No Sign Of Any Leadership Quality From Yingluck

[ballpoint]

Yeah Jinthing ,Thaksin and his mega rich cronies are far from the "working class hero's" that they would try and hoodwink these up here in Issan into believing .

true, and what's sad is they are still more in touch with the working class people than the democrats

what credible choices do the working class have?

Are you trying to tell us there are no working class people in the South? After all, they overwhemingly vote Democrat, so the South must be a magical place where everyone is "elite", and nobody is poor. Until the commentators and journalists acknowledge that each party has its own "power region", and each of these regions contain a microcosm of Thailand as a whole, with some rich, some middle class and many poor, the whole rich elite vs poor working class argument is just so much drivel. What the TRT did was to offer incentives to the parties holding sway in the North and Northeast, including the single biggest party at the time, the NAP, to merge with them. Its recent incarnations have traded on that. Ask yourself why the poor in the South don't see Thaksin as their saviour in the same way that those in the Northeast do? It's all in the selling of the myth. It suits the local power brokers in the Northeast to talk up Thaksin and talk down the Democrats. In fact, when you look at the actual figures, the TRT government spent only a third on the Northeast of what it did on the North, Central and Southern regions (as reported by the World Bank). Surely if it were simply a rich/poor struggle (and I'm not claiming that there is none of that at all, just that it's been wrongly sold by the PTP/reds as the only cause of the current conflict), then the poor of the Northeast should be the ones complaining. The perception is there, but the facts don't support it.

[nurofiend]

Yeah Jinthing ,Thaksin and his mega rich cronies are far from the "working class hero's" that they would try and hoodwink these up here in Issan into believing .

true, and what's sad is they are still more in touch with the working class people than the democrats

what credible choices do the working class have?

Are you trying to tell us there are no working class people in the South? After all, they overwhemingly vote Democrat, so the South must be a magical place where everyone is "elite", and nobody is poor. Until the commentators and journalists acknowledge that each party has its own "power region", and each of these regions contain a microcosm of Thailand as a whole, with some rich, some middle class and many poor, the whole rich elite vs poor working class argument is just so much drivel. What the TRT did was to offer incentives to the parties holding sway in the North and Northeast, including the single biggest party at the time, the NAP, to merge with them. Its recent incarnations have traded on that. Ask yourself why the poor in the South don't see Thaksin as their saviour in the same way that those in the Northeast do? It's all in the selling of the myth. It suits the local power brokers in the Northeast to talk up Thaksin and talk down the Democrats. In fact, when you look at the actual figures, the TRT government spent only a third on the Northeast of what it did on the North, Central and Southern regions (as reported by the World Bank). Surely if it were simply a rich/poor struggle (and I'm not claiming that there is none of that at all, just that it's been wrongly sold by the PTP/reds as the only cause of the current conflict), then the poor of the Northeast should be the ones complaining. The perception is there, but the facts don't support it.

hang on a sec, my mouth is full from the words you put in it

i think the working class are played by both sides.....hence my point

i said i think the PTP are more in touch with the working class because of their strong affiliation to the UDD....i'm not here to argue for the sincerity of this affiliation either

[kraplung]

This Shinawatra government really does need one of those sound effects machines on TV. How is the electorate supposed to know when to take them seriously otherwise?

[GazR]

I'm afraid this is all starting to look like part of the planned scheme.

As we know, culturally, Southeast Asians have a tendency to prefer STRONG leaders.

Yingluck is as blatant a cipher as any fiction writer could make up.

Of course, many (not all) voted for her deliberately to act for Thaksin.

But it is now looking as if she is simply not even competent enough to pull off an ACT of being her own person, which could have worked to balance the desires of both those who want him back to lead and those who will likely riot if he does.

So, I reckon the plan is that there will be stronger and stronger pressure to bring back Thaksin, to fill a power vacuum. A leader who isn't really there. A power vacuum is damaging for any country, and it will be easier to push Thaksin coming supported by that new political reality.

He's very clever, isn't he?

Yes - very clever, but never the cleverest, which is why he isn't PM.

But perhaps the most dangerous: I wonder how long it will be until Thaksin again orders government-sanctioned extrajudicial killings and the 'disappearing' of alledged 'troublemakers'?

Well, you know what they say - 'What goes around comes around.' 'Nufsaid?