Plus

lot's of images and reports from the daytime clashes but from the night time. i read only reports from people who said that they have been eye witnesses of such actions. but can not present any image, that is understandble. if you hear bullets flying around your head, wouldn't you rather run away and duck and cover, instead of moving with your mobile phone in the hand in the middle of the action. there is one very shacky mobile cam video of the night on youtube, taken from a balcony somewhere above the action. but the moment you here the gunshots the people take cover as well and so moch to see isn't on the video anyway. not because nothing happend, but because it was night time, so there is lack of light and it was at night time. and it's only one video from one person.

the crackdown at night time, bloody or not, isn't documented by thousands of cameras. not by international TV cameras nor by thousands of mobile phone cameras. i saw only one video footage by a thai channel, that doesn't showed the shooting, by 3 or 4 people, lay down on a stretcher, injured i guess, getting loaded into a truck or songtweo.

This whole idea is based on a wrong premise - that if people see army shooting red protesters they'd somehow change their minds and sympathise with rioters. The more likely reaction is "som nam na".

By Monday morning lots of people actually wanted them shot - the takeover of Pattaya hotel, the riot at Interior ministry - that did it for reds already.

Perhaps Abhisit is simply buying time - all talk and no action.

Amnesty will not have a life of its own, it's tied up with const amendments and Abhisit gave a two week deadline for proposals without actually committing to anything. He might throw most of them out of the window and set some sort of a committee that would take forever to achieve anyting, and then there's public input and so on.

Watching the joint parliament-senate debate might give some clues as to where all the factions stand and the kind of timeframe we are looking at.

Actually it feels like Abhisit must do something for Reconciliation TM but he has no idea what, so he sent out feelers. This indeciveness was immediately capitalised on by PTP who are all over the media with their own ideas and they excude a lot of confidence that they will get what they want.

Personally Abhisit did very well with the riots, but he also probably realised that he was betrayed by Anupong and possibly even Suthep. He sidelined them, and the police, but once the upcountry troops leave Bangkok - who's going to watch his back? He still works out of a bunker somewhere. He has full public support but that doesn't immediately translate into security.

I think "full public support" needs a lot of elaboration also. Not that they matter anyway.

You need a professionally done poll, run by a reputable western agency, to convince you that his dealing with riots won him public approval?

At least Sonthi is trying. Reds are not as determined.

I can only speculate, there are precious few hints as to what was going on after Pattaya fiasco.

Reportedly he was furious with Suthep who was in charge of the security that simply evaporated, blue shirts he helped to set up didn't help Abhisist either. Then ABhisit was practically lynched in Bangkok and the army and the police didn't do anything. Then he set up operation center with support of some generals that didn't include Anupong, then there was public appearance where Anupong was demoted to sit far away from him. Then, after the riots, Anupong went on TV to talk about crackdown as if he was fully in charge, or as he feels fully in charge again.

Perhaps Abhisit is simply buying time - all talk and no action.

Amnesty will not have a life of its own, it's tied up with const amendments and Abhisit gave a two week deadline for proposals without actually committing to anything. He might throw most of them out of the window and set some sort of a committee that would take forever to achieve anyting, and then there's public input and so on.

Watching the joint parliament-senate debate might give some clues as to where all the factions stand and the kind of timeframe we are looking at.

Actually it feels like Abhisit must do something for Reconciliation TM but he has no idea what, so he sent out feelers. This indeciveness was immediately capitalised on by PTP who are all over the media with their own ideas and they excude a lot of confidence that they will get what they want.

Personally Abhisit did very well with the riots, but he also probably realised that he was betrayed by Anupong and possibly even Suthep. He sidelined them, and the police, but once the upcountry troops leave Bangkok - who's going to watch his back? He still works out of a bunker somewhere. He has full public support but that doesn't immediately translate into security.

It would be nice if more of you acknowledged that many people hold an opinion different from you and that, while different, these are valid and genuine opinions and people have the right to voice them.

What is interesting is how people arrive at these opinions. If you can spot things like wrong facts, gaps in knowledge and faulty logic, it eats away at cliamed "validity".

There was once an interesting episode at ICT ministry that involved Smart ID card specs. They should have had 32MB memory available but the delivered samples had only 28. Seems like a stragihforward answer to a simple question - do they comply with the specs?

Not if you have a politically appointed committee voting on it, everyone with "valid" opinions. The cards have passed.

So, there are cases when people express their "valid" opinions based on anything else but the subject at hand, there certainly are cases like that on discussion boards.

So, basically it means having someone to compile an arbitrary list and then parliament vote on it.

Judges won't have anything to do with, it's outside justuce system.

It's up to a deal between politicians themselves, who to resurrect and who to bury. Shameless, no doubt, but what do they care.

What if they can't agree on who should be included?

It's a hornet nest, even if they ignore public protests.

I can't see how over a hundred cases can be properly investigated and tried (evidence, witnesses, prosecution, defence) in any reasonable period of time, not to mention the legality of it.

Why is it that only the reds or yellows have rights to run propaganda war but not the government?

Thisis why I mentioned the often simply overlooked point

he made: "Not for those who have broken any laws!"

That's the confusing part, I agree. Was Thammarak convicted personally at all? Yongyuth certainly was, his was a separate case from party dissolution.

As the current law stands - they all have broken them one way or another, at least by condoning electoral fraud commited by their fellow executives. Don't forget that executives, as party list MPs themselves, stood a lot to gain from Yongyuths successful bribing of state officials. Don't forget that there is still a loophole in the constitution where disquilying one vote buyer simply replaces him with the next in line on his party list and the vote buying party is not punished in any way, they don't lose even one MP seat.

I'm not against amnesty for least guilty, I just can't see how are they going to determine who deserves what, how are they going to retry the cases in parliament, with politicians voting for their bosses.

It could be argued to leave them on the outside cuts their options to indulging in street poltics and look where that has us.

Could be - but those who took the matter to the streets will be disqualified by Abhisit's own standards - no criminals.

I meant to say, it appears as though Abhisit is a turkey voting for Xmas

It certainly appears that way. Two birds with the same stone - alienating his own supporters and strengthening the opposition.

From reading this page it might appear that SJ is posting news in the wrong thread, btw.

There's no way Abhisit can assure clean elections by letting the foxes back in the chicken house, it sends the opposite message - electoral fraud is not really a wrongdoing that needs to be punished. He can't give them amnesty today and expect to dissolve parties for the same fraud later.

If you say party dissolution is wrong, but it's an old argument, party change names all the time, proxies are everywhere, MPs jump sides every few months - there's no party institution in Thai politics, it's all just names.

Banning party execs is adequate punishment, imo. Otherwise they can just appoint VP for electoral fraud, a temporary position, just for the campaign time. He'd deliver the votes, get his benefit package, and then let EC decide if he should be banned from taking the same job for five years or not.

Basic premise - giving amnesty for electoral fraud is not going to clean up politics and would further erode people's trust in parliament and political system and we would be back to square one:

"There's one and only law in this country - rigged elections. There's only winners and losers, winners get complete immunity and losers will be completely ignored. You think I broke the law - let's go to voting booth and see if you win. Can't win - there's no crime in whatever I do. Corruption and fraud don't exist, those are outdated concept - the ruling party cannot be corrupt by definition (winners), and opposition cannot be corrupt because they are not allowed a chance."

It took a year for judiciary to rule on fate of both TRT and then PPP later. A year of people patiently waiting for justice, time that PAD thought they couldn't afford so they took to the streets. During that time PPP tried to change the laws to excuse themselves and if not for PAD they would have succeeded.

How can Abhisit say "let's forget all this, let's welcome Yongyuth and Thammarak and a bunch of other fraudsters back"?

I don't know where Abhisit is going with this amnesty plan. Maybe it's a move to counteract Newin's resurgence, maybe it's a move to pacify reds. I don't know how it will play out in the long term - if he lets troublemakers who led the country to the brink of revolution to come out from behind the curtains and take charge of parliament - I don't see any reconciliation coming from that move at all. Those tigers don't change spots, it will take time to build up popular opposition, but another mass uprising against corrupt politicians is unavoidable. People will not accept parliament ala PPP days and PAD will be the first one on the streets, and the likes of Chalerm will again play the role of the nation's democratic conscience to furhter disgust of millions.

It might work if Abhisit plays it right and no controversial figures are resurrected, but how is he going to achieve that? It will be a scramble to get into his good books and no legal rules to weed the troublemakers out. I don't see how it could work, but maybe he has some extra tricks up his sleeve.

You can rant all you want but IE8 connects to the Internet just fine. It's the problem with settings on your particular machine, and most likely you yourself screwed it up somewhere.

Now, without pointing fingers in every direction, what exactly are the symptoms? How is your computer connected to the Internet? What are your IE connection settings? How are they different from Firefox settings?

Could it be something really simple like "work offline" option clicked under File menu?

sale of Shin Corp for 76bn baht "without paying tax".....This was so misleading......I still meet people who don't realize that stock market main board transaction generate no tax because there's no capital gains tax in Thailand for stock market transactions.

Thaksin's children, the legal owners, were eventually charged with tax on buying Shin shares off the market at 1 baht value and then placing them on SET at market value, two days before the sale to Temasek.

So yeah, I sitll meet people who think that Thaksin was taxed on Shin sale itself.

Eventually Thaksin challenged the whole state of Thailand, it wasn't just a rat.

What do you expect them to say? "Oh, he can't be punished, he must be placed above the law, let's call it democracy and go home"

Yeah, if only those pesky yellows could shut up and put up with Thaksin. What's wrong with these people?

PPP and Democrats set up plenty of projects, and any projects can be abused.

Any agricultural product price pledging scheme can be corrupt to the core, like longkan in TRT days. Or rubber sapplings.

Last year people were watching rice pledging scheme and Mingkwan's attempts to give juicy contracts to businessmen that were already blacklisted by the govt. It fell through. Money was lost, but by Pridiyatorn estimates it was still in low millions spread over hundreds of participating companies.

Snoh tried to push Bangkok bus lease project. It fell through.

The reason is not he lack of trying or opportunities, the reason is that these days everybody's watching, everybody knows that a good corruption scandal can be milked to no end and eventually bring your opponents down. Remember rotten fish distributed to flood victims? PTP tried very hard to pin it on Democrats and make it into a big issue - it didn't catch on. It was a batch of spoiled fish, nothing sinister.

PAD has demonstrated that you CAN bring people on the streets to protest against corruption, that scares the government, any government. That's the big change from the days when the whole cabinet acted illegaly with complete impunity.

Face it - you won't admit it because it would give credit to PAD and yellows, the designated right wing chovinist fascist pigs.

There's going to be a press conference where they "victim" will tell his side of the story about being forced to wear a red shirt and drive in circles trying to escape the demo.

Oh boy.

If you see the government covering up blatant corruption ala STX case, let me know.

Little guys skimming their 10% when no one is watching is a different story.

What do you think PAD could have achieved? They targeted the government, not custom officials. Do you see any corruption scandals involving the government? When was the last one? Can you find anything substantial in the past three years, the post-Thaksin era?

I don't think Interpol would send its agents to arrest Thaksin on Thai orders, I doubt it has the mandate to supercede national laws.

They'd probably locate him and inform the governments, and then it's up to the national police and extradition treaties/requests.

Thaksin can sleep safe in Nicaragua or his African hideouts, but if he was spotted in a country where Thai diplomats can move very fast, he could be detained in a matter of hours.

Obviously the movement grew and morphed over the four years, giving plenty of excuses to label it in any way you fancy.

According to Supalak from the Nation it is a movement for elitist and military order, that their goal has become clear with introduction of new politics.

Nevermind that new politics was a very late addition that didn't even catch on, certainly not with a rank and file protesters.

Even then - new politics was introduced to fight corrupt politicians, as an alternative election system. Go ahead, read their announcements - "we are fed up with money controlling politics, with politicians having to rely on business to campaign, and serving the business to repay their debts and ignoring the people, it's a vicious cycle that will never end on its own". That was the main idea, in my own words, not stripping villagers of the right to vote, as we were led to believe by "progressive" retards with a mission.

I didn't see any noticeable reduction in corruption since they started or finished their protests

Compare it to Thaksin years where new corruption scandals were breaking out every week. Or imagine how long it would take to sign off those bus projects in TRT years. Now they are dragging it for a year now, stripping all the fat off the budget in multiple steps.

Come to think of it - when did you last hear about any big scandal? Can it even compare to CTX billions?

I was hoping that hundreds of thousands of red shirts ready to die for the new constituion can come up with some ideas on their own. Apparently not. Apparently their interest is strictly limited to foot clappers and dying.

Some mass movement, ain't it?

Phew, that was easy.

From the thread title I thought someone was stealing trains and selling them to Malaysia.

Train thief! What next?

"genuine public uprising against corrupt politicians" sorry, I don't buy it.

There were probably hundreds if not thousands speakers on PAD stages all around the country. That was what made in genuine. That people from all walks of life overcome their prejudices and joined together in a fight against Thaksin and corruption.

Until that point Sondhi's crusade didn't carry much weight, true, but he simply was the right man in the right place and was able to provide his services to a snowballing movement.

The man has seen both highs and lows in four years since then. If you think he did all of this just because he was denied a license once, go ahead, Freud. Maybe it was sexual trauma in his childhood, that would conviniently explain everything.