Thai prosecutors press criminal charges against ex-PM Yingluck

[ginjag]

fair enough....that's your opinion. Most opinions from Shinawatra supporters are usually Flawed.

yea of course they are...........

And a minority on TVF, but they also still believe "She did nothing wrong" and it is all "politically motivated" Shins hallmark--remark

Just out of interest (and it has taken 18 hours to summon up enough), how do you know it is a minority?

Law of averages, take a quick count of posters with your view, and put that against the posters with a positive outlook--does that give you any clues

[philw]

The Washington Post makes an attempt to put the question of criminal charges in context.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/thailands-ineffective-rule-by-force/2015/02/19/0c53b660-b863-11e4-a200-c008a01a6692_story.html

Of course assuming the paper is not in the pay of Thaksin (very probable) what is needed is for the government to "explain" to these misguided amateurs that foreigners (except a few middle aged retired tourists now cyber warriors) cannot possibly understand the complexities.Thailand is governed by its own rules and is exempt from the historical and social pressures that every other society is subject to.

The Guardian seems to be saying much the same thing.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/19/guardian-view-military-rule-thailand

Good one.

Thanks for the links, the Grauniad as usual excels.

This would be apposite, except that Thailand does not have a jury system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kyos-M48B8U

[krismagi]

I lived in Thailand for three years. Thought I would get that one in at the beginning as I can speak from personal experience when I suspect many of the contributors on this thread do not have that insight. I am also English and proud of it, in the year of the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta.

Corruption demeans a country and makes it economically poorer but there are also the aspirations of the very poorest in society to consider. Taksin Shinawatra understood that feeling for improvement and addressed it and won fairly held elections from 2001 on-wards (the facts speak for themselves). You cannot defend what he did to get rich but then he was doing what every other Hi-So person in Thailand is doing (and has been doing) and that is milking the system for personal gain. That is not acceptable but from Shinawatra's regime came genuine advancements, for example, in extending basic free healthcare to rural communities. As a result, sensing that here was a rare politician who was improving their lot, the poorer people in Thai communities voted for him and his various parties.

The Establishment did not like that and so we have had various political moves and coups to 'get back' and 'restore' the status quo from 2006 onwards. After all it is acceptable to financially rape the country for personal gain but - Buddha forbid - do not let the poor in on the act.

As for the Rice Pledging Scheme, is it really so different from the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU? I suspect not (wine lakes and the rest all funded by taxpayer money) and there the clearly stated social aim was to provide a fairer redistribution of income to the poorer farmers (and it has worked) but, of course, it has been abused and in cases mismanaged. Such a social policy is probably complete anathema to red necked American posters on here (and in the the UK the UKIP followers) but then that country has become an oligarchy with a complete corruption of democracy (Oligarchy:a political system where a privileged few control a country's political and social existence). Stand up the Koch Brothers will you? Is the USA a functioning democracy any longer? I suspect not .... (even Harvard University agrees with that analysis)

So for the chair bound Western thread writers on Thai Visa, you are not Thai. If you were, you would be living under martial law (with no end in sight), no democratic expression allowed, living with a regime that is pretending to be Uncle Joe (a Stalinist in joke) using the words of 'reconciliation', 'national unity' blah blah to justify seizing power illegally. What this regime desperately wants is to extinguish all free expression and for the current (unacceptable) political and social situation to continue so in that sense the squashing of the Shinawatra's could be argued as constituting a backward step. That is, if you are poor and Thai.

In the meantime, we the chair bound pundits can express our views as it makes absolutely no difference to the situation in Thailand. Just more hot air where less is actually required.

Edited February 20, 2015 by krismagi

[JAG]

karma party time i hope whole shin clan crawl under rocks they came form and their red shirt thugs

Guaranteed to raise the level of debate - every time!

[rubl]

The Shin vilification campaign has become as utterly tedious as it was always banal.

Drop the Shin obsession. It was the march of progress that produced them, not the other way round. They are the product, not the creators of change.

The country has developed in the past 20 years, the ordinary people are more connected and clued-up. Communism is no longer a threat. The old system that kept the country working during those difficult decades (all credit to the person who created that system) is now out of date and is being sloughed off.

This is just a messy transition phase. It will happen with or without the Shins.

Actually here we just discuss the OAG pressing ahead with criminal charges against Ms. Yingluck. The self-financing RPPS which was so profitable that it lost 700 billion Baht. With her frequently on television and in parliament stating to be in charge, the plan working as expected, no problems, no real problems, minor problems, problems addressed, some losses till can we borrow some more?

I agree though that this is a transition phase. In future politicians should be aware that being elected doesn't mean they have a mandate to fool around and ignore the population.

[JAG]

The Shin vilification campaign has become as utterly tedious as it was always banal.

Drop the Shin obsession. It was the march of progress that produced them, not the other way round. They are the product, not the creators of change.

The country has developed in the past 20 years, the ordinary people are more connected and clued-up. Communism is no longer a threat. The old system that kept the country working during those difficult decades (all credit to the person who created that system) is now out of date and is being sloughed off.

This is just a messy transition phase. It will happen with or without the Shins.

Actually here we just discuss the OAG pressing ahead with criminal charges against Ms. Yingluck. The self-financing RPPS which was so profitable that it lost 700 billion Baht. With her frequently on television and in parliament stating to be in charge, the plan working as expected, no problems, no real problems, minor problems, problems addressed, some losses till can we borrow some more?

I agree though that this is a transition phase. In future politicians should be aware that being elected doesn't mean they have a mandate to fool around and ignore the population.

I wouldn't worry Rubl, there seems little prospect of politicians being elected in any meaningful sense for the foreseeable future.

[rubl]

Right. Not-a-red talking about 'yellow lovers', 'elite' and distracting with a dignified innocent Amply Rich woman who's made a martyr simply because the OAG dares to indict her.

Ms. Yingluck positioned her RPPS as self-financing scheme only needing a revolving funds of 500 billion Baht. Defended it. Told parliament to be in charge. And now the OAG may not ask her what happened?

Doggy see bowl doggy eat = your mentality.

So by saying yellow lovers I am a red?

Yes YL has been a heck of a lot more dignified since the PDRC's antics last year right up to now, from my neutral point of view, than the tweeny hissy fits in front of the media by this other one.

And as far as I'm concerned the Shinawatras are elites too, same dirty coin as I told you already. However, I do want to see the poor properly represented and given a fair chance in life and only Taksin has recognised them (clearly for his own ends, of course, dirty Thai politician/businessman that he is).

I'm actually looking forward to the lid blowing off when a certain event occurs: it's disgusting the way Thai people have been kept in the dark for decades. Maybe it'll rip the country apart but it's about the only way anything's going to change. Reconciliation? How utterly childishly naive to think oppressing them is going to reconcile anything. Are you that lacking in insight not to see that? Ah but they didn't pull their guns yet and the threats and adjustments can safely be ignored or justified by sitting as you are on your dirty side of your dirty coin.

It's also disgusting that educated Westerners are showing support for Thai politicians. The whole lot of them should be exposed and their ill-gotten gains shared out amongst those who never had a chance for anything better than 'event days' instead of a decent basic education and the chance to be something more than a motorcycle taxi same as dad was.

But you don't care do you, because you're a yellow lover who wants to promote the status quo: that good Thai people are being fobbed off by dirty criminals who don't like being questioned about their family's assets, who don't even have to turn up to defend themselves in court because they are "too busy" destroying the economy and laying democracy to ransom - that is, of course, if their day in court ever arrives.

You fit right in: choose a winning team, join a chorus and ignore the scum on your own side of the dirty coin.

Oh boy. Struck a nerve, did I?

For a non-partisan, unbiased, objective observer you go on a lot about 'yellow lovers' and you assume a lot about posters as well.

Anyway, this highly dignified Amply Rich lady is charged. Not because of politics, but because she started a self-financing scheme while PM, defended it, stated she was in charge and only she, and managed to lose 700 billion Baht on that self-financing scheme. "negligent' and with all statements she made on 'no problems', 'no real problems', 'listened to warnings', 'taken warnings into account', 'financing arranged', 'can we borrow some more?', it would seem 'criminally negligent' is really kind. Personally I would call it 'intent to deceive and defraud'.

Her hand-picked Minister of Finance (the 'little white lies' guy) stated the day before the RPPS officially started it would cost around 440 billion Baht only with money returning from rice sales. Mid-2013 Ms. Yingluck acknowledged a loss of 230 or 320 billion Baht (forgot which, sorry). That time her Minister of Commerce was 'replaced'.

So, nothing about 'yellow' or 'red', just purely looking for justice.

"Struck a nerve, did I?"

You flatter yourself: one usage of 'yellow lovers' in my second reply to you was asking you to clarify that you think simplisticly: "So by saying yellow lovers I am a red?" and not related to your implication, which is ironic since your proven behaviour observed in my posts that it is you, sir, who is over-egging the pudding with accusations of a shirt colour. Furthermore, I suggest you now go back and count how many times I've actually used the expression and try to show in what way you could possibly have hit a nerve with someone for whom you don't even seem to be understanding, as also observed about you with my doggy see bowl image.

As to the specifics of your partisanism, it doesn't interest me at all. See, this is just further proof you are incapable of thinking beyond food once you think you've seen a doggy bowl; or to put it another way just to help you out here, the analogy of a football match: you are trying to accuse me of playing for the opposite side and attempting to entice me to respond politically, whereas my true point is as an observer on both teams saying one is dealing with all the mutual fouls far better than the other.

You can tediously come back again and again until such time as your ego thinks it's hit a mark, but since there was never any doggy bowl for you to feed from in the first place, it's just not going to happen that I'll join your dirty game of fouling football.

Or the coin analogy: in short, go find someone on the other side of your coin, because as far as I'm concerned I wouldn't touch that dirty money on either side. If you are not an apologist in support of one of these two factions where is the evidence for your critical thinking when it comes to your own side?

Finally, more fool you for being suckered by the Thais, when in this case - as it has been for decades before Taksin - the suckering was meant for their own people not us.

Ah, I struck more than one nerve it would seem.

What's with the 'doggy see bowl image'. Is that a reference to the 700 billion Baht Ms. Yingluck's RPPS lost? Some were really suckered in by the way above market prices Ms. Yingluck promised.

As for 'critical thinking', well I don't want to strain you too much. You already do not understand that a politician who starts a self-financing' scheme which doesn't need any reservations apart from an initial 'revolving funds' to pay from and put back from sales, open him/herself to anyone who has the intelligence to see such scheme can't work. It's almost like a 'ponzi' scheme, a criminal offence in lots of democratic countries.

Now if only Ms. Yingluck had made a clearly visible reservation in the National Budget with proper accounting, she could have gotten away with 100 billion loss being budgeted. Did she do? No, 'self-financing', no need for reservations, no need to increase the deficit and financial standing of the Thai government. That's what we were told. She went on television, her 'white lies' minister of finance just as positive.

So, be a good boy, leave out the disparaging remarks and stick to the topic.

[rubl]

I lived in Thailand for three years. Thought I would get that one in at the beginning as I can speak from personal experience when I suspect many of the contributors on this thread do not have that insight. I am also English and proud of it, in the year of the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta.

Corruption demeans a country and makes it economically poorer but there are also the aspirations of the very poorest in society to consider. Taksin Shinawatra understood that feeling for improvement and addressed it and won fairly held elections from 2001 on-wards (the facts speak for themselves). You cannot defend what he did to get rich but then he was doing what every other Hi-So person in Thailand is doing (and has been doing) and that is milking the system for personal gain. That is not acceptable but from Shinawatra's regime came genuine advancements, for example, in extending basic free healthcare to rural communities. As a result, sensing that here was a rare politician who was improving their lot, the poorer people in Thai communities voted for him and his various parties.

The Establishment did not like that and so we have had various political moves and coups to 'get back' and 'restore' the status quo from 2006 onwards. After all it is acceptable to financially rape the country for personal gain but - Buddha forbid - do not let the poor in on the act.

As for the Rice Pledging Scheme, is it really so different from the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU? I suspect not (wine lakes and the rest all funded by taxpayer money) and there the clearly stated social aim was to provide a fairer redistribution of income to the poorer farmers (and it has worked) but, of course, it has been abused and in cases mismanaged. Such a social policy is probably complete anathema to red necked American posters on here (and in the the UK the UKIP followers) but then that country has become an oligarchy with a complete corruption of democracy (Oligarchy:a political system where a privileged few control a country's political and social existence). Stand up the Koch Brothers will you? Is the USA a functioning democracy any longer? I suspect not .... (even Harvard University agrees with that analysis)

So for the chair bound Western thread writers on Thai Visa, you are not Thai. If you were, you would be living under martial law (with no end in sight), no democratic expression allowed, living with a regime that is pretending to be Uncle Joe (a Stalinist in joke) using the words of 'reconciliation', 'national unity' blah blah to justify seizing power illegally. What this regime desperately wants is to extinguish all free expression and for the current (unacceptable) political and social situation to continue so in that sense the squashing of the Shinawatra's could be argued as constituting a backward step. That is, if you are poor and Thai.

In the meantime, we the chair bound pundits can express our views as it makes absolutely no difference to the situation in Thailand. Just more hot air where less is actually required.

The main difference with EC policy and the Yingluck RPPS is way of financing. The EC policy is covered by member state payments and expresly administered as subsidy, i.e. money spent, on the deficit side of the accounting.

Ms. Yingluck positioned her RPPS as 'self-financing' scheme, no need for reservations, no need to increase the National Budget deficit. No, no need, self-financing. Only a 'revolving funds' to be setup to make initial payments and restore from revenue of sales. Her Minister of Finance stated such again the very day before the scheme officially started. Mid-2013 the Yingluck government admitted to 230 or 320 billion Baht loss, but all under contorl, financing found and reserved. Finally in caretaker mode in December 2013 the government wanted to borrow 130 billion more, on top of the close to 600 billion already spent.

So, Ms. Yingluck indicted, maybe on the 19th of March formally charged. She'll then get the 20 boxes the OAG used to justify their indicting, but problably Ms. Yingluck has most of that already. She got a few boxes early last year. When charged she'll be able to give all the answers she didn't give yet, Within reason she'll be able to request additional witnesses for the defence. And so on, and so forth.

[NanLaew]

... Thailand's junta-stacked government is also considering launching a civil suit against the nation's first female prime minister to seek $18 billion in compensation for damages caused by the scheme. ...

If they are to maintain whatever thin veneer of legitimacy they claim to have, I truly hope that the junta pursue the civil suit SOLELY and decline being a tool for the special interests that actually rule here. The entire premise of impeaching an ex- premier that had already resigned before the army took over is legally perilous. The fact that the Thai impeachment process being condoned by the army comes from a Constitution that they have already suspended makes it even more so.

[NanLaew]

...

I agree though that this is a transition phase. In future politicians should be aware that being elected doesn't mean they have a mandate to fool around and ignore the population.

What on earth has either an elected or nominated government (or even the army for that matter) got to do with a certain, small unelected Thai demographic that perpetually rules the roost anyway? They always have and they hope they always will.

The fact that those who truly govern Thailand Bangkok have had a major sphincter-pucker with the various versions of Thaksin Inc., and they need some time to get their preferred social order solidly back in place before the big event.

[Robby nz]

The 700 billion and counting, for there are still ongoing storage and marketing costs to be added, is in fact only the tip of the lossberg to the country and the people.

There are the lost markets that may never be got back, such as Iran which was once one of the top buyers.

The confidence in Thai rice as a premium product was destroyed when the PT Govt sold inferior rice to several countries including the US and Ivory Coast.

The rice traders who before the scheme were the ones who bought Thai rice on behalf of their customers were forced to go to other countries to buy rice for those customers who were loyal to them and trusted the traders to get what they wanted and give them a fair deal.

Those traders are still buying rice for their customers from other countries and may never come back into the Thai market, if the do come back it will only be to buy for a low price

Then there is the loss to the farmers themselves who are now deeper in debt than ever before and have to service that debt with interest.

The scheme which was touted as helping the poor has been found by research to have only reached 18% of poor farmers and that 18% only got 5% of the money paid out to farmers, yet rents and costs of fertilizer and chemicals were pushed up by the landlords and companies to get their share, so the poor farmers were even worse off than before.

The 82% of poor farmers who could not participate in the scheme were also burdened with the higher costs making them even poorer than before.

There is the interest that must be paid on the bonds and loans to be taken out to pay for the losses, that will in part have to be borne by a future generation of tax payers..

And now we see a proposal to write off 45 billion of farmers debt : http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/801632-moac-proposes-that-govt-write-off-45-billion-baht-of-farmers-debts/

Then there are the costs of all the investigations and legal action associated with the scheme which will no doubt run into billions.

All to be added to the 700 billion.

And some call going after those responsible a witch hunt and suggest it should just be forgotten.

You have some very valid points there....but you forgot to point out that none of this happened without the complicity of the yellow shirt party members and or the military.....as they are involved in nearly everything that goes on in this country and especially when there are such large sums of money involved.

There is no way they would not be involved in any number of direct or indirect ways.

As they always say: If you follow the money trail you will learn far more about the truth concerning just where exactly all the money went and who exactly enriched themselves.

If anyone on this forum actually believes the usual culprits were not at all involved in the whole rice pledging scheme and how it ran amuck the way it did run amuck, while it was only the Red Shirt members that enriched themselves on a government enacted program...then you are not understanding the way things commonly run amuck here in Thailand while all kinds of profiteering shenanigans are going on behind the scenes.

Just because Ying Luck was in power at the time, in no way stops or prevents the opposition party members and or those hugely wealthy and influential people, known as the Status Quo in this country, from enriching themselves on any given government enacted program....whether it be their own programs or whether it be opposition enacted programs

They were also hugely complicite in the down fall of the program while "they" enriched themselves to no end also.......but who gets the blame......Yink Luck.

Ahhhhh..........The Masters of Duplicity

Cheers

I learn something every day.

So the pledging scheme has nothing to do with Thaksin, Yingluck ot the PTP, it was all devised by those you call yellows and the military and they were the ones who benefited.

But then perhaps I should go back and read some of the links again to see who the winners are, lets start in 2010 :

http://www.thaivisa....cheme-thailand/

2012-10-10

Winners And Losers Emerge In Rice Scheme: Thailand

Then go on to :

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/737022-rice-fraud-verdict-on-thaksins-aide-due-today/page-3

Thaksin aide jailed for rice fraud

Didn't realize he was a yellow or the military.

Then in 2012 the Democrats produced evidence in a no confidence debate that showed who had benefited from fake G2G deals :

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/600926-rice-deals-with-china-fake-thai-democrats/

Surely they werent implication themselves ?

If you bother to read these link you will see the name Siam indica comes up over and over again, a company which has been the main beneficiary right through and was linked to 'Thaksins aid' and seems to also have links to a PT MP, the wife of someone who was at one time referred to as "Monkey on a rope" who ended up with enough millions as a leader of the red riots (and other things, rice?) to be able to start an airline.

Then there is another from the red stage who owns a trucking company that was carting rice around to unspecified destinations while he was a deputy minister of commerce :

Meanwhile, there has been a report that about 500 tonnes of rice have been released from a warehouse in Nakhon Si Thammarat’s Muang district.

Most of the trucks used to move the rice are registered in the lower part of the southern region. Several of them bear the name ‘’Nattawut Transport’’.

A source said a letter which approved the release of the stocks was issued by the Commerce Ministry’s Department of Foreign Trade.

The source added that the destination of the rice is not known and it is being speculated that the rice is being transported to the lower South or the Thai-Malaysian border.

‘‘This is not the first time. Hundreds of thousands of rice sacks have been moved. Local authorities have no idea where the rice is heading,’’ the source said.

He must have been covering his tracks very well to be a military, or is it yellow, all along.

Wont post any more for I an really wasting my time for you know the truth, you have read all about the conspiracy in red publications.

Read my post again while I remind you how I pointed out the Yellow Shirts and many others interconnected to the Yellow Shirts who are not Red Shirt affiliated people per say were also very complicit in the down fall of the rice pledging scheme and all the profiteering that occurred perpetrated by many people in many ways.

As usual the Thais have their ways of corrupting a system or program to their financial benefit.

You said:

So the pledging scheme has nothing to do with Thaksin, Yingluck ot the PTP, it was all devised by those you call yellows and the military and they were the ones who benefited.

That is a small minded retort on your part.......... as it would be obvious to anyone that read my post, I said nothing of the sort...while your retort is also a thoughtless assumption on your part.

For you to ( Imply ) and or seemingly believe that no other people or entities or other sectors of Thai sociality were not involved in the mass profiteering related to the rice pledging scheme shows you are not taking into consideration many other factors going on behind the scenes, as is commonly the case here in Thailand.

Obviously red shirt party members and their associates corrupted the program and enriched themselves...but they did not accomplish that without the complicity of non red shirt party members and various existing entities that willingly participated in the diversion of huge amounts of money.

You need to be reminded of all the past government programs and huge amounts of money that are unaccounted for during the times the Yellow shirts were in power and for all the many decades that the Yellow shirts lorded over Thailand before there was any serious opposition to their rule.

There are dozens of cases in the past while none of them were ever resolved while the Yellows were in power.

As pointed out by you and many others, the scheme involved 700 billion Baht ...and more????...correct

Who owns the Banks and the Financial institutes in Thailand???

Let me give you a hint....It is not the Red Shirts.

Cheers

What is small minded is calling anyone who is not involved with or supports Thaksin PT or the reds yellow.

No middle ground according to you if you are not with them you are against them.

Furthermore yellow was first used as a protest color at the airport protests so attempting to use that color for anything before then is just silly.

If you are going to attempt to site previous govts losses as an excuse for the rice pledging loss then you should be prepared to detail those losses with links so we can all know that it is not just another lie.

I have posted links to prove my points, if there is any truth to what you post then please post links to prove it.

What have banks got do with it ? If you have proof that banks and financial institutions were involved in corruption then you should be talking to the NACC.

What I believe in is the truth and facts and I don't see any of that in your posts, only more of the but, but, they did it to, with no supporting evidence at all.

[Robby nz]

I lived in Thailand for three years. Thought I would get that one in at the beginning as I can speak from personal experience when I suspect many of the contributors on this thread do not have that insight. I am also English and proud of it, in the year of the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta.

Corruption demeans a country and makes it economically poorer but there are also the aspirations of the very poorest in society to consider. Taksin Shinawatra understood that feeling for improvement and addressed it and won fairly held elections from 2001 on-wards (the facts speak for themselves). You cannot defend what he did to get rich but then he was doing what every other Hi-So person in Thailand is doing (and has been doing) and that is milking the system for personal gain. That is not acceptable but from Shinawatra's regime came genuine advancements, for example, in extending basic free healthcare to rural communities. As a result, sensing that here was a rare politician who was improving their lot, the poorer people in Thai communities voted for him and his various parties.

The Establishment did not like that and so we have had various political moves and coups to 'get back' and 'restore' the status quo from 2006 onwards. After all it is acceptable to financially rape the country for personal gain but - Buddha forbid - do not let the poor in on the act.

As for the Rice Pledging Scheme, is it really so different from the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU? I suspect not (wine lakes and the rest all funded by taxpayer money) and there the clearly stated social aim was to provide a fairer redistribution of income to the poorer farmers (and it has worked) but, of course, it has been abused and in cases mismanaged. Such a social policy is probably complete anathema to red necked American posters on here (and in the the UK the UKIP followers) but then that country has become an oligarchy with a complete corruption of democracy (Oligarchy:a political system where a privileged few control a country's political and social existence). Stand up the Koch Brothers will you? Is the USA a functioning democracy any longer? I suspect not .... (even Harvard University agrees with that analysis)

So for the chair bound Western thread writers on Thai Visa, you are not Thai. If you were, you would be living under martial law (with no end in sight), no democratic expression allowed, living with a regime that is pretending to be Uncle Joe (a Stalinist in joke) using the words of 'reconciliation', 'national unity' blah blah to justify seizing power illegally. What this regime desperately wants is to extinguish all free expression and for the current (unacceptable) political and social situation to continue so in that sense the squashing of the Shinawatra's could be argued as constituting a backward step. That is, if you are poor and Thai.

In the meantime, we the chair bound pundits can express our views as it makes absolutely no difference to the situation in Thailand. Just more hot air where less is actually required.

I wont go into the rest of your post and your vast experience in your 3 years under the PT govt and the present administration however I would like to address one little thing :

As for the Rice Pledging Scheme, is it really so different from the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU? I suspect not (wine lakes and the rest all funded by taxpayer money) and there the clearly stated social aim was to provide a fairer redistribution of income to the poorer farmers (and it has worked)

And it has worked ??

Ok I will tell you it has not worked for the poor farmer or indeed for farmers in general, for a start only 18% of poor farmers were eligible to participate in the scheme (world bank research) and only 5% of money paid out to farmers reached to that 18%.

Farmers and general household debt under The PT Govt has risen to unprecedented highs, from a freedom barometer report :

http://freedombarometer.org/assets/pdfs/Freedom-Barometer-Special-Report-Thailands-Agrarian-Policy.pdf

Farmers Debt under Yingluck

Coinciding with increases in governmental debt is overall debt held by farmers, which now amounts to 103,047 baht per head. Since 2010 debts have climbed by 6% per year. About 63% of all households in Thailand are in debt, of which 15 percent originate from the agricultural sector.

If you were to read that report and others such as the reports from the TDRI : http://englishnews.thaipbs.or.th/tdri-says-yinglupledging-scheme-causes-almostcks-rice--trillion-baht-loss It will give you a better idea of just what the losses and implications are.

However these don't really go far enough for as I have said elsewhere there are other impacts, such as loss of markets, loss of confidence in the quality of Thai rice, other countries increasing production to fill the gap left by Thai rice being withheld from the market which has depressed prices, the need to now get rid of the stored rice which can only be done at a loss and at the detriment of each new seasons crop prices.

The rise in rents and costs of fertilisers and sprays impacted on the poor farmers in particular the 82% who could not take part in the scheme.

There is also hidden consequences, for one the increased use of water for irrigation that was used as farmers increased production to take advantage of the scheme depleted dams and has been cited as having an impact on the present drought situation.

I have only been brief here for I have covered all this before with links, but, No it has not worked for the farmers in general and in particular for the poor farmers.

[AloisAmrein]

Politically motivated revenge plot of the BKK plutocracy which regained power at gun point (they NEVER would have won an election). And the military crooks call this even "reconciliation" and "restoring law and order". Really a bad joke. Could be from Hitler or Mussolini.

[hawker9000]

Politically motivated revenge plot of the BKK plutocracy which regained power at gun point (they NEVER would have won an election). And the military crooks call this even "reconciliation" and "restoring law and order". Really a bad joke. Could be from Hitler or Mussolini.

Lol. Yes, yes. Very good. Just like that. Massage your magic amulet, click your heals together three times, and reverentially intone "Hitler" "Mussolini" "Hitler" "Mussolini", over & over & over & over again.... This will remove all the stink and bad kharma from the previous regime's corruption & greed. Just a note though, you really should've carried out all this mumbo jumbo BEFORE the military, not so steeped in the occult, found it necessary to do something less .. "mystical" ... about the deteriorating situation under the previous crumbling thaksinocracy. (And if it doesn't work, maybe it'll help free up some of the barstools around you.)

Edited February 21, 2015 by hawker9000

[Si Thea01]

Politically motivated revenge plot of the BKK plutocracy which regained power at gun point (they NEVER would have won an election). And the military crooks call this even "reconciliation" and "restoring law and order". Really a bad joke. Could be from Hitler or Mussolini.

Lol. Yes, yes. Very good. Just like that. Massage your magic amulet, click your heals together three times, and reverentially intone "Hitler" "Mussolini" "Hitler" "Mussolini", over & over & over & over again.... This will remove all the stink and bad kharma from the previous regime's corruption & greed. Just a note though, you really should've carried out all this mumbo jumbo BEFORE the military, not so steeped in the occult, found it necessary to do something less .. "mystical" ... about the deteriorating situation under the previous crumbling thaksinocracy. (And if it doesn't work, maybe it'll help free up some of the barstools around you.)

You are so right Hawker. What is it with this mob, live in the past, obviously condone everything bad and corrupt and carry on with the denigration of anyone who even attempts to make things right. I think I just found out why, they are all singing from the same hymn book. Wouldn't have a clue and just go on and on with the same old rhetoric, nothing new, everything old. Where do they get the bit about taking over at the point of a gun. They're all saying it so it must be true. 555555. Give us a break, all the BS is just huff and puff, so why don't they admit it. I think some would have to pick themselves up of the floor before they could even consider the bar stool.

Edited February 21, 2015 by Si Thea01

[metisdead]

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