jayboy

Thanks for posting.

Nice audio on the Red Shirt grenade launch.

btw, rixalex... you're not alone in your astonishment.

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No problem. Couple this with the infamous doctored audio recording of Abhisit, along with the fake claims about the army murders beforehand (army supposedly killing soldiers for betraying orders to shoot at red shirts - all proven lies), and it becomes pretty clear the whole campagin was a massive attempt to smear Abhisit, the army, and everybody else with authority who opposed Thaksin.

You can preach to the converted as much as you like, set up straw man arguments (doctored recordings etc), chatter hysterical propaganda but the awkward fact remains Abhisit has a case to answer on the deaths of civilians.In the official enquiries the army has refused to co-operate.To date the HRW report is (shockingly in my view) the only reliable report available but there are still many unanswered questions (including I agree the behaviour of redshirts).Abhisit as much as the army has tried to wriggle out of any kind of accountability.Despite all efforts this issue like this can't be swept away.Ask Mubarak.

What you say is fair enough - but tryng to portray supporting Thaksin or PT as a 'sophicticated' stance is ludicrous.

You misunderstand me.I wasn't suggesting that supporting a particular political position was "sophisticated".I was making a more general point that sophistication can be found in knowledge, context,nuance, willingness to debate as well of course reasoned argument.This obviously covers all political viewpoints.

It's not my own position but there are very compelling counter arguments against PTP and its redshirt supporters, and above all the pernicious influence of Thaksin: unfortunately I hardly ever see them well articulated on this forum.I'm pleased when I do.

Once again you are correct. Thaskin was and is still trying to engineer total power and to scrap the parliamentarian system.

Why would he want to scrap a system which consistently votes in parties aligned to him?

Semantics. The system doesn't vote! The system allows a party to create a situation where an election can result in certain party/parties to be voted in with sufficient direct or cooperative majority to further adjust and manipulate that very same system to ensure that we can rule for twenty years.

Oh dear.Sometimes one is simply embarrassed.

Once again you are correct. Thaskin was and is still trying to engineer total power and to scrap the parliamentarian system.

Why would he want to scrap a system which consistently votes in parties aligned to him?

You may find that 52% was not the true figure and the persistent rumours of vote rigging in Bangkok will not go away. How could a certain, previously most accurate poll for election, get it so wrong in Bangkok and so right in every other part of the country. 7,000,000 extra ballot papers unecessarily printed will fuel this fire. The fact that PT still won has kept this theory very quiet but if there is any truth in the chatter it will be used to put another nail in the coffin of the floundering Dem party. Word in my area is that the rigging was done not to so much gain extra seats but purely to save face by still be able to say " at least the middle classes voted for us".

This rumour is on the back burner but It will not be reported in the popular press, do some research about the inaccuracy of the election exit polls in Bangkok.

I don't buy this.Exit polls are sometimes very wrong even when more sophisticated techniques are applied than is the case in Thailand.International observers saw no irregularities.It may displease many who are politically partisan but the reality is that election polling is generally fair in Thailand.If one dismisses the reactionary dinosaurs who account for Thaksin's popularity by vote buying and "regional mafia bosses", one must also dismiss this kind of report.The PTP actually did rather well in Bangkok in percentage terms but this didn't translate into seats:it happens.

It is so glaringly obvious to me that what I have posted above is close to the truth that I cannot for the life of me understand how other normal and rational human beings (at least those who do not wear religious or political blinkers) cannot see it. Yes glaringly obvious.

You may not understand why others have quite different opinions but in a sense that is your problem.There are a great many deeply knowledgeable people who care as much about truth and morality but who have a radically different perspective - and if I may say so a rather more sophisticated one - from yourself on Thai politics and society.The purpose of a forum like this is ideally to exchange ideas and views, and avoid being narrowly dogmatic.

One would think that Abhisit would be concentrating on a different issue to that which saw his party thumped at the recent election if he were looking to future electoral success. Maybe he isnt looking at that route to power however

Ouch !!!

i don't allow myself to get caught up in this any more. my new attitude is, the thai people voted, they want a convicted felon and his cohorts in power, then like people in all democracies they get the government they deserve.

Perhaps, but regardless of what some people speculate on here, I think you can put some very safe money on a large group of people turning out to oppose any efforts to get Thaksin off "scot-free"

The country is in the hands of crooks serving the agenda of one man and resentment is building.

I have little doubt that the PAD, the yellows, the multicolours (they are all the same) could be mobilised again.It is however now very clear that this grouping initially idealistic but subsequently it seems deteriorating into a ragged mob of Chinese grannies and louts is only allowed off the leash when it suits the elite.We know for certain the PAD activity was deeply disapproved of at the most important elite levels.Anyway the key issue as regards Thaksin is what deal has already been done.If Thaksin breaches the understanding then street protests could be mobilised again.The frustrating thing for us lot is that apart from a tantalising insight from Crispin we don't know the full details, although I think it's clear Thaksin has had a sizeable part of his loot returned.

I haven't the foggiest whether Thaksin will get a pardon conditional or otherwise, but I would have thought it certain if it does materialise it will be "legal".

Insight's last sentence is interesting though muddled.The government is no more full of crooks than the last, less if anything.Yes, there is definitely a reasonable view that Thaksin is the power behind the scenes, hardly a big secret and obviously known when the Thai people gave the present government a comfortable mandate very recently.The 'resentment building' is not that obvious.We know that the elite and its mainly Sino Thai middle class hangers on loathe Thaksin and that won't change.On the whole Yingluck is making a reasonably good start, and has made some astute moves on police and military appointments (and left well alone in some cases).LM monitoring is being ramped up, cutting the ground away from one area of opposition.If the election was held again today, I am sure PTP would improve its position and the Democrats fail further.

Therefore although I don't discount a middle class return to the streets, I suspect it will be if the concordat has broken down and there's no sign of that at the moment.If it does break, then the PADsters will be unleashed again but once they have served their purpose these useful fools will be marginalised (once again).

Avudh (like a whole number of capitulating academics writing in the other newspaper) is just another waffler of the 'on the one hand, on the other hand' shallow political commentators.

They think that their political capitulation dressed up as liberal wish-wash will look good for the positions of respected eminence they crave so much.

Another one pops into Thaksin's pocket. 'Hoowee! Here I am!'

It would be really refreshing if the opponents of Thaksin (the worst of the offenders I think) but also the supporters of Thaksin could summon up the objections they have to any journalist by addressing his arguments rather than cop out with petulant personal abuse.

Not sure what you mean with the "simply not true" bit....as the statement that follows it was never made by anyone in the post you quoted, or in the missing quotes it was in reply to.

It's the omissions as much as the statements that make your (and similar) posts on this subject misleading.

Thanks for the setting the record straight. It's sadly necessary to correct all these misrepresentations and obfuscations as indeed, he initiated it, he supervised it, and he claimed the credit for what was supposedly the complete eradication of all drugs country-wide.

Of course Thaksin was the prime mover and as Prime Minister must take responsibility.However talking of misrepresentation and obfuscation, it's simply not true that Thaksin was not encouraged by some very powerful supporters.The history to this is in fact quite well documented.The urgency to demonise Thaksin for political reasons has obscured the context of the campaign,why it happened when it did , who gave overt support and why there was never a snowball's chance of hell of Thaksin being charged for it.

Chaoyang Re reversal of quotes no harm done.It's easy to do.

By swept into power, you mean he bought a whole bunch of small parties and put them all under his banner. All it really took was a large sum of money. Anyone with the right bank balance could achieve exactly the same result. If the owner of CP decided to go down the same path, but threw more money about than Thaksin, do you really think Thaksin would still win? It's all about the money.

Deposed because of his own actions. It wasn't like he was running the country fairly and well, and suddenly had his legs kicked from under him. Had this happened, there would have been a very different public reaction to the coup. Rather he was messing things up. Like the way he sold his business. He was trampling over rules, trampling over people, and it pissed enough of the wrong people off. He didn't have to do this. He chose to. He wasn't the innocent victim. He was the perpetrator of his own downfall.

then able to engineer a comeback while abroad even with extremely powerful forces arrayed against him. That doesn't mean he was a great administrator.Again, as with his election success, the main force in his favour was his bank balance. It has the power to win pretty much all battles in the end, because there are so few, who can't ultimately, be bought. It's what we are witnessing right now.

Only yesterday you strongly claimed you are not in denial.Yet here you are again in full denial mode.

It's all about money, Thaksin drew a righteous coup down on himself, his bank balance was the reason for the subsequent election victories of Thaksin aligned parties.All the tired old lies and half truths regurgitated ...never a word about the Thai people tiring of the old unelected elites, the flirting with PAD quasi fascism by the Dems, the ethnic stereotyping and contempt for rural people, the grotesque disparity between government spending on the cities and the countryside.

It reminds me of a not quite reformed alcoholic, just one more little drink...it won't hurt.

Chalerm has an LLD, not a PhD, I think - earned in the way it should have been from Ramkhamhaeng University, which is a pretty reasonable one.

Is it reasonable though? A friend once told me, rather unkindly I thought, it was a university for reformed bar girls.

I guess Chalerm wasn't called to the bar though. However since you mentioned reformed bar girls, (some might say, ex prostitutes) then he was in good company, since most politicians, in my opinion, are worse than prostitutes.

People go to prostitutes to get screwed, usually for pleasure; politicians, on the other hand, just screw the people.

I agree and in fact in the context of Thailand I don't even think it's even controversial.

Chalerm has an LLD, not a PhD, I think - earned in the way it should have been from Ramkhamhaeng University, which is a pretty reasonable one.

Is it reasonable though? A friend once told me, rather unkindly I thought, it was a university for reformed bar girls.

Here we go again indeed.... on one of your straw man arguments. Totally misrepresenting my view.

Didn't say that the government didn't really win. They did. Point of contention is when vocabulary like "landslide" or "overwhelming majority", or, as in this case, "an easy cruise to win" is used. A 3% majority is not described, at least not accurately, by any of those terms. What would be accurate to say is that they narrowly won a majority, and did so on the back of a campaign that included a number of blatant lies. Did they deserve to win? Yes, they probably did, because even without those lies, i believe they still would have won more votes than the Dems - just a smaller margin and likely not the slender majority that they ended up with. And speaking of deserving, the Dems in my opinion, certainly did deserve to lose - not because of the way they performed when in power, but because of the way their campaigning was so miserable.

Here's a proposal for you: stop misrepresenting the truth and indulging in exaggeration, and i'll stop correcting you on it. Deal? Would save us both a lot of time.

The government won the election comfortably.Deal with it.

They won a majority of house seats by around 3%. 3% that they may well not have garnered, had they not run a campaign that included a number of blatant bare-faced lies. Doesn't read to me as being a particularly "easy cruise".

And off we sail on another off-topic subject....

Here we go again .... the government didn't really win the last election and even if it scraped a dubious and probably corrupt win, it didn't deserve to.All variations on the deniers' theme

What somersaults of logic the deniers have to subject themselves to.

Might be more productive to consider why the Thai people gave the Democrats, the military and the other unelected elites such a slap round the face..and think about policies that might be more appealing to the country at large.

"Those who find Thaksin unacceptable are a minority in my opinion".

Funniest statement I've seen on TV for many a while!!! Ha Ha Ha!!! Thank you for making me laugh!!

I'm sure nobody would begrudge you a laugh.But since parties allied with Thaksin have just cruised to an easy election victory following a mandate from the Thai people, it's not entirely clear what you find so amusing.

I'm happy to deal with/discuss other possible crimes by Thaksin or by others, on threads pertinent to those matters, of which there are many. The only way in which they would be pertinent to this thread, is if the individuals concerned had fled after being tried and convicted for those alleged crimes. Until that happens, these matters serve no purpose being included in this discussion, besides offering relief to those who find the actual topic too hard to deal with.

I believe this thread is about Chalerm and Thaksin's pardon.I understand why you want to limit discussion but the matters raised (including the potential serious criminal charges against Thaksin's main accusers) are relevant.

Rixalex

"Silly and off topic" you say, when clearly my post was neither.I knew this would be too sensitive for some to deal with rationally.Their problem is that Abhisit and his military cronies have yet to be properly scrutinised for some extremely serious offences (think of Mubarak who is facing rather similar charges), while the offences Thaksin has been charged with are relatively trivial.It's hard for some to deal with.

Actually the drug killings are relevant because I think there's a general consensus these were the worst of Thaksin's abuses.If Thaksin was wanted in the Thai courts for these charges I don't think there would be any question of a pardon.So the question of why thee charges weren't brought against him is a matter of legitimate discussion, and relevant to this thread.

If you wish us to sit down and lament all the crimes that have possibly been committed but yet to be tried, we will be here all day. Not sure where it will get us however.

All the crimes? No, just the one - the murder of civilians on the streets of Bangkok.

I know it's not a popular subject but I have a feeling it can't be wished away.And whatever Buchholz says it's directly relevant to this thread given that Abhisit is leading the charge against Thaksin's pardon.

[quote name='scorecard' timestamp='1315547200' post='4684729'

And please let's not regurgitate the old story about 'other people are also corrupt'.

I'm not talking about corruption.I'm talking about more serious crimes (which as previously noted are far from proven).

To get a pardon, you first need accept responsibility and repent for your crimes. If Thaksin doesn't admit to any wrongdoing and serve at least a day in jail then how can a pardon be granted to someone who doesn't admit any wrongdoing?

It's a fair point.Nevertheless we know from Wikileaks and elsewhere that the charges against Thaksin had political motivation behind them (that's different from saying there were was no substance to the charges, though they were relatively trivial by Thai standards).What makes this rather contentious that those in the lead (particularly Abhisit and Prayuth) in pursuing Thaksin to the prison cell may have committed prima facie much more serious crimes for which they have not yet been charged.They may indeed be wholly innocent but we don't know because there has been no resolution to the Inquiry, and the army has refused to co-operate.In an ideal world these more serious charges would be cleared up first.

If he comes back a free man, mark my words, Thailand will not have free and fair elections again.

Why should Thaksin have a problem with free and fair elections since the parties he's associated with are able to win them so comfortably?

Historically, people who go to the lengths Thaksin has gone through to obtain power never seem to keep hold of it legitimately. It's not as if "being legitimate" is something this man prides himself on so far.

And to many Thais the man is utterly unacceptable.

I'm not sure that makes much sense.If one can win power legitimately why should one want it illegitimately? It's more of an issue for Thaksin's opponents with their coups, judicial interventions and failure to win popular support.

We know that many Thais find Thaksin unacceptable but that doesn't give them a veto power.In essence that's what the political struggle is about.

If he comes back a free man, mark my words, Thailand will not have free and fair elections again.

Why should Thaksin have a problem with free and fair elections since the parties he's associated with are able to win them so comfortably?