As Yingluck Shinawatra settles into the first couple of months of her ersatz premiership, she and other members of what is ostensibly her government continued accruing headlines where they insisted, assured, denied – and occasionally shirked and dismissed – that whatever it was that they were up to that day was not aimed at benefiting Thaksin Shinawatra, [...]
Archive for ‘2011’
Longer Trains Desperately Needed on the BTS Sukhumvit Line
Posted: 7th September 2011 by bangkokdave in 2011Tags: Bangkok, Bangkok Mass Transit, Bearing, BTS, commuter trains, mass transit, Silom Line, Skytrain, subways, Sukhumvit, Sukhumvit Line, Thailand
Published as a column in The Nation (with comments on ThaiVisa) on September 5, 2011 From the day BTS extended its Sukhumvit Line from On Nut to Bearing, the rush-hour commute on that line has become… well, unbearable. With a reported 100,000 additional daily commuters using the extended line, every train headed in the direction of Bangkok’s Central [...]
Published in The Nation as a short essay, August 10, 2011 Yingluck Shinawatra has just been officially endorsed as Thailand’s first female prime minister. Her election may well be historic, but is it any sort of victory for feminism? Based on the circumstances of Yingluck’s rise to power, that seems highly unlikely. First, both Yingluck’s [...]
With Yingluck Shinawatra about to be officially signed, sealed and delivered (well, maybe not sealed) as Thailand’s new PM, the shadow of the man who created her candidacy and called her his ‘clone’ – her big brother and the fugitive ex-PM Thaksin Shinawatra – continues to loom large. While both Yingluck’s supporters and detractors know [...]
Vote-Buying in Thailand: Mundane, Possibly Deadly In the wake of Thailand’s general election came the inevitable allegations of voting irregularities, including vote-buying. Vote-buying is an endemic problem inThailand, part and parcel of its political culture and a major symptom of the wider corruption prevalent in its society. Some vote-buying occurs among the urban poor, but [...]
Thaksin Shinawatra is not involved in politics. His sister Yingluck Shinawatra, who has just been elected as Thailand’s prime minister on a ticket of her big brother’s Pheu Thai (PT) party, does not take orders from him. Talks in Dubai (or is it Brunei?) that involve Thaksin and prominent Thai politicians are not about cabinet [...]
A Big Defeat – and a Small Victory – for Thailand’s Democrats
Posted: 5th July 2011 by bangkokdave in 2011Democrats Lose Thailand’s 2011 General Election but Secure a Crucial Win in Bangkok Yesterday, on July 3, Pheu Thai (PT), Thaksin Shinawatra’s proxy party, scored a decisive victory over the Democrats,Thailand’s ruling party since 2008. At last count, PT had won 265 parliamentary seats to Democrats’ 159 (updated from 262-160 on the graphic above). As [...]
A personal report from the Democrat rally at Rajprasong, held on Thursday, June 23, 2011, as part of their campaign during Thailand’s general election. As my motorbike taxi approached Rajprasong intersection, there seemed to be tension in the air. Rain had recently passed but the darkening sky was still grey. The traffic on Ploenchit Road [...]
Published in The Nation, June 24, 2011 A little over a year ago, groups of men associated with the red shirt protest, set fire to nearly 40 major building in Bangkok, including the city’s premier shopping complex, Central World, as well as several government buildings in the provinces. Today, core red-shirt leaders including Natthawut Saikua, [...]
Arisman’s Unique Set of “Constitutional Rights”
Posted: 12th December 2011 by bangkokdave in 2011Tags: Arisman, Arisman Pongruangrong, Arisman's bail, arson, insurrection, Pheu Thai, PT, red shirt protest, red shirts, Thai politics, Thailand, Thaksin, UDD
In a recent interview with the Bangkok Post, hardline red-shirt leader Arisman Pongruangrong, who turned himself in to the DSI last week after spending more than a year on the run from Thai justice, has made a number of statements typical of the man’s complete disconnect from reality. Hilariously, he proclaimed that “I have exercised my [...]