MrMojoRisin

I don’t know, how about: Coup Attitude adjustment camps Arbitrary incarcerations Section 44 Increased human rights abuses Book banning Banning groups greater than 5 Weaponisation of the legal system Computer crimes act Increased ISOC surveillance and intimidation Dissolution of Future Forward Drop in world corruption ranking Increase in poverty rates Etc. Etc.

I would think that no two Thais would have had the exact same experience under 9 years of junta rule. Those that prospered will no doubt want to keep things unchanged, those that suffered would no doubt want change. What better way to understand the true state of affairs than holding a free and fair election? The fact that the current expectation is that the vote for change is going to utterly obliterate the vote for no change, to me, quite clearly indicates a great many more Thais have suffered rather than prospered with Prayuth as PM.

Nonsense

Look at you, telling other people how to live their lives. Can’t help yourself eh? No surprises that you despise democracy as you do.

That‘s great for you. What about the 70 million Thais. Do they get a say?

If Thailand is doing so we’ll under the current management then there should be no fear of elections. Why do you think Pheu Thai are such overwhelming favourites to win in a landslide?

Self diagnosis? I’d usually recommend getting a second opinion, but in this case…..

9 years of Prayuth will have that effect I suppose.

Oh the irony - the right was always so wedded to free speech and rugged individualism yet here you are cheering on oppression, censorship and authoritarianism in the name of “culture”. ????????????

I guess we’ll see on the 14th won’t we. What would a Thaksin landslide say about his past performance?

Everything to do with experience, ability and policies….Thaksin’s. You know very little about politics (globally) if you are unaware about the benefits of name recognition (Trudeau, Bush, Ghandi, Bhutto, Aquino, etc. etc.)

The point in using Vietnam’s figures was to illustrate that Thailand’s “growth” over the same period was underwhelming - 48% sounds significant, but really it isn’t because as you have just stated, starting from the back end of the grid warps the statistics (Thailand in 2010 was not as far back as Vietnam, but it was still far, far from the front end).

After the election it may well be Srettha, however, there is no doubt that Paetongtarn the star attraction before the election. She is the vote winner (by proxy). Thaksin's daughter is just Thaksin's daughter - thus her popularity.

Whatever his motivations, he made the lives of a great many neglected people much much better, this is why his daughter will be PM in two weeks.

Thaksin's re-election in 2005 had a 72% voter turnout. The 28% that were not bothered to vote - are they the vast majority of indifferent individuals that you speak of? The 2019 election had a 75% turnout - is that an increase of indifference?

That is very true. The south has never had much interest in Thaksin. What is also very true, is that the bulk of Thaksin's support has always come from the poorer sectors of society (predominantly from the north and north-east). Why is Pheu Thai the favourite to win the upcoming election? Whom does their supporter base consist of....is it upperclass, gentrified elites? Thaksin's most effective policies were reducing rural poverty and the introduction of universal healthcare, allowing him to gather the hitherto-neglected support of the rural poor, especially in the populous northeast. 100% of the poor don't support Thaksin - the vast majority of them do. So what is your point?

Well, if you're slow on the uptake, I guess you'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, why do you think the love and adoration the commoners, peasants, underclasses and downtrodden masses have for Thaksin is so so enduring? Answer the above question and you'll have the answer to the question posed in your previous post.

Exactly my point. Pheu Thai is better than Prayuth Move Forward is better than Pheu Thai. Its a step by step process. I can see PT winning this and the next election and Move Forward winning the next two after that. Change / improvement is gradual. Either way, the military / elites or on the outer for at least a generation.

Better keep your money in your pocket or it will be gone quick smart. What's really going to be fun to watch is all the junta lovers spending the next 20 years frothing at the mouth living under Pheu Thai / Move Forward governments. Thaksin is about to become a daily presence in your existence there old chum. ????????????

What an extraordinary achievement, especially given the fact that two of the six years you mention were pandemic years. Prayuth must be a genius. I am curious though, given Prayuth’s outstanding success in developing Udon Thani, why is he so unpopular? I mean, you’ve made it clear that Thaksin’s meagre efforts merit no adulation yet here we are 20 years later and vast numbers of Thais worship the man as a god primarily for being the first PM to invest in rural development on a meaningful scale. Quite the quandary. Perhaps the answer lies in the lack of accuracy of your assessment of the comparative success achieved by each side of Thai politics. Hmmm, But 79% of the poor remain in rural areas and mainly in agricultural households. Thailand’s poverty reduction slowed from 2015 onwards with poverty increasing in 2016, 2018 and 2020, mirroring a slowing economy, stagnating farm and business incomes and the COVID-19 crisis. It finds that in 2020, the poverty rate was over 3 percentage points higher in rural areas than in urban zones and the number of rural poor outnumbered the urban poor by almost 2.3 million. The distribution of poverty has also been uneven across geographic regions with the poverty rate in the South and in the Northeast almost double the poverty rate at the national level.

1% of the population owns 85% of the wealth - it's indefensible which is why you have opted to ignore it. Weak! Your stats don't tell the story you think it they do (comprehension again?). 48.7% over 11 years looks quite paltry. How does this compare with Vietnam over the same period? Vietnam PPP household income went from US$894 in 2010 to US$2178 in 2021. That, my friend, is a 243% increase in the same time it took Thailand to achieve 48.7% Thailand is underdeveloped outside of Bangkok. This is the very reason why Thaksin is so popular - he kickstarted development of the rest of the country, had he remained in power god knows how high the PPP household income would be by now - perhaps the figure would be 100% instead of just 48.7%, thanks to the anti-democracy forces we'll never know what could have been. Lets not forget, before Thaksin came along the rural poor didn't even get access to decent affordable healthcare - what does this say about your cherished traditions and culture?. The introduction of the 30 baht universal healthcare system eliminated 17,000 preventable infant deaths per year - the sort of malfeasance not seen in the west for a century was only solved by a democratically elected Thaksin a mere 20 years ago. Why are you so afraid of letting the Thai people decide what they want for themselves and their country? If they wish to embrace aspects of western culture and economic policy who are the minority to deny them that? You don't even respect the Thai people enough to let them decide their own future, your anti-western diatribes are but a fig leaf that are all too easily seen through.

The bar chart you showed is misleading, as it only shows wealth distribution by the top and bottom 10%, rather what lies in between. The fact that the very rich are getting richer is a global phenomenon (and I'll even cite the Guardian here): Comprehension ain't a strong point eh? The bar chart shows the bottom 50% and the top 10% What lies between? The remaining 40% of Thais possess an astounding 12.6% of the wealth. It doesn't take much effort to deduce that the bottom 90% of Thais hold just 14.3% of the wealth. Compared to the USA where the top 1% own 38.5%, Thailand's top 1% own an obscene 85.7% Thailand is right at the very top of the worst in the world for inequality... and deliberately so. Democracy will, as much as it is possible, reduce this inequality. Are you shocked that the meagre 1.7% that you thought the bottom 10% owned is actually the total wealth of the bottom 50%? It is disgraceful and anyone who preaches cultural values, traditions and purports to care for the Thai people, if they were genuine, would be front and centre in the fight to restore democracy.... yet here you are Thaksin, Thaksin, Thaksin. You're fooling no one but yourself. All is all, Thailand has continued to do well, and household income has increased more rapidly since those terrible conservatives took over. Yes, well, he may have a point. By 'progressive', I think he's looking at the west, where progressives seek to disregard and apologise for their nation's history, suppress the national religion, the subordinate the family unit in favour of the state, erasure traditions, and insist on cultural and class homogeneity that is defined by state edicts. Does that sound familiar? It's attributes of Marxism I outlined earlier, and it's a good thing if people like that are driven out. Nobody should be driven out. Every citizen deserves their say via their vote. Who are the conservatives to oppressively force their views, values and beliefs onto others? Who are the conservatives to deny their fellow citizens of their right to vote? More pertinently, why do Thai conservatives need to deny democracy?

There you go again, using emotional language. Your points might carry more weight if they were made politely, recognising that others don't share your opinion. Opinions are not automatically valid or equal. Opinions are subservient to facts (e.g. you can't have an opinion that 1 + 1 = 5). Should anti-semitic or racist opinions be treated as anything other than deplorable? How should we treat Putin's opinion that Ukraine belongs to Russia? What would a "more developed" Thailand look like? The west? Look at the state the west is in now, with its total breakdown of family, society and culture. People are lonely, angry, divided, and are resorting to hurling insults at each other (like you do) instead of trying to reconcile their differences. I'm glad that Thailand rejects this kind of "progress". A more developed Thailand would be a Thailand with less unnecessary death and suffering and more freedom, for example: developed western countries have an infant morality rate of between 2 and 3 deaths per 1000 live births whilst Thailand is over double that rate at 6.882 (2022), Thailand's poverty rate plummeted under Thaksin's leadership averaging just over 7% annual decreases, since the coups that rate of decrease has more than halved only again rising above 4% under Yingluck's government (“The increase in poverty in 2018 was widespread, occurring in all regions and 61 out of 77 provinces,” the World Bank said in a report last year), Thailand has been downgraded in global rankings from "partly free" to "not free" under the Prayuth regime reversing the previous trend, both political and individual freedoms have been severely curtailed, the suicide rate in Thailand declined by 3.6 per 100,000 under Thaksin but increased by 1.0 per 100,000 under Prayuth, Thailand has the highest income inequality in East Asia (by some measures the world), just look at what has happened since the 2006 coup in the graph below. China's version of Marxism has adapted to the modern world, particularly in its embrace of making money to become more powerful. That said, various core attributes of Leninism-Marxism plainly exist in Chinese society that don't exist in Thai society, such as: the suppression of religion, the deification of political figures, the subordination of the family unit in favour of the state, the erasure of traditions, and the insistence on cultural and class homogeneity that is defined by state edicts. Moreover, business leaders are treated with suspicion in China, and are struck down if they become too powerful, 'bourgeoise' even, like Jack Ma from Ali-baba and others have been. How curious, in order for China to develop it has embraced western practices, technologies and economic policies and as a result seen remarkable progress in a very short period, yet.... you also want to claim the the west is on the verge of collapse and void of morals and decency. Thai conservatism, on the other hand, very much supports religion, encourages a strong family unit, values tradition, holds successful businesspeople in high esteem, and is tolerant of cultural differences. Sure, Thailand keeps its house in order by expelling divisive and crooked oligarchs from its political system, but that's not such a bad thing if it means maintaining Thailand's traditions and social order. The leader of Prayuth's party, UTN was recently in the news for labelling progressive Thais "nation haters" who he will "drive out of the country". What sort of dystopian nightmare are you supporting here? Who rightly gets to dictate a nations values if not its people via democracy. Thailand is one of the most unequal societies in the world - is this something worthy of being maintained or do the Thai people deserve better?

Thailands development has been stunted by anti democracy kleptocrats. If the middle class was growing instead of being under extreme financial pressure then Prayuth would easily win re-election. Why do you think that Prayuth is doing so poorly in the polls? Calling out abhorrent political “opinions” is not ad hominem, it is simply stating facts. Conservative Thais are entitled to their opinion and their vote - they are not entitled to silencing those opposed to them nor denying them their vote. It is you that are confused if you think that China is communist. The CCP is more aptly described as being authoritarian and nationalistic, not surprisingly the same two terms that spring to mind when discussing the current Thai regime and its supporters.

Inequality in Thailand is extreme. The effort required to maintain the status quo, the level of oppression and censorship necessary is unachievable in an open society. The Thai people are not going to accept, for example, the impositions that the CCP enforces on Chinese citizens in order to remain in power. Thais have tasted freedom and experienced real democracy and they want more. Banning public gatherings, arbitrary detention, internet censorship… Thais have had a taste of this sort of nonsense under Prayuth and they resoundingly detest it all. Many Thais have died in the decades old fight against the establishment that deliberately created the extremely unequal and exploitative society - their deaths have not been in vain, victory is nigh. Why do you want Thailand to be ruled as the CCP rule China? Do you really think Thaksin (or Thanathorn) are so evil that condemning a nation of 70 million to the miserable existence that most Chinese are forced to endure is a price worth paying? What is wrong with you?