Politics, Thai Style

I've neglected to give an update on Thai politics in a bit, as I've been focusing on the U.S presidential race. Another reason is that I was in the habit for quite a while of reading the paper at breakfast for updates, and I've slacked off that lately.

The PPP party did manage to form a coalition government with the former Bangkok mayor and always interesting Samak Sundaravej as Prime Minister. Unlike in many western democracies, the civilian government here does not have complete control over the military. The reassignment of military personnel for example, is not within the purview of the PM. He is part of a group that consists mostly of high ranking military officers which decide such changes. This is important, because the success of a military coup is highly dependent on the loyalty of officers at the level of colonel.

There is some also some non-elected body that retains some power here. I'm really not certain of how it all works together as I've never read a good explanation.

One thing that is certain is that Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej didn't take long to stir up controversy. For those of you not in the know, Samak is an old political veteran called in to lead the PPP, the successor to the now defunct Thai Rak Thai party which was led by deposed PM Thaksin. Samak has a reputation for losing his cool with reporters and saying some pretty outrageous statements.

In a recent interview with CNN, Samak declared that only one person had been killed in the 1976 anti-dictatorship protests staged by students at Thammasat University. The official police count of deaths resulting from the protests is forty-six, although students claimed it was well into the hundreds. Samak has been accused by many of having stirred up anti-communism sentiment that led to the massacre. Interestingly, some of the student leaders of the protests are Samak supporters.

The first Samak quote of interest that I heard was around bribes and election fraud. He stated that it wasn't really that serious of an issue because people didn't die because of bribes and fraud. Personally, I think that in a country with extreme poverty, institutional corruption perpetuates poverty, ensuring that decisions are made for the personal gain of those with power instead of for the best interest of the people. In other words, how many people die of starvation because project A was chosen over project B because project B's owner paid someone off.