Pheu Thai's decision to push through the amnesty bill was a mistake: Weng

[See the bears]

Govern undemocratically they did---NOT a crazy statement. Forget the military element. Topic is PTP. and what they did.

You want to be in denial OK, but stay on topic. Elected government in the case of PTP proved that it does not guarantee good governing. They proved that. ADMIT IT without the army BS.

They won a very convincing victory at the polls on the back of many election promises. These included bringing back Thaksin Shinawatra, which was regularly mentioned on the election trail. Also, the rice scheme, tablets, car scheme, minimum wage, infrastructure spending...were all clearly laid out for the voters to see. Afer elected they carried through with or were in the process of carrying through with these. How is that "governing undemocratically"?

"The Puea Thai Party, aligned with exiled ex-Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his red-shirt supporters, vowed Monday to bring Thaksin home to re-start his work for the nation, reports Thai News Agency (TNA)."

Election promises ??? Rice scheme---disaster-----tablets disaster-----car scheme financial disaster--- infrastructure spending ?? where did that disappear to ?? these were clearly laid out YES, but were all mega blunders. The amnesty---con and a farce--see sense why post such rubbish.

It wasn't that they didn't map out the pledges, agree with that, but what unfolded was a different kettle of fish.

That's how you & your yellow & green friends spin it in order to justify yet another coup for the rich, but the economic justification of these schemes, as with the US Farm bill & EU CAP schemes, is for economists to debate.

[rametindallas]

Not much for even a partisan to disagree with in you post. A clarification, though, and I should have been more specific. By 'elite', I meant that group of Thais who have most of the wealth and power of this country and Dr. Thaksin had only recently joined its higher ranks. My thought, when I said 'fictitious', was that Thaksin had 'the elite' into a great 'boogie man' that was against the people and was purposefully keeping them down (I subscribe to the notion that the elite were fine with the status quo and saw no reason to change the culture that had, for so long, benefited them; benign neglect and not evil entent). Dr. Thaksin saw his opportunity to harness the discontent so prevalent in the poor and disenfranchised for political power and he used it as a 'wedge' issue even though he made no great changes to the system that he was a beneficiary of. The heretofore disenfranchised saw him as their champion among those with the power. Dr. Thaksin, with his media empire, bolstered his image as champion of the poor. He is a masterful propagandist and he developed a 'divide and conquer' strategy that had kept him and his proxies mostly in power since 2001. So, it is 'elites' against 'prai' (serfs).

Dr. Thaksin broke all the 'gentleman's agreements' regarding transfer of power in Thailand when he refused to let others have their turn at the trough and united those against him all by himself. He was not more corrupt than the other 'elite', he was just better at it. IMO, he truly wanted to become like Hun Sen and be President for Life through the manipulation of the democratic process. It almost worked but he made too many enemies and his arrogance blinded him to the coming storm in 2006.

You are 100% correct that the 'blanket' amnesty bill that would have allowed Dr. Thaksin back into politics was the 'bridge too far'. The army had been fine letting PTP loot the country with their 'doomed to fail' Rice Support Scheme and it didn't step in during the violence of the Spring. It wasn't until the gridlock caused by Suthep on the whole country did the army actually act (though I believe they began planning in December when Parliament was dissolved). If PTP had governed honestly for just two years (instead of Infrastructure, Water, and Rice Schemes that were anything but transparent), they would have earned enough good will that could have brought Thaksin home any way they wanted. Unfortunately for the Kingdom, they got busy rewarding themselves for winning the election and failed to govern for all Thai people.

Yingluck had a perfect opportunity with the coup to stand up

A last point of disagreement. It has never been in Ms Yingluck's nature to be 'boss' or to 'stand up' against any power authority which is why she was chosen, over her more assertive/experienced sister, to be PM. She was only the mouthpiece of her brother and she does not have the quick wit/tongue of a Suthep or Chalerm. She gets a 'pass' in my book and is another victim of Dr. Thaksin's never ending quest for power.

with regard to thaksin, we probably agree on most things. Although, as one of the poster has pointed out, the balance of spending by the government started to shift away from Bangkok to the provinces - and there are quite a few Thais who don't have a lot of means and can see that his policies were helping more people - they also see that he was not perfect. But in the end, many many people I know have uttered the sentiment of 'respect my vote' during the Suthep protests. As you can imagine, 'utter' applies because many Thais do not go into details on politics. Although I did hear a few rather pointedly say Suthep was a 'bad man'. Which IMO is also true.

As for Yingluck, I think that she had that opportunity. She was and is more popular than her brother, which she surely understands. And she would have seen the 'intervention' coming from a mile away which would have given her time to prepare. The fact that she did not leverage her popularity and seize the moment, makes me more or less agree with your assessment.

As for your point about the army, my guess is that the planning began at least in December. Personally, I think the (royalist) elites and the military were horrified when Yingluck won in 2011 and were looking to take out her government from the first day. Suthep's bragging post-intervention adds to that impression. But even without it, I seriously wondered back in 2011 if the PTP would make it until another election.

I wasn't surprised they won, but didn't realize they would be stupid enough to throw the election away and govern undemocratically, Thaksins brains for you ??? you would have thought he could have kept the ship sailing, but he got too big for his breaches again (I stress) repeating his previous PM-ship.

govern undemocratically is one of those crazy statements from folks who think that military 'can-use-the-d-word'-ships are better than an elected government.

You must admit that the overwhelming victory enjoyed by PTP gave them/Thaksin too much confidence and they used their majority to push through projects without following proper procedure and which were immune to criticism. They governed 'democratically' only in the most basic definition of the word. Those who did not support PTP were shut out of government investments and the opposition was completely ignored (even though they represented 40% of the voters). Putting the 3.2 trillion Baht infrastructure out of the oversight of Parliament, allowing treaties to be handled within the cabinet, letting contracts on water management project with inadequate or non-existent public input, environmental/human impact statements and all done in a shadowy, back-room, non-transparent way is 'democratic' in name only and only because they had a majority in the Parliament. They began construction on a new Parliament building with very little transparency, began a Rice Support Scheme that, for the money spent, should have made every rice farmer in Thailand wealthy; but didn't, the unsustainable new car tax break that, even now, can't be funded properly, the 40% rise in minimum wages that caused inflation (that hurts the poor), poor parents lost their subsidy to pay for books and school uniforms to finance tablets that they had no software/teacher training for and that were poor quality, the first house scheme that helps Shinawatra land development companies, and other policy corruption that goes on, and on. The PTP did no reforms or enforcement of environmental laws or clamp down on the mafia (a source of bribe money for the RTP, their supporters), evict forest encroaches, or any of the things that are currently making Prayuth popular. They bought their popularity with populists schemes paid for with the people's own money.

ginjag probably shouldn't have used the word 'undemocratic' as it is an inflammatory word with many, but his point was that the PTP government governed for themselves and their supporters but not for the whole of Thailand and that was stupid on their part. As I stated earlier, if they had governed honestly for two years, they could have had anything they wanted after that; including Dr. Thaksin's return and his return as the head of the party. Greed, impatience, and arrogance was their downfall. At the end, Thaksin and his PTP ignored even their Red Shirt supporters, who propelled them into power, and, instead of amnesty for the protesters of 2010, insisted on 'blanket' amnesty going back to Thaksin's first term all the way through the corrupt behavior of the Rice Scheme. BTW, those same Red Shirt protesters are still in jail, Abhisit and Suthep are still walking free, the rice farmers are even deeper in debt, and the taxpayers will take 30 years to pay off the damage of the Rice Support Scheme. PTP had the power to help the country but instead, helped themselves and were brought down by violating the agreement not to force the return of Thaksin. I will give ginjag some validity for his 'undemocratic' remark, it was undemocratic of the PTP to take their marching orders from one man, who is a fugitive, convicted felon, instead of listening to all the voters who voted for them.

Edited November 2, 2014 by rametindallas

[whybother]

with regard to thaksin, we probably agree on most things. Although, as one of the poster has pointed out, the balance of spending by the government started to shift away from Bangkok to the provinces - and there are quite a few Thais who don't have a lot of means and can see that his policies were helping more people - they also see that he was not perfect. But in the end, many many people I know have uttered the sentiment of 'respect my vote' during the Suthep protests. As you can imagine, 'utter' applies because many Thais do not go into details on politics. Although I did hear a few rather pointedly say Suthep was a 'bad man'. Which IMO is also true.

As for Yingluck, I think that she had that opportunity. She was and is more popular than her brother, which she surely understands. And she would have seen the 'intervention' coming from a mile away which would have given her time to prepare. The fact that she did not leverage her popularity and seize the moment, makes me more or less agree with your assessment.

As for your point about the army, my guess is that the planning began at least in December. Personally, I think the (royalist) elites and the military were horrified when Yingluck won in 2011 and were looking to take out her government from the first day. Suthep's bragging post-intervention adds to that impression. But even without it, I seriously wondered back in 2011 if the PTP would make it until another election.

I hoped that PTP would make it to another (normally scheduled) election. It would have been enough time for the electorate to realise that the PTP policies were a failure. And it wouldn't have been an election tainted by recent events ... maybe even approaching a normal election.

But that may have been the reason that PTP decided to push the amnesty bill when it did. They looked at the possibility that they wouldn't have the same power after the next election (probably still in government but only with the help of a coalition). The same sort of thing happened in 2008. The anti-Thaksin crowd begrudgingly accepted a Thaksin proxy party win, but as soon as the government tried to get Thaksin off, the protesters came out.

As for the army planning a coup, I would suggest that that is the first thing that a new CIC does when he gets appointed (and probably well before that). It has nothing to do with who is in power at the time, but more to do with putting people they trust into the right positions so that they can move whenever the time comes ... and in Thailand, the time comes quite regularly.

[ginjag]

Govern undemocratically they did---NOT a crazy statement. Forget the military element. Topic is PTP. and what they did.

You want to be in denial OK, but stay on topic. Elected government in the case of PTP proved that it does not guarantee good governing. They proved that. ADMIT IT without the army BS.

They won a very convincing victory at the polls on the back of many election promises. These included bringing back Thaksin Shinawatra, which was regularly mentioned on the election trail. Also, the rice scheme, tablets, car scheme, minimum wage, infrastructure spending...were all clearly laid out for the voters to see. Afer elected they carried through with or were in the process of carrying through with these. How is that "governing undemocratically"?

"The Puea Thai Party, aligned with exiled ex-Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his red-shirt supporters, vowed Monday to bring Thaksin home to re-start his work for the nation, reports Thai News Agency (TNA)."

Election promises ??? Rice scheme---disaster-----tablets disaster-----car scheme financial disaster--- infrastructure spending ?? where did that disappear to ?? these were clearly laid out YES, but were all mega blunders. The amnesty---con and a farce--see sense why post such rubbish.

It wasn't that they didn't map out the pledges, agree with that, but what unfolded was a different kettle of fish.

That's how you & your yellow & green friends spin it in order to justify yet another coup for the rich, but the economic justification of these schemes, as with the US Farm bill & EU CAP schemes, is for economists to debate.

One word----DENIAL for all to see.......yellow and green BS your spin. Thaksin schemes were that good they all resulted in Thailand losing trillion +

Forget the rich--elite-army---again divert from the topic..............There is no spin if you do not see they were disasters you are not being honest.

Granted these schemes were not a disaster for the financial well being of the Shins and friends.

[Ricardo]

"red-shirt co-leader and former Pheu Thai MP Weng Tojirakan still says it was a grave mistake that led to the downfall of Yingluck Shinawatra's government."

Looking again at the OP, it's slightly interesting that Weng doesn't actually attribute any of the blame, to then-PM Yingluck or to the party itself, he merely says passively that "it was a grave mistake".

Is that as close as he can come to actually criticising Thaksin, who was surely the person who really made that decision, which all PTP MPs/leadership then went along with ?

And doesn't he accept some personal responsibility, for failing to speak or vote against the Bill after it was modified, if it was such a grave mistake that it led to a wave of popular protest and led to the need for an early-election ?

Or perhaps I'm reading too much into his wording ?