Yingluck losing popularity to Abhisit

[jdinasia]

Pedro .... how many constituencies currently have more than 2 parties contesting them with any chance of winning?

edit,

of those how many are passing out cash so visibly in front of a polling place?

of those how many are not getting the basic details of the voter?

Edited November 11, 2013 by jdinasia

[tingtongfarang]

One solution is for the election committee to step up to the plate and do what they were put in place to do. To see any election as a true democratic process. The best way to do that is for any vote buying from any party should nullify the election result and the offending party/parties to be suspended from the ballot.

That is what would happen in a mature democratic country as we have in the western countries.

This vote buying sham is in full view, and there are no secrets made about it. So what the hell do Thailand have with an election committee if they just so dysfunctional they led this sort of thing slide.

I would be very interested to see which way the vote went if there were no possibility of vote buying. Because that is ballot rigging at its very best.

dont forget that in a true democracy the moment votes are bought or sold democracy is out the window, who said democracy is not my aim?

[AleG]

To all you cynics that think that 500 baht really buys a vote. You are more stupid than the people handing out the money. Almost all candidates hand out cash. If you were Thai and someone offered you 500 baht you'd take it and tell them what 'THEY' want to hear, meanwhile waiting for the next idiot to come along. The only candidates that didn't have to hand out money in my area were the Taksin candidates, they didn't need to buy votes, they already had them. My wife picked up 1500 whilst sitting outside the polling station waiting for pal to vote at the recent Amphur elections, my wife had already voted <deleted>. I sat and watched as many as five different agents give the mother-in-law money, I asked if any of this would influence her voting intentions. The answer simply 'Bor'. The people of Isaan are no different to the politicians, they'll take what they can get, the difference is that for a politician it costs a lot more to get there and when they do, they'll take a lot more.

A story not credible on so many levels........

Are you kidding?

I know quite a few Isaan voters and they all take the money and then go and vote for whoever they like. Apart from a few cases of open voting booths a while back, what exactly forces them to vote for the highest bidder?

what exactly forces them to vote for the highest bidder?

There are other "incentives" besides money. After the last election my GF's father, a poo yai, had to go into hiding for a while because he couldn't deliver the village to the correct party and was warned a hitman was after him.

[Frank James]

Until Mr T starts handing out vote funds again that is .....

I agree! All these Thai people protesting about the amnesty bill and who should I vote for and so on. All the complaining will stop at election time when the winner will be who hands out the most money to the voters to buy their vote. I don't feel sorry for the Thai people in this respect. They were actually bought by the winning party so deal with it! Thai politics is never about the issues but always about money. How can Yingluck call this a democracy. Socialism working at its best,

Sent from my iPad using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

First it is not "the Thai people". Some votes can be bought, but the honest suffer the same under this government. It is not that all Thai people are selling their votes.

And it has nothing to do with Socialism. I am no friend of Socialism, but the ideology is based on helping people and distribute wealth equal to everyone. (Basically from the wealthy to the poor)

Here it is the opposite, distribute the money from the people to one or few rich families.

That is just greed dictatorship with some very thin socialist painting on it.

True Socialists would try to nationalize or at least tax the rich Shin companies.

Thank you, h90, for correcting the previous poster about this government being "socialist". Is is an oligarchy, replacing or supplanting a long series of previous oligarchies, and will be replaced by another crew of toadies, doing the business of the Very Few. If a truly socialist government ever came to power here...no it's not a possibility, useless to speculate how it might be.

I get highly annoyed when people call Barack Obama a "socialist". If only that were true! Then Americans would have a single payer, national health plan, instead of this monstrosity created by the insurance industry. Like G.W. Bush before him, he does the bidding of those few who really run the world.

[tingtongteesood]

They should make the comedian Udom Taepanit PM !

[Emptyset]

To all you cynics that think that 500 baht really buys a vote. You are more stupid than the people handing out the money. Almost all candidates hand out cash. If you were Thai and someone offered you 500 baht you'd take it and tell them what 'THEY' want to hear, meanwhile waiting for the next idiot to come along. The only candidates that didn't have to hand out money in my area were the Taksin candidates, they didn't need to buy votes, they already had them. My wife picked up 1500 whilst sitting outside the polling station waiting for pal to vote at the recent Amphur elections, my wife had already voted <deleted>. I sat and watched as many as five different agents give the mother-in-law money, I asked if any of this would influence her voting intentions. The answer simply 'Bor'. The people of Isaan are no different to the politicians, they'll take what they can get, the difference is that for a politician it costs a lot more to get there and when they do, they'll take a lot more.

A story not credible on so many levels........

Why is it not credible? Heard more or less the same story from many Thais and academics who've studied it suggest vote buying is far less effective than it was in the early 90s. Such a story wouldn't surprise Korn Chatikavanij either:

'“If a candidate today in Loei runs under the Democrat banner for him to try to win he would need to spend two or three times more than his PPP opponent in order to win and even then he still might lose.

This is exactly what happened in the last election. A number of the old TRT MPs in the Northeast defected to the new party Puea Paendin and “they outspent PPP three to one and they still lost”. This goes along way to confirming what Chris said, but money is no longer determinative of your success. What Thaksin did was to make that connection and make it directly relevant to his target group. We are less afraid to compete against vote-buying than the buying of MPs. I still believe at the end of the day that if you sold your vote it is still your decision in the ballot box. However, it would be very ineffective for the Democrats to buy a Northeastern MP. Simply at the end of the day we cannot go against the will of the people and no amount of money will help.'

http://asiancorrespondent.com/59728/mysterious-political-party-and-effectiveness-of-vote-buying/

[beautifulthailand99]

They should do the decent thing and tie the knot ...............................................around each other's throats and pull at the same time.

[jdinasia]

@ Emptyset ... see post 61

[gp2002]

That's because the people that vote for Yingluck don't have phones, so they couldn't be contacted. They are waiting for the next round of voting funds to be issued by Thaksin.

[smileydude]

Dissolve the house and hold new elections.

The results will show us how much popularity the Shin Clan really lost.

[hansnl]

Until Mr T starts handing out vote funds again that is .....

I agree! All these Thai people protesting about the amnesty bill and who should I vote for and so on. All the complaining will stop at election time when the winner will be who hands out the most money to the voters to buy their vote. I don't feel sorry for the Thai people in this respect. They were actually bought by the winning party so deal with it! Thai politics is never about the issues but always about money. How can Yingluck call this a democracy. Socialism working at its best,

Sent from my iPad using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

First it is not "the Thai people". Some votes can be bought, but the honest suffer the same under this government. It is not that all Thai people are selling their votes.

And it has nothing to do with Socialism. I am no friend of Socialism, but the ideology is based on helping people and distribute wealth equal to everyone. (Basically from the wealthy to the poor)

Here it is the opposite, distribute the money from the people to one or few rich families.

That is just greed dictatorship with some very thin socialist painting on it.

True Socialists would try to nationalize or at least tax the rich Shin companies.

True socialists?

There are socialists.

And there are socialists.

And then there are other socialists.

You are not, as you say, a friend of socialism.

Which one?

Your ideas, as written above, about socialism are rather, ehhhh, communistic?

Socialism, pure, is making politics so that every man, woman and child has equal chances.

And distributing rich people's capital to poor people is definitely NOT a socialist credo.

The other way around, all the money from the poor people to the rich people, how do you call that?

[wolf5370]

This is just a temporary blip. If PTP decide to dissolve the House and hold new elections, PTP will win again, but maybe with a much smaller majority.

Which will have the same effect.

I agree. There is though the possibility of a Red Shirt split - especially if someone with some charisma can be found from within the pre-change (mostly educated) part of the party, as opposed to the fundamentalist free-Thaksin (farmer/worker) part - that may well attract people from other party lines too (and would be a good think IMO). It would certainly shake up the old guard (juxtaposition of elites that has been every election since constitutional monarchy was instigated here).

[wolf5370]

Until Mr T starts handing out vote funds again that is .....

I agree! All these Thai people protesting about the amnesty bill and who should I vote for and so on. All the complaining will stop at election time when the winner will be who hands out the most money to the voters to buy their vote. I don't feel sorry for the Thai people in this respect. They were actually bought by the winning party so deal with it! Thai politics is never about the issues but always about money. How can Yingluck call this a democracy. Socialism working at its best,

Sent from my iPad using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

First it is not "the Thai people". Some votes can be bought, but the honest suffer the same under this government. It is not that all Thai people are selling their votes.

And it has nothing to do with Socialism. I am no friend of Socialism, but the ideology is based on helping people and distribute wealth equal to everyone. (Basically from the wealthy to the poor)

Here it is the opposite, distribute the money from the people to one or few rich families.

That is just greed dictatorship with some very thin socialist painting on it.

True Socialists would try to nationalize or at least tax the rich Shin companies.

True socialists?

There are socialists.

And there are socialists.

And then there are other socialists.

You are not, as you say, a friend of socialism.

Which one?

Your ideas, as written above, about socialism are rather, ehhhh, communistic?

Socialism, pure, is making politics so that every man, woman and child has equal chances.

And distributing rich people's capital to poor people is definitely NOT a socialist credo.

The other way around, all the money from the poor people to the rich people, how do you call that?

To my knowledge there has never been a truly socialist government anywhere, ever. Stalin forced out Trotsky (and Lenin was hardly the perfect socialist either) - Marx 's The Communist Manifesto was never adhered to by anyone, there was always the elites/the haves and have nots. Thailand will likely never be communist (let alone Marxist) as the people and the state is too engrossed in materialism and the USA (etc) too much of a vested interest in keeping it as is - China too these days would prefer a materialistic state to push products through (get around EU country import limits etc) than a communist one (they have never really got along with other communist states!).