Thai politics

Politically speaking, Thailand is quite weird. On the surface it looks quite free and Westernised, and democratic. Compared to neighbouring Myanmar, it's doing well but there are also some dodgy things going on. Lately, many people are trying to impeach the prime minister, Thaksin, because of some dodgy share deals that he was involved in. If I understand correctly, he basically sold off a bunch of shares in a Thai corporation to a foreign investor without paying any tax on the sale, and involved various lurky offshore companies in the process.

At the moment, he's dissolved parliament and is calling a new election next week. The opposition parties are refusing to take part in the election, and calling for his resignation. So the saga continues...

Apparently one of his mottoes is "Better to die than to live like a loser". In my apartment block, a cartoon version of Thaksin illustrates the lift rules card (check out the pic).



So there have been quite a few protests, and mysterious things going on... Some stuff that surprised me:
- one of the Thai TV channels stopped broadcasting during a speech against Thaksin due to a "technical problem"
- a high level police officer declared that protestors were harassing his staff, and said it was much better in the past when he could round them up in vans and beat them
- some of the main media critics of Thaksin have been fired from their jobs
- due to the complaints, the government has unveiled a bunch of populist policies, like giving poor people a certain amount of additional social money per day
- protestors are putting on traditional Thai/Chinese opera as a form of protest
- despite all the unrest, it's likely that Thaksin would get elected again apparently! I think this is because he has a lot of support in the poor, uneducated regions of Thailand.

The man himself (picture from Metroblog Bangkok, an interesting team blog based here)



A good source for news about Thailand - The Nation newspaper