New Mandala

11 responses so far ↓

• 1 Grasshopper // Nov 25, 2007 at 8:59 am

  Maybe Thaksin can release his diaries for the PPP to kick against?!

• 2 bystander // Nov 25, 2007 at 1:16 pm

  Yeah, good riddance.
  I hope Howard himself will be unemployed soon.

  Well, I guess on the 24th of December you will have a post called ‘How to say no to military coup’ (that might be premature, but let’s hope not).

• 3 Srithanonchai // Nov 25, 2007 at 3:24 pm

  All right, the Australians managed this without a coup. Message received. Now lets transfer her political structures to Thailand so that people here can emulate this good example. After all, you can reproduce structures in a certain place only if they exist there. It is a harder act to create them.

• 4 Republican // Nov 25, 2007 at 10:19 pm

  No, no, no, no, no! that just won’t do in Thailand.

  The “progressive” political science academics in Thaiand would condemn this as an “electocracy”, or “majority” democracy. Don’t you know that elections are just another way in which the “state” and “capital” in cahoots with “global capital” exploit “the people”? Because you can’t have elections without those terrible, evil people: politicians! Ughhhhhhhh……

  And anyway, the people don’t have enough education to vote sensibly. They just give their votes to anyone who might improve their lives. How selfish.

  What the academics, their media lackeys, the NGOs and their royalist backers behind the scenes want is to lead a courageous “people’s movement” to fight the “state” and “capital” in order to protect the rights of the “community”.

• 5 Aussie // Nov 25, 2007 at 11:19 pm

  Thanks Srithanonchai.

  That was an utterly ridiculous and naive post by Andrew Walker. I know AW has spent a fair bit of time in Thailand so perhaps the kindest interpretation of this silliness is that he was completely shitfaced when he stuck that graphic up at 1.01am.

• 6 Andrew Walker // Nov 26, 2007 at 1:14 am

  Hey Aussie – I am in Europe right now so I was as sober as a judge!

• 7 Colonel Jeru // Nov 26, 2007 at 2:46 am

  Anytime Australia needs lessons about \’peaceful demonstrations\’ to protest against corrupt and extra-judicially killing Prime Ministers who just won\’t leave office, check out Thailand. Or the Philippines, if a second opinion is needed.

  Even on such ordinary routine matters as how to carry out a bloodless military coup without spilling a cup of coffee, we have Thai generals aplenty only willing to oblige.

  But Republican is already crying a river he gets hysterically incoherent on such moments I have to take my leave hastily before I puke.

  BTW who is Kevin Rudd? Never heard of the guy until he won.

• 8 Johpa // Nov 26, 2007 at 5:12 am

  Australia does not need conservative military generals to lead coups, bloodless or otherwise. They have the Governor-General’s office for those purposes. Or are you all too young to remember a certain Prime Minister named Whitlam?

• 9 jonfernquest // Nov 26, 2007 at 4:39 pm

  Two down (Thaksin, Howard), one more to go (Bush).

• 10 Sidh S. // Nov 26, 2007 at 6:56 pm

  Gosh, it is a strange feeling I have. Although I am relieved that Labor has won, but John Howard was the only PM I ever knew in my 10.5 years here!

  He has done a lot of good for Australia (responsible economic manager they say), but also a lot of bad. By slavishly toeing America’s line, the international bad image has also rubbed off on us here (although Aussie pride has risen, as much if not more, due to prowess on the global sports fields as Howard’s revisioning of history). He probably did more harm than good for his own the Liberal Party by not handing leadership to the next generation (Peter Costello etal) much sooner. Australia is now in an interesting situation with both federal and state levels of government monopolized by Labor. With the Greens likely to hold the balance of power in the Senate, we might witness a significant ‘correction’ of Howard’s social and environmental agenda long overdue (unless Kevin Rudd is merely a younger Howard as many suggested and Australians have just voted for more of the same)!

  Lessons for Thailand? Surely there are many – notably related to corruption (internally lack-off – althrough externally a bit more problematic). If you need to ‘buy votes’, buy them via policies and pork-barrelling (this is catching on already though post-TRT). Of course, as Srithanonchai has noted there are significant structural limits. Most notably is ‘conflict’, as we all know, between the the rural poor who has the votes and the urban middle-classes who provides most of the country’s tax revenues… Actually Australia has something slightly comparable with the rural and suburban ‘mortgage belts’ voting Liberal in the past elections (that I followed)…

• 11 Aussie // Dec 3, 2007 at 1:56 am

  That’s even worse, Andrew W. I was out of my skull when the unflushable turd finally got flushed, which is why I feel some justification for the reckless commentary that I engaged in when I finally realised JWH had bobbed down past the S-Bend. But even in my my most drugged moments, I never would have proposed this had lessons for Thailand. G’arn! You’re a secret drinker!

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