Who Is To Is To Blame For The Problems Of Thai Society And Who Should Be The One To Fix It?

[chadintheusa]

Thaksin is great, you can blame everything on him, it is quick easy and u dont have to think.

When in doubt, blame it on Thaksin

When you think about it Thaksin and his money are at the root of it, sure there are other problems but without him the current situation wouldn't have any momentum.

[RussellHantz]

Thaksin is great, you can blame everything on him, it is quick easy and u dont have to think.

When in doubt, blame it on Thaksin

When you think about it Thaksin and his money are at the root of it, sure there are other problems but without him the current situation wouldn't have any momentum.

Very true. And do you know that Thaksin is solely responsible for all of the greenhouse gases in the world as well ? he is

[Soutpeel]

Thaksin is great, you can blame everything on him, it is quick easy and u dont have to think.

When in doubt, blame it on Thaksin

When you think about it Thaksin and his money are at the root of it, sure there are other problems but without him the current situation wouldn't have any momentum.

Very true. And do you know that Thaksin is solely responsible for all of the greenhouse gases in the world as well ? he is

Of course....because he spouts so much hot air....

[quiksilva]

Thaksin is great, you can blame everything on him, it is quick easy and u dont have to think.

When in doubt, blame it on Thaksin

When you think about it Thaksin and his money are at the root of it, sure there are other problems but without him the current situation wouldn't have any momentum.

Very true. And do you know that Thaksin is solely responsible for all of the greenhouse gases in the world as well ? he is

Certainly the poor treatment of the rural and impoverished population goes back way further than his tenure in power, in fact these issues go back to age immemorial and should certainly have been addressed much longer ago. However as much as those changes were and indeed are still needed, those issues did not cause the current upheaval (although they have been useful pressure points for the manipulators).

The truth is Thaksin's abuses of power are the significant underlying factor for the current troubles. Most decent free thinkers will agree that he had to go, but he should never have been removed via a coup.

The opposition should have done a much better job at taking their fight to the ballot boxes, they should have put more money and time into promoting their policies (which have done more for the very same disaffected than any other party), but they didn't, and in some respects it was not for lack of funds or political will it was because their hands were tied, by Thaksin who had corrupted independent bodies, bullied the press and removed checks and balances.

Thailand was looking very much like we were going to have a Singaporean style "democracy", with Thaksin at the helm.

[scorecard]

I suggest building a list of 'who', or even a list of 'what' is close to impossible. There's obviously a multitude of factors - a puzzle of factors.

I agree that education in one of the causes - just one of the many factors in the puzzle.

Another factor (just one), I would suggest is that Thai people at large have passively accepted since 1932 the gangs of thieves and leeches under the label of 'politicians'. None of these gangs have done anything very constructive to build Thailand into a modern highly productive, highly capable civil society.

Why, because these so called 'politicians' had no intention whatever of building Thailand, there intent was just raping the coffers and manipulating whoever they needed to manipulate to ensure access to the coffers was open and easy.

And over time this has also generated a thug mentality, which again, Thai society has passively accepted, and which has done untold damage to application of the law, and untold damage to equal justice. We're not there yet, but if this got worse then a lawless society would start to evolve (like in some provinces of the Phillipines).

Where does this passive approach come from, well again lots of factors but one factor is the strongly hierachical / status society. And let's not forget another twist, all Thais would love to be seen as 'high class'. And remeber that 'high class, does not automatically mean Bangkok people only.

Another factor which has unfortunately developed (just one factor in the puzzle) is that some of the 'high class' have an attitude that they are entitled to more, that they are special.

And yet another twist is that the highly corrupt 'politicians' see themselves as 'high class'.

Perhaps another factor is that because a solid democracy has not yet developed, the military have continued to play a dominant role, whereas if a stronger democracy had developed decades ago, then perhaps the military would today look similar, in terms of it's role, to many other societies which have strong democracy.

Another way to look at this is that in some instances the military has continued to play a 'watchdog' role. And of course in some instances the military has tried to play a dictator role.

And it's arguable that if there was a solid democracy in place, the military would not have needed to play a watchdog role, and would not have been able to play a dictator role.

And of course there's lots more factors.

But there's another angle - out of all of this what are the key learning points. Perhaps some (just some) of the learning points would be:

- The need to rework the constitution so that one man can never (NEVER) gain unchallengable power, and can never (NEVER) render ineffective / gain control of the balance processses and mechanisms.

- The need to rework the constitution so that all parties must have a solid, specific, detailed manifesto, and at election time the leaders in the capital and the candidates in the provinces would be required to take part in public debates, including a process whereby the public could send in anonymous questions which must be answered on stage.

- Rework the Electoral regulations so that vote buying has much more serious punishments, even jail even for small infractions, massive fines, and ban for life.

- Change the election laws so that jumping across parties is a lot more difficult and subject to public scrutiny in terms of manifesto.

- In terms of stopping vote buying I suggest there's a number of other very salient / critical points:

1. Until there a requirement for a manifesto and debate, and there is much stronger punishment for vote buying, then the current incapable, insincere, dishonest leeches and thugs (the 'politicians') are going to continue to rape the country and intimidate / manipulate anybody they need to and get away with it, also continuing to do massive damage to justice (equal justice), and let's be honest, they are not going to let go without a strong fight, even bloodshed.

2. Until the above changes, the capable and sincere people who really want to contribute (and there are many of them) will continue to just stay at home, because they will never join the current parties of leeches & thieves, they won't allow themselves to be associated with these dishonest and incapale gangs.

3. And I would suggest further that if we had highly capable and sincere people filling the roles of 'politicians' we would quickly see a much more equitable society with an overall higher standard of living for all, equal justice, better spread of the common wealth of Thailand, massive changes in the methodology and therefore the quality of education leading to better opportunities for all, etc.

- Rework the police so that they are accountable to the public, rather than accountable to their own brotherhood. Install accountability, promotion by displayed capability and displayed high performance, and recruit much more capable people. Punish corruption very severely. Increase salaries to an appropriate level for the required accounyability and the knowledge and skills needed for the required outputs.

- Rework the civil service / the ministries, etc., same as the reforms needed for the police.

Until most of the above is tackled seriously (and more), nothing will change.

However I have a little bit of good news. Just recently my university held interviews for the students who are trying for freshie places. Each interview was quite long and the candidates were asked quite diverse and serious questions.

Many were asked "What would you like to contribute to Thailand?"

Many answered instantly "Stop corruption".

Edited April 19, 2010 by scorecard

[britmaveric]

I know the answer to this question but unfortunately the choice is not included in the poll

Agree.

Agree too

Ditto....

[BigWheelMan]

It`s us, the foreigners who are to blame for all of Thailand`s problems. Read the Thai news reports, or ask any Thai, most crimes against the country are committed by us nasty Farangs.

So it should be us that must right the wrongs we have done.

Why don`t we begin by paying treble prices for everything, instead of the usual double as we do now?

[Chunky1]

Whomever came up with the idea for the PAD is majorly responsible. What a terrible, terrible strategy that didn't even work. They took power away from an elected government twice expecting to magically have been able to do better in the forthcoming elections... Surprise, nothing changed!... It took, no surprise here, third parties to change to the Democrats side. Why didn't they just do that from the beginning? They could have avoided all of this nonsense if they just got Newin on board in 2006. There would have been no precedent for what is going on now! We now have this perpetual state of anarchy. Move it along peoples!

Edited April 19, 2010 by Chunky1

[tso310]

It`s us, the foreigners who are to blame for all of Thailand`s problems. Read the Thai news reports, or ask any Thai, most crimes against the country are committed by us nasty Farangs.

So it should be us that must right the wrongs we have done.

Why don`t we begin by paying treble prices for everything, instead of the usual double as we do now?

Can't disagree with Thai logic.

[321niti123]

I know I'm simplifying the issue, but I've seen so many people blame one group or person for the problems of thailand and i just want to know where the people in this forum stand.

[Loz]

Howabout this:

Thaksin puts his faith in the people of THailand like they put their faith in him.

He returns and atones for his crimes at least until such time that those valiant fighters for his freedom can win control of the government by legitimate means and if they see fit, set him free. Then he would have a more legitimate platform as one of the law abiding people of thailand willing to trust in the goodness of the majority of politically active thais.

Thaksin's No sacrifice policy is a big part of his undoing in my view. Give a little, get a little.

[Huey]

Howabout this:

Thaksin puts his faith in the people of THailand like they put their faith in him.

He returns and atones for his crimes at least until such time that those valiant fighters for his freedom can win control of the government by legitimate means and if they see fit, set him free. Then he would have a more legitimate platform as one of the law abiding people of thailand willing to trust in the goodness of the majority of politically active thais.

Thaksin's No sacrifice policy is a big part of his undoing in my view. Give a little, get a little.

Exactly, he's a spineless user ready to let his minion's bleed while he stays on foreign soil too good to come back and lead from the front.

[321niti123]

Im really surprised that only 7(including me) people voted that all peace loving thais should help fix this problem. Thailand is everyones home land and we should work together not against each other to overcome its problems, and we should do all we can to help it not only wait for the government to fix everything. Thats just my opinion anyways.