Looks like it’s election season again in the Kingdom for some political office or another. The campaign signs are back, plastered all over the power poles in the sois, so it got me curious.

What actually motivates someone to get into local politics? You spend weeks before an election driving around in the back of a pickup truck plastered with campaign posters featuring your own face, shouting through a megaphone and asking complete strangers to vote for you, all for a job that many candidates seem to have little obvious experience or qualifications for.

Then I started wondering how many of these people are actually well educated, have any education in administration or political science, or have a track record that suggests they’d be good at governing. Maybe some do, but it’s often hard to tell from the campaigns themselves.

And even if they do get elected, what actually happens after that? Do they end up getting anything meaningful done, helping the country in a tangible way, or improving people’s lives? Or do most of them just disappear into the system, collecting brown envelopes, until it’s time to campaign all over again?

In an ideal world, you’d like to think people get into politics because they genuinely want to serve the public and improve their country. But how much of that still exists? At least from the outside, it often looks like politics is more about status, influence, building connections, collecting favors, and moving up the social ladder than it is about public service.

Maybe I’m being too cynical, but that’s the impression I get. I’d be interested to hear from people who know more about Thai politics. Am I missing something, or is that basically how the game works?

IMHO, in every country in the world, no matter whether the politics are leftwing, centre or rightwing, 99.9% of the candididates are 'in it' only for themselves, for the money, the power, the kudos, the connections, the corruption etc. I regard almost ALL politicians as total leaches and I have never had the slightest interest in politics in my whole life....

35 minutes ago, 123Stodg said:

Looks like it’s election season again in the Kingdom for some political office or another. The campaign signs are back, plastered all over the power poles in the sois, so it got me curious.

What actually motivates someone to get into local politics? You spend weeks before an election driving around in the back of a pickup truck plastered with campaign posters featuring your own face, shouting through a megaphone and asking complete strangers to vote for you, all for a job that many candidates seem to have little obvious experience or qualifications for.

Then I started wondering how many of these people are actually well educated, have any education in administration or political science, or have a track record that suggests they’d be good at governing. Maybe some do, but it’s often hard to tell from the campaigns themselves.

And even if they do get elected, what actually happens after that? Do they end up getting anything meaningful done, helping the country in a tangible way, or improving people’s lives? Or do most of them just disappear into the system, collecting brown envelopes, until it’s time to campaign all over again?

In an ideal world, you’d like to think people get into politics because they genuinely want to serve the public and improve their country. But how much of that still exists? At least from the outside, it often looks like politics is more about status, influence, building connections, collecting favors, and moving up the social ladder than it is about public service.

Maybe I’m being too cynical, but that’s the impression I get. I’d be interested to hear from people who know more about Thai politics. Am I missing something, or is that basically how the game works?

Like everything in Thailand " MONEY "