Thaksin is out to destroy the educated, smart, wise, hardworking, virtuous middle class!

While the poor are still stupid and rotten and undeserving of their ballots! Oh if only landowners were allowed to vote!

And Thaksin is still in control of elections officials, so much so as to be able to switch ballot boxes, influence exit polls, and basically conspire to hijack the entire election!

Woe to us!

P.S. So what is it, did Thaksin pay the villagers OR did he do the ballot switching? If he did pay the villagers, wouldn’t the ballot box switching be useless? If he could switch ballot boxes, why would he bother paying them off?

If the generals won’t accept the people’s mandate, why hold an election?

Concerning your post No.8:

Wow! Class hatred and anti-Semitism (via replacement theology) in the same post! You should have added a little sexism and gone for the trifecta.

You wrote, “rarely is the majority ever right.”

Indeed. That’s why I agree with your sentiment that we need an elite cabal to micromanage the lives of the general populace. However, the question remains, should our elites be composed of conservative industrial-military aristocrats or leftist academic technocrats? It’s a shame we can’t have a democratic vote as to which group should compose our elitist cabal due to that “certain ex priminister [sic] with deeeep pockets“. And by a ” certain ex priminster” you mean Prem, right?

Since, randomthaiguy4thailand, I’m guessing the sarcasm of the previous paragraph will elude you, allow me to say this; as someone who practiced Judaism for 27 years before entering another spiritual path, forgive me if I believe the Jewish majority of 1st-century Judea were “correct” in your particular example. It’s just a shame that the Roman elites had to interfere. (By the way, just when is “Jesus vs the Jews in 3-D” coming out on DVD? I missed it when it was playing at the local cinema.)

The end of the monarchy may be a laudable objective. The Nepalis have shown the way forward!

In Thailand, I don’t think PPP are the ones to end the monarchy. The monarchy are likely to do that for themselves if they insist on continually trying to manage democratic politics. It is clear that the old men who run the monarchy have been unable to do this over the past 16 months. They tried and failed. Sure, they are scared by PPP. They were also mortified by the demonstrations against Prem. They also realise that the good PPP election showing is a vote against their intervention in politics.

They clearly have some thinking to do.

They need to ensure the monarchy’s position. Maybe the death of Galayani, which can’t be far off, will be an opportunity for more grand shows of allegiance.

However, the polls show that their political time and their influence is more limited than they had imagined.

If one looks for the silver lining in the election, it is that the people of the N and NE have shown great determination not to be dictated to any more. Indeed, it seems the military were the big buyers of votes in those regions, and they largely failed!

That’s a good lesson for the military. Their royalist coup failed.

I think the military-royalist coalition now has a choice. Back away and support democratic development or use the bureaucracy and military (through the security laws and constitution they engineered) to limit popular sovereignty. If they opt for the second path (and maybe they are so arrogant that they will), then they risk their own privileged positions.

Here at New Mandala HQ, we expect that local results from across the country will start to dribble in from 7:45 pm Canberra time. Substantial national tallies may start to become available a few hours after that. Some of the Thai media has reported that major results won’t be known until much later in the evening but given the way ballots are being counted it seems likely that indicative results will become clear early on.

Thanks for asking…and sorry I can’t be more certain about it.

Best wishes,

Nich