Comments on: Surayud splurges on allegiance, sufficiency and well-being

By: Sawarin

Sawarin — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 16:04:28 +0000

Guess where Surayud’s next stop will be after his brief term of administration ended? Backing up by the military, this is a gradual rise of the ‘administrative power’ of the Privy Council.

Now that political parties are in limbo, the concept of democracy is very fragile indeed.

Thailand is, once again, at the mercy of………. (History/God/Capitalist logic/or whatever you’d prefer).

By: Srithanonchai

Srithanonchai — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 11:41:54 +0000

There are also some 1,158 urban governments and 75 PAO. Will they all receive the same amount of money? Disburse for what? Is there any project framework with a statement concerning the expected benefits? Will there be any monitoring and evaluation? Or will the procedure rather follow what was used during the Miyazawa fund? So far, there seem to be more questions than answers. Hopefully, some more details will be made public soon.

Thaksin spent one million baht of a revolving fund for villages and urban communities, not tambons. Anyway, I am quite certain that an equivalent announcement by Thaksin would have caused an outcry by his “regulars.” Let’s see what will follow on Surayud’s announcement.

By: patiwat

patiwat — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 08:10:29 +0000

There were 7254 tambon as of the 2000 census. Spending 10 billion for all of these tambon is equal to about 1.4 million baht each.

Thank you very much, Surayud! This now makes you more of a populist than Thaksin!

Thaksin spent only 1 million baht per tambon, and although some of that was spent on improving “well-being” by buying things like telephones and pickup trucks, much of it was spent on long-term investments.

Bread and circuses, indeed!

By: Srithanonchai

Srithanonchai — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 04:34:08 +0000

Ten billion are no peanuts. The Auditor General might want to get ready to investigate whether this will result in the squandering of public funds for an ill-conceived and implemented pet project. Better start the data gathering now than waiting until everything is done.