic though, is it? All those people have no idea what democracy is, you either shoot them or the country is doomed to to live under murderous elites.

That was a Rolls Royce to one of the leaders of a coup that led to Chamlong led uprising against Suchinda, and it was for the satellite concession.

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One of the PDFs, with five slates for signatures is probably not kosher. The the two page PDF also needs a cover - three pages in total.

There's no way two people can carry a 150kg box with a thousand petitions inside, I can't even imagine what this box would look like, what it's made of and how much it could weigh itself. Reds are just talking of their asses here - the point is to create an impression, facts don't matter.

They keep the location secret, as in no one has ever seen them. Right. That was precisely my point.

Maybe it will check out in the end, but it's also likely that they won't submit it when the time comes, in the name of reconciliation or whatever. Then it will be six million petition that never was, they just talked about it.

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ABAC poll is not affiliated with Democrats - where did this come from?

The reds said they need 600 boxes to store the petitions. 2 reds will carry one box on 17th August. 1 box contains 10,000 petitions.

10,000 petitions - 30,000 sheets of of paper. One sheet of A4 paper weighs about 5 grams. So that "box" would weigh 150 kg. 600 boxes would weigh 90 tons. Maybe they use thinner paper, and there aren't 6 million petitions, but still it's a lot of paper.

Possibly I missed that in the last couple of days - but there are some questions about these five million signatures.

For example, each petition is on three pages. Five million petitions would weigh about 60 ton. That much paper can't be possibly stored at Truth Today offices at Imperial Lad Prao, as reds claim.

Perhaps people signed just the last page, without seeing the petition itself.

Also, they are not going to submit whole five million petitions (or so someone claimed on TV), only 700,000. That makes their existence even more suspicious.

And, as Newin pointed - nearly every on in ten Thais, including children, had signed it, but it's not so easy to find these people.

Questions, questions...

Check out Abac site - it's a business, they do polls for anyone who pays. In case of politics I think they sell results to the media.

Bangkok Pandit somehow gets full results for his blog, he either translates from Thai or pays for them, too. Or whatever their arrangment is. He hasn't covered this latest poll yet, but it's only Monday morning.

Usually the logic goes like this - you want to measure public opinion, you order a poll, and you look at the results, and account for error margins, either the statistical ones, or, perhaps, wording of the questions that creates ambiguity.

If the results differ from your own estimates, you suck it up and learn to predict the public mood better. No one else is responsible for your own judgement errors.

Or you can aks your favourite political commentator who always agree with you to validate your opinion, and to hel_l with polls. That would massage your ego very nicely, so you can feel confident enough to go and spout some more nonsense about conspiracies and demonisation.

They should discuss it in parliament, then take to the referendum, with each point being voted on separately - fully elected Senate, amnesty, electoral zones and number of candidates change and so on.

Do you have any evidence or proof? What do you, personally, know about polling that makes you qualified to dismiss ABAC polls as unprofessional?

So far I think you main qualification is that you don't like the results.

My first step - treat them all as obstacles in a video game. That way I'm not disappointed or upset when they don't cooperate. I'm upset at my own skills instead.

Occasionally they get through, though. For me it's usually when someone manages to cut me off when I don't let them to. In those cases I try to figure out how they managed it rather than be angry about it. If I conclude that the other guy has better judgment of his car size, I think I should improve myself. If I conclude that anyone could have done it if they broke a particular rule, like making a u-turn from a second lane, then I let it go because I just don't do that kind of stuff. If I conclude that he is just an idiot counting on me breaking in time - well, no need to be upset with idiots, as per rule number one.

Basic thing - anger comes when reality doesn't meet your expectations. So adjust expectations instead of reality, and I don't mean expect very little, think of it as uderstanding, not just expectations. If you know exactly how and why that other guy does it, your expectations will be very very close to the reality.

Another trick is that I want to get from A to B as fast as possible with optimal effort - not too hard, not too little. If someone cuts me off, it's not a big deal when taking in account the full 30km route. Temporary set back. It's "putting things in perspective" - and I can't think of the whole life while driving, or eight preceipts or something, 30km journey is ok, though. Big enough to not care and small enough to stay in my mind all the time.

No comparison. In today's editorial in The Nation they say nearly 120 billion has been spent in the South already (not just this year, though). Nation's point is that it's a waste of money judging by the results.

He was forced to live in exile because of abuse of the rule of law.

Maybe it means "he abused the law and was forced into exile". Hope there's no ambiguity in Thai version.

Same for the pseudo petition which may have 700,000 actual signatures (that's the number that the petitioners intend to submit to the Royal Office on the 17th). The remaining 4,300,000 or so signatures will be conveniently sealed in cardboard boxes and loaded up somewhere else.

Really? I haven't heard it yet.

Is it really the case? That's their five million signatures?

The Consitution states simple that the King can grant pardons. It doesn't give people right to petition him for this and for that.

Have you seen the text of this petition?

Basically they want the King to help fix the economy.

It says that economy is bad, Thaksin is a capable leader, they request a pardon so that Thaksin can come back and serve as economic consultant.

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"We, whose names and addresses appear at the end of the petition, would like to call Your Majesty's attention to the economic grievances brought about by the coup on September 19, 2006.

"Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted from power even though he was a knowledgeable and capable leader enjoying the people's trust.

"He was forced to live in exile because of abuse of the rule of law. The people deem it unacceptable for double standards of law enforcement.

"As the last resort for people to rely on, it is our fervent hope that Your Majesty, who is just and far-sighted, will not allow your subjects to be mired by their grievances for too long by granting a royal pardon to Thaksin.

"Therefore he will once again be free to return and serve the country, at least as an economic adviser to dispel our grievances as we, the petitioners, remain confident in his capability.

"In submitting the petition, we expect to foster reconciliation although we humbly abide by Your Majesty's discretion."

I agree however with Hammered that it's just a game and don't see any prospect of Thaksin actually receiving a pardon.If he was serious he would do it it himself and that means admitting guilt.If the elite had any imagination or motivation other than a bone headed hatred of Thaksin it might conclude there was an interesting opportunity here but of course the Neanderthal tendency will prevail.

You mean they should support this "pardon" despite Thaskin showing absolutely no remorse whatsoever? Or you mean they would stubbornly reject it if he came forward with apologies?

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It's not a request for "pardon". It's a petition to declare Thaksin a political victim and grant him victrory over his opponents.

Pua Thai's election victory (after the banning of TRT) was really a defeat!

It depends on your angle. Yes, it was a victory for the people who elected the government of their choice. I don't know why you assume that the elites would be against it, though. They fight Thaksin, not the people.

If you look at it from Thaksin's point of view - did they get him off the hook? Did they grant amnesty to banned TRT execs? Did they re-write the constitution? No, nothing. What kind of victory was that?

And if you looked at it from elites point of view - they let people have their government and they kept Thaksin at bay. Was it a defeat?

I, personally, don't care very much who runs the government here, as long as it works for the country and not for Thaksin, or any other particular individual. It's just different flavours of governing styles, some are more inept than others, I can live with that, it's- not a big deal if you compare it to Thaksin's revoluiton.

So, if PTP gets some 40 more seats that Democrats - go ahead, celebrate your "victory", if that's your version of a good time. I wouldn't care, and Bangkok Pundit thinks that PAD would actually be happier in opposition than trying to govern together with the likes of Suthep and Newin.

Different people go into elections with different goals. Victory of defeat mean different things to them.

So Abhisit went for "suitable" over "senior". By seniority the next in line is Thaksin's brother in law, and it could be in the rule book that he should get the position.