Thailand - The Plot Thickens

[Thai at Heart]

My comment was regarding how do foreigners influence or alter the current issue with Thaksin and reconciliation? They don't.

Then why did Thaksin hire Robert Amsterdam, a Canadian "lawyer" / lobbyist, to create and spread propaganda?

Because he is quite good at it, and despite his lack of traction in Thailand, Amsterdam courts quite a few bigwigs in the west perhaps?

I'd agree (though despise it), so janetrizzo's statement that foreigners do not influence or alter the current issue with Thaksin and reconciliation does not hold.

Well, that depends very much if you go with the view that there is some conspiracy to enslave all of the economies of the world to a single system.

I have little doubt that one of Thaksin's plans was to liberalise the Thai economy and remove the protection behind which many of the major Thai companies sit today. Whether he was being sponsored to do this or not is speculation, but it raises the very simple question. He had a phone company, he didn't want to find the finance to expand it, he couldn't sell it, so he jigged the law to allow it. Whether his idea was to jig the system to allow his buddies into new markets or open it up to allowing foreign interests is unknown, but either way, he wanted to change the economic status quo and some major "new" money companies went with him, and the older money didn't.

There are dozens of very well established thai companies today that operate behind a veil of protection from petrochemical, to agribusiness, l to construction, to media, to beer who make a very very nice living hiding behind this protection and they weren't going to be dictated to by him. They paid their dues to get this protection a long time ago. He was messing with the very fabric of Thailand's Tatler set, and they don't do international competition, no way, no how.

Ironically, though 2015 with Asean will probably change all that anyway, and unless Thailand gets its house in order, far more international competition is coming their way anyway.