Plus

It is assumed that Koo is a Thai woman, a true Thaksin supporter, and so her family income is assumed to be in line with the rest of the red shirts.

Or is Thaksin, once the richest man in the country, is the champion of the poor, and the poor themselves live on a low income of 100,000 baht per month?

You did not understand ISSAN

I'm trying to. I'm having hard time with any reasonable explanation for their voting patterns that does not present them in a very bad light.

So a wife of a guy caught for buying votes wins an election

I did not say she paid for the votes, I haven't seen any complains about vote buying this time, and if her husband was disqualified for something else rather than buying votes, it has nothing to do with the current case.

This time Sakhon Nakhon voted with conviction, but it's good to know that a third of them have stopped chasing Thaksin dream.

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Commentators in the Nation said that leaflets featuring Newin with Thaksin and Abhisit made a great impact - they clearly displayed him as a traitor.

Newin can reply that his allegiance lies with voters and Thailand in general and he can work with any other politicians if that would bring benefits to the people, and he doesn't have to serve Thaksin for the rest of his life.

Maybe this argument will make sense to Isanese, who value loyalty to pooyais above caring for the country, adavnced democracts that they are.

Can't we all just agree that we're sick and tired of elite sponsored army coups, installed patsy governments and yellow?

I'm afraid not, as many of us are sick of reds, and that goes for the rest of the country, too, especially after Songkran riots.

Why don't you agree with us?

In case MPs are disqualified, there will be by-elections, and for party list MPs, the next in line will take their place.

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The Nation

The EC postponed for 15 days its deliberation on the cases involving 44 MPs, including six Cabinet members, secretary-general Suthiphon Thaveechaiyagarn said.

It also decided to give to its committee investigating 28 MPs from the ruling Democrat Party in a separate case of violating shareholding rules more time to gather information before completing its probe, he said.

...

Of the 44 MPs, 23 are from the Pheu Thai Party, eight from Puea Pandin, three each from Chart Thai Pattana, Pracharaj and Bhum Jai Thai, two from Ruam Jai Thai Chart Pattana, and one each from the Democrat and Social Action parties.

How can dear old Plus and Animatic keep on with their hoary old mantra of "They weren't elected - they bought their votes!" if you start giving the facts?

I said no such thing.

This is the second time you deride people for things they haven't said, without even a little "sorry, my mistake".

Try to display some manners if you want to be taken seriously and not as some internet troll.

Now I see that Plus and Animatic are having a field day over the fact that 1/3rd of the electors didn't vote for Anurak Boonson! Eh? You mean 2/3rds of the entire electorate did vote for her - a figure that I think many MP's anywhere in the World would be quite happy to achieve.

In places like Sakhon Nakhon it's a loss of 30% for PTP. They used to get over 90% in those areas, and that drop in support in their backyard is quite an indicator of what's going to happen in nationwide elections.

Who would eat americanised chinese food here? What's wrong with "authentic" Chinese, or Thai-Chinese?

Even american food is a hard sell nowadays - even at fast food outlets. It's all pork burgers, spicy chicken with sweet sauce and the likes.

They spent money on uniforms, text books, supplies - that kind of stuff. 15 year free program is on the way, I think. There's a thread for it on TV.

About a third of people in Sakhon Nakhon didn't vote for Thaksin - in his own backyard.

Opened with Opera, the music started when the page was displayed, but there was Quicktime update warning.

Why not use mp3 instead? Those quikctime/real audio plugins are not installed by default on every computer and can throw a bunch of errors or warnings.

Problem with bikes is that they occupy space on the road that is often taken by other cars cutting in front of you.

First you let a bike in, then three cars will squeeze in front of him, and you'll be left at the end of the que.

what have this do to with the suspicion of a possible form of 'vote buying' with that cash handouts?

What vote buying? There aren't any elections on the horizon.

providing education or somekind of infrastructure that makes people able to set up their own businesses would be smarter, than a simple cash hand out.

There's no point in setting up new businesses when the exisiting ones can't survive for the lack of consumers. That would be a recipe for a disaster.

Current unemployment rate is less than a half of the expected rate, and just a tad higher than it was during times of economic growth.

Dems spent good money on education already, and infrastructure investments are in the current 1.3bil stimulus package.

we in Singapore were scratching our heads, wondering how we could have insulted the Thai people's national pride or threatened their national security.

Imagine if Singapore was to sell Singtel to Indonesia, for example.

Now, Abhisit himself wants to liberalise. Does that mean Temasek can keep Shincorp and all charges will be dropped? Didn't Thaksin want to liberalise in the first place?

In the first place he decreased foreigner share in telecoms to 25%, which pissed off his competitiors, Orange and Dtac. The ceiling was raised back to 50% only two days before Shin sale was announced to the public.

He also implemented "financial master plan" that restricted foreign banks to one branch only.

the 2000 baht for the low income earner, the 500 baht for the elderly, the 2000 baht for the blinds? wouldn't be other forms to provide social support more effective in the long run than simple cash handouts?

Not necessarily.

Republicans and libertarians would argue that even collecting taxes is ineffective in the long run.

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Going shopping is the fastest way to spend this tax money, if that was the point - getting fastest returns, it worked.

Banned politicians here are banned by an Army Coup installed legal framework, courts and Constitution Courts. The sole purpose of these appointees was to disband TRT and convict Thaksin.

Party dissolution and subsequent ban were recommended by the very first investigative panel, about half a year before the coup, according to the rules spelled in 1997 Constitution.

Don't blame the junta for TRT's run-ins with the law. They got exactly what they deserved, junta or not.

Courts are not supposed to be a tool of revenge, but about justice.

And justice has been served.

PPP top executive undeniably bribed govt officials for the benefit of the party.

Two other parties went down, too, btw.

They pass big bikes that cost more than their truck, to gain status

and then pullover in front of them 100 feet later, causing the bike more problems.

But they HAD to PASS that bike before pulling over.... because they are higher status now,

and must use it to feel that they have it.

It is a form of mass mental illness...

That's not really related.

Bikes are really annoying, moving along at turtle speeds and forcing people to brake not to crush them when they approach their exit.

You exit the fast lane at 90km/h and there's a dozen bikes crawling at 50km/h 500m from your exit. You either brake or overtake.

Braking is harder on the car.

Everybody had to accept the sentence because it was the final instance. That did not hinder widespread public criticism of the sentence. Under present conditions you could not criticize this sentence anymore.

The right to criticize controversial court decisions contributes to transparency of the judiciary and the whole society.

You confuse criticising a sentence with accusing the court of bias.

Contempt of court while the case is in process, libel after it's finished - semantics, what's it matter which law exactly you are breaking.

Back in 2000, btw, people were equally warned of criticising the decision, too. There's nothing new to it. What's new is that Thaksin supporters got the wrong end of the same stick they used on others. How does that feel? How does it feel not being above the law?

You will certainly look cool with a Mac, but it's a major loss of face if, for example, you can't connect to a wifi spot and assistants can't help you as they all been trained to connect from WinXP and you have to click on different buttons on a Mac, or when you try to buy an aircard for Edge/Gprs or, god help, 3G, and shop assistants have no clue how to set it up on Apple, or a banking site that tells you to install IE5 to use it, or a popular game like talesrunner that works only with Internet Explorer, too.

Yeah, there's this neighbour kid with all those online games that won't work on anything by Windows. Sure, they are stupid Thai games by stupid Thai developers, but tell this to your own kid when he wants to play, too.

It appears that thailandtorrent is by invitation only, obviously to limit the number of users, exactly against the philosophy of having torrents in the first place. Very Thai logic.

Good luck to them.

Nearly all the cars you see on the roads I purchased via finance companies. The monthly repayments on a manual are pretty well the same as on an automatic.

Not really true.

What's the spread between manual and top of the line Jazz? 150k? That's a lot of money, quite a difference in both downpayment and monthly installments. Those manuals have always been considered as cheapest, entry level, first buyer vehicles.

Now we have Protons for that market segment, though, but neither Honda nor Toyota has changed their policies yet. Let's see what will be offered in upcoming Mazda2/Ford Fiesta.

The OP is three years old. I don't think he wants to know the answer now.

City has higher power, but it only matters when pushed to the limit, at usual speeds the numbers are exactly the same, and it's impossible to say which engine performs better when you step on gas just by looking at the numbers.

Reviewers at Bangkok Post always held Vios as a sportier car but I've yet to see Jazz/City owner on this board who'd complain about speed or acceleration, it's rather the opposite.

New City is a very good looking car, a far better selling feature than horse powers.

Thai senators and MPs are also granted immunity but probably not in equal measure.

Contempt of court, as its sole purpose, is to protect the integrity of judges in order that they can perform their jobs.

So you think accusing sitting judges of prejudice in performing their duties does not undermine court's integrity?

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When Thaksin was aquitted in 2000 his opponents had to swallow the bitter pill and accept courts decision as final.

When Thaksin is found guilty, his supporters demand different standard for themselves, all in the name of democracy.

A bunch of hypocrites.

Yeah, we had these SRT plans all the time on Thaksin's table, but it's not as easy as spending money on construction.

I'm simply pointing out the total inability of his detractors to accept the democratic will of the electors in Sakon Nakhon.

Can you point out exactly where people don't accept outcome of Sakhon Nakhon elections?

Fighting imaginary demons, are we?

The office of the Constitution Court filed a complaint with police, seeking legal action against Visaradee for her comment during a House debate that the court's dissolution of the People Power Party was unfair.

If found guilty, Visaradee can face a maximum jail term of seven years or a fine of 2,000 baht, or both.

No further comment needed on the state of democracy in Thailand.

It is so funny. No wonder Giles & Thaksin are better off fleeing the country.

Accusing the court of prejudice in parliament, on national TV? What else do you expect?

Try that in the US, see how long you'll hold off contempt of court charges.

Typical.

Instead of answering a simple quesiton - why do Cambodians think that ancient culture of Khmers who happened to live in present day Thailand should not be preserved - they start ranting about all their old wounds and centuries of injustice.