Thailand with massive marches? Give me a break, these people are just a collection of malcontents with nothing better to do. They lost the election last year and are now doing everything possible to discredit the new Prime Minister and his Cabinet. I was in Bangkok - China Town, during the last part of June. The so called massive marches took place a little over 4 blocks from where my hotel was. These malcontents were causing traffic jams all over the center part of Bangkok, but little else. Starting at the Democracy Monument and then moving to the Government House after 30+ days of demonstrations. Originally they were calling for a confidence vote and trying to prevent changes being voted on to the Thailand's Consitution. The Peoples Democratic Party was using the press to sway public opion and to gain international attention. Guess it worked with the international press but the Thai's I talked to were ready for the whinners to go back home. .
The standing Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej and his cabinet gave the PDP what they originally wanted. This only empowered the PDP and they continued the protest adding additional issues. The PDP have called for resigination of the Prime Minister, Interior Minister, and many others. They were also trying to make a issue of a pending World Heratige Site in Cambodia. Concerning a Temple site and boarder area that the World Court ruled on forty years ago. What this has to do with the present ruling government, who knows. But it makes good press. Ha! Ha!
In the USA what the PDP is doing would have been labelled as actively trying to overthrow the standing government. They would have been met at the Government House by armed troops and hauled off to the closest prison. Yea we support free speach in the USA.
The week I left Bangkok, the feeling of the majority of the Thai's I talked to. Was summed up by the PM saying, "Nothing was going to be done to the protesters as long as they are having fun." IMO the PM is giving these people just enough rope to hang themselves. Though according to the Interior Minister, "These protesters were in voilation of Thai Law and were looking at 6 year prison terms." I'm sure something is going to happen. But to give the PDP any credibility is just sad.
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Corruption actually raises the stakes in a number of ways: it makes office-holding in places like India and elsewhere extremely lucrative. That makes leaders even more reluctant to leave office graciously. Being forced into the opposition can mean a serious financial loss—as well as possible legal trouble.
Fortunately, there are recent signs that Asian voters are slowly starting to reject politics as blood sport. Roh's impeachment earned him great public sympathy in Korea, boosting his party to a parliamentary win in 2004, and a majority of voters are now turning on the current protests as well. "If political attacks become too irrational or extreme, people come to their senses," says Prof. Lee Jung Hee of Hankook University of Foreign Studies in Seoul. The president's approval rating has rebounded from single digits in early June to about 20 percent today (several apologies and a cabinet reshuffle didn't hurt). Taiwan has grown much more stable since early this decade, when opposition leaders refused to even call the then President Chen by his title, tried to oust him through street protests and claimed he'd rigged an assassination on his own life (despite a total lack of evidence). Professor Liao says those events were actually a "vaccination" that made Taiwanese democracy stronger.
The real cost of the chaos, however, is the policies these nations have had to abandon in the process. South Korea's growth rate has slipped from 7 percent in 2002 to about 4 percent this year, and it could badly have used a shot in the arm. But since the protests began, Lee has had to step away from some of his bolder reform proposals. Thailand, too, faces a stalled economy, a serious food crisis and a stark rich-poor divide—which its gridlocked government is unlikely to address. In India, while Congress has weathered a many storms, reform has also ground to a halt, and the grand nuclear deal—which could have finally vaulted India into true great-power status—seems unlikely to survive attacks from the left. Constitutions and the trappings of democracy will probably persevere, in other words, as will individual leaders, but that's cold consolation for the region's citizens, who face lean times in the months ahead.
With Jonathan Adams in Taipei, B. J. Lee in Seoul, Sudip Mazumdar in New Delhi and Jaimie Seaton in Bangkok
© 2008
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