Redshirts Parade In Support Of Feb 2 Election

[Ricardo]

At the end of the day, I'd trust the Dems\Suthep with the Thai economy more than I'd trust a party that has blown in excess of 10 billion US Dollars in 1 year on a sketchy rice scheme designed to keep votes coming in from the paddy fields, it's like throwing sacks of candy to kids regardless of the consequences to their (read economy) health.

Sorry, it's a bit pedantic, but ...

It's 360++ billion THB in TWO years, pledging started October, 2011. not saying that that makes is any better though

The 360 ++ billion figure you are using is the Dems number, the current administration says around 120 billion baht per year or 4 billion USD per year totaling 8 billion USD in 2 years, these are recent figures from the IMF, I imagine the true number is somewhere inbetween.

The whole scheme was to try and control the worlds rice prices and to help 4.5 million poor farmers get more money in there pockets to improve there lives. Thailand has always been one of the worlds leading exporters of Rice and this is not an unusual practice many countries do the same thing with there comodities, China with copper, currently Indonesia with Tin, oil in the middle east etc etc.

Just a few points :

1. Much of the money has gone to the millers & other middle-men, not the poor farmers or UDD-supporters, as under the Dems' less-costly but less-vote-winning alternative. Some of the G2G-deals are spurious, others are via middle-man companies apparently created for the purpose, to skim-off further corruption.

2. All of Thailand's poor have to pay more for their staple rice, only the farmers & middle-men see any benefit, no wonder that inflation had risen.

3. Thailand was previously the world's number-1 exporter, but has now slipped to number-3. Will that ever be recovered ?

4. Sensible countries, wishing to run some sort of producer price-support scheme, consult with other leading producers, they don't blindly go it alone !

5. None of the previous-government's numbers really add up, too many versions of them floating around, in a deliberate attempt to cover-up the true losses on the scheme. Refusal even to tell the taxpayers what selling-prices are achieved, when their rice is sold, is highly-suspicious, not 'commercial-confidentiality' as claimed.

6. The true scale of the disaster isn't yet clear, noboby yet knows how many millions-of-tons of rice will rot in the warehouses, and cost even more to dump, or how much rice is 'paper-rice' & never actually existed, or how world-prices will be depressed longer-term by the large unsold-stock now built-up.

Whichever government is formed, after the election, will have to pick up the pieces from this mess, and repay BAAC & its government-backed bonds.

[ianf]

"The Redshirts have vowed to fight the rebels and underlings of the ammart (feudal elite), in order to eradicate them from the Thai society,"

That is exactly what the Yellow leaders want. They want to bring back the old feudal lord system, Bangkok ruling over "pesky" peasants and those peasants just bowing deeply and keeping their mouths shut.

Utter infantile nonsense.

[Skywalker69]

They are only parading in celebration of a 500 baht payday for all.

I have news for them. There won't be any election on Feb 2nd, well not with any opposition anyway, and that means no need to pay for a vote.

http://asiancorrespondent.com/116697/vote-buying-thaksin-and-the-democrats/

Read, then try again.

Your point exactly?

There will be ZERO VOTE BUYING!!!.... get it in your head.

Wow! You start to sound like your hero Mr. S. Good work!

Wow! You start to sound like your hero Mr. T.S. Good work!

[LuckyLew]

"The Redshirts have vowed to fight the rebels and underlings of the ammart (feudal elite), in order to eradicate them from the Thai society,"

That is exactly what the Yellow leaders want. They want to bring back the old feudal lord system, Bangkok ruling over "pesky" peasants and those peasants just bowing deeply and keeping their mouths shut.

Thailand has just spent the last few years being ruled by the rich and wealthy ...

Only difference is these rich and wealthy are taking more and more from Thai coffers and the expense of the poor

Give a man 500 baht and he can eat for a day

Give a man an education and he can learn to earn

Keep a man uneducated and he will keep voting for you for 500 baht

[pomchop]

There is always two sides to every story. The reason the poor support Taksin just MIGHT have something to do with the fact that under Taksin their lives improved. Hate Taksin all you want but the economic numbers under him are pretty impressive.

between 2001 and the coup that overthrew him in 2006, GDP grew by 30 percent, public sector debt fell from 57 per cent of GDP to 41 per cent, and foreign exchange reserves doubled. He even managed to balance the budget.

Income in the northeast, the poorest part of the country, rose by 41 percent. Poverty nationwide dropped from 21 percent to 11 percent

BANGKOK – It has gone quiet in Bangkok, as the people who have been trying to overthrow the government tidy up the debris that litters the city after the last two weeks of demonstrations.

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra is taking an equally low-key approach. The Thai Army has removed the barbed wire that surrounded government offices, and protesters are wandering through the prime minister’s offices and picnicking on the lawns while she runs the affairs of state from some other location in the capital. But by next week the Civil Movement for Democracy will be back in action, and the final outcome is not clear.

The main thing that distinguishes the Civil Movement for Democracy is its profound dislike for democracy. In the mass demonstrations that have shaken Thailand since Nov. 24, its supporters have been trying to remove a prime minister who was elected only two years ago — and their goal is not another election.

“We don’t want new elections because we will lose anyway,” one protester told Reuters. “We want (the prime minister’s family) to leave the country.”

If they succeeded in driving Yingluck from power, they would skip the whole business of elections and hand the country over to an appointed “People’s Council” made up of “good men.”

These good men would naturally agree with protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban that the majority of the Thai people are too ignorant and flighty to be trusted with the vote. “From a Western point of view, “democracy” is an elected government serving as the people’s representative,” he told The Guardian. “Unfortunately, elections in Thailand do not represent people’s (real) choices because their votes are bought.”

They are “bought” not by bribes but by government spending on free health care and anti-poverty programs. In most democracies this is seen as part of the normal political process, but Suthep and his supporters, who include a high proportion of the country’s professional and middle classes, especially in the capital, regard it as illegitimate.

The current government has destroyed “the virtues and ethics of the people,” Suthep says, but with time and hard work the unelected People’s Council could make them moral again and “put the country on the path to perfect democracy.” We can even imagine that the poor might eventually become enlightened enough to be trusted with the vote again.

There is a conflict between the interests of the rich and the poor in most countries. In democracies it normally plays out in the electoral competition of right- and left-wing parties, and some compromise (always temporary and contentious) is arrived at via the ballot box. But in Thailand, the rich take to the streets.

They do so because they always lose the elections. In five elections since 2001, the winner every time has been Thaksin Shinawatra or somebody chosen by him. Thaksin is a man of humble origins who built the country’s largest mobile phone provider and then went into politics. He proved to be unbeatable.

His record in power has not been above reproach. He was careless of human rights, particularly in his war on drug dealers (he used death squads), and his family fortune benefited to some degree from his influence on government policy. But he wasn’t really in it for the money — he was already mega-rich before he went into politics — and he knew exactly what the poor needed. To the horror of relatively wealthy Bangkok and the south, he gave it to them.

He set up programs like village-managed micro-credit development funds and low-interest agricultural loans. He created a universal health care system and provided low-cost access to anti-HIV medications.

Yet between 2001 and the coup that overthrew him in 2006, GDP grew by 30 percent, public sector debt fell from 57 per cent of GDP to 41 per cent, and foreign exchange reserves doubled. He even managed to balance the budget.

Income in the northeast, the poorest part of the country, rose by 41 percent. Poverty nationwide dropped from 21 percent to 11 percent, and the prevalence of HIV/AIDS declined. Thaksin even allowed the 2.3 million migrant workers in the country to register and qualify for health coverage.

From the point of view of the opposition Democratic Party, all this was just “buying the people’s votes.” When Thaksin won the 2005 election with an increased majority, it conspired with the military to overthrow him. He was then tried on corruption charges, but fled the country before the inevitable verdict and has since lived in exile, mostly in Dubai. But his party, reformed and renamed, goes on winning every time there is an election.

That’s why his 46-year-old sister is now the prime minister. She probably does do what he says most of the time, but there’s no crime in that: The voters who put her there were really voting for Thaksin. And if the current insurrection in Bangkok overthrows her, they will vote for whoever else represents Thaksin next time there is an election. The right in Thailand should really grow up and get over it.

by Gwynne Dyer

[tingtongteesood]

They are only parading in celebration of a 500 baht payday for all.

I have news for them. There won't be any election on Feb 2nd, well not with any opposition anyway, and that means no need to pay for a vote.

http://asiancorrespondent.com/116697/vote-buying-thaksin-and-the-democrats/

Read, then try again.

I don't know about other areas, but I do know this, our neighbors and many people we know, in Chiang Dao, (Chiang Mai Province) were offered 500 Baht per day, by the Reds, to come and protest in Bangkok. To the best of my knowledge, I never heard of Democrats or anyone affiliated with Democrats or Yellow shirts, offering money up here.

I also know, that people were paid 800 Baht each, by the Reds, to vote Red in the Municipal Election, in Chiang Mai, recently. To be fair, there were rumors, that the Dems offered 600 Baht per vote in Chiang Mai, for the Municipal Elections, too, but the 800 Baht from Reds, is for sure, because I know the person who paid it out, in one area.

So anyone out there, who thinks that vote buying is a myth, has no idea about the reality in Thailand.

The United Nations offered to bring in people to supervise the elections, after the coup, but Thailand refused. There has been absolutely no legitimacy to so-called Thai Democracy.

Democracy here, is a farce.

A lot of people, in this Country, have no problem, standing there, waiting for a free handout, not realizing, that nothing is free and that somebody has to work and pay taxes, so they can get their Government handouts. (As little as that may seem, because most of it, lands in the pockets of the rich anyways)

If you "never heard of democrats or anyone affiliated with democrats or yellow shirts offering money", then you clearly didn´t read the article. If you had read it you would have, to your amazment no doubt, found that the democrat confesses that the democrat party even spent more money on vote buying, than the reds.

Yes, I agree, democracy is a total farce in Thailand!

My point was that so many Suthep fanbois loves to use the vote buying-argument, but in fact, as most people are aware of by now, vote buying is a method used by the whole political spectrum in Thailand.

Vote buying is part of the problem as poor uneducated people don't understand economics and they don't understand that the government is doing bad things to make itself look good to some people at the expense of the country aand have no fiscal responsibility. However much you try to explain things, some will never get it and some just don't care. It is a problem.

More of a problem is the 'electoral fraud' that Thaksin's parties have been banned for 3 times. Thaksin and cronies will never win a 'clean election' but he would never allow them to take part in one either....AND THERE'S YOUR PROBLEM !

[kingalfred]

The reds want the fake elections to continue ,they want that famous thai phrase"Same Same" with their corrupt masters in control

[Baerboxer]

They want to exterminate the "feudal elite". Except for their master feudal lord Thaksin. For him, they will lick his crevices clean, with mirth and glee.

So there is "they" and then there is "we", right? Those pesky peasants outside Bangkok are all just stupid yahoos! That attitude is so typical for arrogant expats, living in Bangkok...a dime a dozen.

FYI, it is not 1992 or 2006 anymore. Thais outside Bangkok are also now wealthier and paying for votes is getting harder and harder.

"Harder and harder" - do you mean more expensive? Explains the 2,2 trillion then

Arrogant rural expats - satang a dozen and cheap at half the price!

[rubl]

There is always two sides to every story. The reason the poor support Taksin just MIGHT have something to do with the fact that under Taksin their lives improved. Hate Taksin all you want but the economic numbers under him are pretty impressive.

between 2001 and the coup that overthrew him in 2006, GDP grew by 30 percent, public sector debt fell from 57 per cent of GDP to 41 per cent, and foreign exchange reserves doubled. He even managed to balance the budget.

Income in the northeast, the poorest part of the country, rose by 41 percent. Poverty nationwide dropped from 21 percent to 11 percent

-- quote removed, just click on the link provided by pomchop --

by Gwynne Dyer

"That’s why his 46-year-old sister is now the prime minister. She probably does do what he says most of the time, but there’s no crime in that: The voters who put her there were really voting for Thaksin. . And if the current insurrection in Bangkok overthrows her, they will vote for whoever else represents Thaksin next time there is an election. The right in Thailand should really grow up and get over it."

Makes you wonder about all the statements from PM Yingluck c.s. during the recent censure debate.

Also of course what Mr. Dyer states here is exactly the reason why the 'right' and many others want some reforms before the next elections. As it is a re-election of a puppet manipulated by a criminal fugitive would not improve the situation.

[kingalfred]

They want to exterminate the "feudal elite". Except for their master feudal lord Thaksin. For him, they will lick his crevices clean, with mirth and glee.

So there is "they" and then there is "we", right? Those pesky peasants outside Bangkok are all just stupid yahoos! That attitude is so typical for arrogant expats, living in Bangkok...a dime a dozen.

FYI, it is not 1992 or 2006 anymore. Thais outside Bangkok are also now wealthier and paying for votes is getting harder and harder.

"Harder and harder" - do you mean more expensive? Explains the 2,2 trillion then

Arrogant rural expats - satang a dozen and cheap at half the price![/. quote] some of us have lived outside in the country and in BKK. . Your narrow minded view typical of expats living out of the capital ,to use your words" a dime a dozen"

Edited December 16, 2013 by kingalfred