The Military Must Learn To Respect The Law And The Govt: Thailand

[gl555]

F this guy Nitirat. The Army was right to kick out that scumbag Taksin.

The Army has it's mandate, and it's not to respect the govt or crooks who bought their way into positions of power like Taksin, and his red shirt terrorists.

Meaning, they are allowed anything they want and are not to be bothered by democracy or laws or other unneccessary stuff like that!? How do you like Myanmar, by the way?

It's plain naiverty to expect the army to respect the law and 'democracy' when the very same people in the government ignore and subvert it to benefit themselves. When the civilian government learns to respect the law then perhaps the military will too. When you have thugs and thieves like Thaksin, Jatuporn, Arisman, et al in the government, it's nice to have the military watching over the government's shoulder.

[Chris Lawrence]

The Army were dead right to oust Thaksin, Thailand was headed for another Phillipine-like, Marcos dictatorship with Thaksin at the helm.... the only way out was the quiet and silent coup. At that time almost no one in Thailand complained , it was so obvious what Thaksin was up to. It was a coup for the people and for freedom ..... and for "True Democracy"....!

Can you please explain how a coup is democratic. Lots of countries have democracies but they weren't the results of coups they were the reults of elections. A minority stages a coup and that is democracy? geez I would hate to live under your regime. The likes of Burma and many other places around the world were the results of coups, democracies I think not.

I will try. I look at the coup as the ultimate check and balance, used when politicians begin to exploit the democratic system. Thaksin was blatantly corrupting democracy, enacting laws for his own benefit, stacking the police and military with his family members, buying up opposition politicians.

Burma, and other countries that have coups, are military junta dictatorships, Thailand is not. Elections were held in Thailand reasonably quickly after the coup, and Thaksin's party allowed to regain power. That they were caught in electoral fraud and bribery is the risk that they took, and paid the price for.

Is there not a procedure in place in the Thai Parliament to allow for similar to Australia's Double Dissolution? That is democracy.

Ozmick, I don't think you explained it at all. A coup is not democratic; coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either civil or military. A coup d'état succeeds if the usurpers establish their dominance when the incumbent government fails to prevent or successfully resist their consolidation of power. If the coup neither fully fails nor achieves overall success, the attempted coup d'état is likely to lead to a civil war.

[h90]

F this guy Nitirat. The Army was right to kick out that scumbag Taksin.

The Army has it's mandate, and it's not to respect the govt or crooks who bought their way into positions of power like Taksin, and his red shirt terrorists.

Meaning, they are allowed anything they want and are not to be bothered by democracy or laws or other unneccessary stuff like that!? How do you like Myanmar, by the way?

The army saved us from a dictator Thaksin and different than Myanmar gave the power back to the the people.

[OzMick]

The Army were dead right to oust Thaksin, Thailand was headed for another Phillipine-like, Marcos dictatorship with Thaksin at the helm.... the only way out was the quiet and silent coup. At that time almost no one in Thailand complained , it was so obvious what Thaksin was up to. It was a coup for the people and for freedom ..... and for "True Democracy"....!

Can you please explain how a coup is democratic. Lots of countries have democracies but they weren't the results of coups they were the reults of elections. A minority stages a coup and that is democracy? geez I would hate to live under your regime. The likes of Burma and many other places around the world were the results of coups, democracies I think not.

I will try. I look at the coup as the ultimate check and balance, used when politicians begin to exploit the democratic system. Thaksin was blatantly corrupting democracy, enacting laws for his own benefit, stacking the police and military with his family members, buying up opposition politicians.

Burma, and other countries that have coups, are military junta dictatorships, Thailand is not. Elections were held in Thailand reasonably quickly after the coup, and Thaksin's party allowed to regain power. That they were caught in electoral fraud and bribery is the risk that they took, and paid the price for.

Is there not a procedure in place in the Thai Parliament to allow for similar to Australia's Double Dissolution? That is democracy.

Ozmick, I don't think you explained it at all. A coup is not democratic; coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either civil or military. A coup d'état succeeds if the usurpers establish their dominance when the incumbent government fails to prevent or successfully resist their consolidation of power. If the coup neither fully fails nor achieves overall success, the attempted coup d'état is likely to lead to a civil war.

DD? AFAIK, no.

Your definition of a coup doesn't take into account the local circumstances. Here we had a caretaker PM whose mandate had expired, who had resigned but then unilaterally re-instated himself with no constitutional right to do so, who had delayed calling an election well past the due date, and who was using the additional time to consolidate his own dominance by nepotistically advancing his relations and cronies in both the police and military. IMHO that equates to a completely different ballgame than the overthrow of a democratically elected government. You might also want to check who is the CinC of the Thai military.

The likelihood of a civil war was non-existant, in fact the only protest was by a small number of TRT supporters that passed almost unnoticed - at least until Thaksin organised his insurrection crew to protest under the pretext of being anti-coup more than 27 months after the event, and only after his proxy party lost power.

Any comparison of Thai and Oz politics is meaningless given the nature of the politicians and their lack of willingness to perform under the democratic rules. The games that Thaksin played here would have had him thrown from office into a cell in short order if tried in Oz. Could you possibly imagine Keating giving a Food Aid loan to New Guinea with the understanding that they would use it to buy pork from his piggeries?

[OzMick]

F this guy Nitirat. The Army was right to kick out that scumbag Taksin.

The Army has it's mandate, and it's not to respect the govt or crooks who bought their way into positions of power like Taksin, and his red shirt terrorists.

Meaning, they are allowed anything they want and are not to be bothered by democracy or laws or other unneccessary stuff like that!? How do you like Myanmar, by the way?

It's plain naiverty to expect the army to respect the law and 'democracy' when the very same people in the government ignore and subvert it to benefit themselves. When the civilian government learns to respect the law then perhaps the military will too. When you have thugs and thieves like Thaksin, Jatuporn, Arisman, et al in the government, it's nice to have the military watching over the government's shoulder.

Nice? It's bloody essential!

[bendejo]

In the history of modern Thailand the coup has become part of business as usual. This argument was made repeatedly during the post-Thaksin coup when the interim gov't was being denounced by the Western powers for lacking in democracy.

Democracy itself is on the ropes these days anyway. Worldwide, it is being accepted that whoever puts in the most $$ will get the victory, whether into campaign advertisements, influence peddlers, or directly into the hands those casting the votes.