Mr Pundit (#4): Thanks for the article, though I’m not sure why you’re so enamored of that particular comment.
A lending busines, whether micro or macro, is all about risk management. To make the business model work, your revenues must cover your operating expenses and capital costs; and your revenues are in turn a function of the amount you lend, your default rate, and the interest rate that the payers pay.
Banks try to lend large amounts of money to a few borrowers they consider safe because that lowers their operating costs (large borrowers means fewer of them to deal with) and limits your default rate; however the cost is in a low interest rate.
Loan sharks on the other hand compensate the other way – to finance their high operating costs, they charge very high interest rates and ensure repayment through unsavory means that keep them from being legitimate.
Microlenders (and increasingly they call themselves micro-financiers, indicating expansion into insurance, deposits, and other financial services), challenge both business models by creating new systems and processes (like group lending) to simultaneously lower operating costs and defaults. How they do this varies widely, as does the performance of various microcredit institutions. Some are destined forever to stay charities, some are attracting hedge fund backers, some are being acquired by tradiional banks.
My issue with SML and other Thaksin era programs is that I’ve been unable to find much operational details or outcome data about them despite having asked people working in those programs. That in itself I find problematic, though I doubt this new cast of clowns will make things any more transparent.
Or bullcrap like this in the so-called “praise Thaksin” board:
Remember the broke of Bird Flu, or the Tsunami, there was always Thanksin Shinawatra, the only
prime misnister who dared eat stacks of chicken in front of the media camera to prove how brave
he really was. How impressed we were, watching the Premier and his Thai-Rak-Thai politicians on TV actively and promptly involved in the rescue of the Tsunami victims?
The whole “debate” is a joke. The anti-Thaksin board is full of trolls who are giving him back-handed praise, and the pro-Thaksin board is full of back-handed contempt.
How else can you explain anti-Thaksin crap on the like this: Another example is the airport. Everybody knows it is a problem. It has forced PM Surayud to reopen Don Muang and already several airlines have threatened to stop services to Thailand. But since you can’t stand to lose face, you bribed 60 airlines, the AoT, the Civil Aviation Department, into claiming that the airport is safe and sound. You even found a way to bribe one of your loudest enemies, Tortrakul Yomnak, into saying that the airport was safe and the cost of fixing would be absurdly low. It is clear that no Thai institution is safe from your claws.
or pro-Thaksin crap like this: Sometimes you had lots of officials and important people gathered around agreeing with everything you said – which added to the importance of your personage. I liked it when you and all your closest officials would wear starched white naval uniforms. I was impressed that you all had fliers wings on the collars. Are you all naval pilots? Listening to you speak was like having a friend say he would always pay money to make things better.
Mr Walker – are you seriously suggesting a “checklist” for determining whether a policy or government is “populist”? Oh dear, where to even begin…
“Populism” simply means rule by the people (latin: populus=people); that’s it. It’s not inherently liberal nor conservative, but it calls for direct appeal to masses rather than any smaller body of elites. The more a system appeals to masses, the more populist it is.
“Elements of populism” can be derived from two directions – first, by looking at elements that are more prevalent in populist systems than non-populist systems; or by looking a distribution of specific elements across populist systems themselves. However, to use these elements to define and identify populism would be tautological and incorrect. Rather, whether a system is populist or not must be defined by it’s appeal to the people, and then the other elements examined to see whether it fits the general definition or is an aberrant case.
Most modern systems of government have populist elements to them – it’s hard to find many governments which have NO appeal to their populations. Similarly, most governments and systems also have implicit recognition that pure populism must be tempered – for example any representative system is somewhat anti-populist since it establishes an elite rather than relying on constant referenda. Civil and human rights can also be anti-populist in that they establish lines which popular sentiment cannot cross – while ironically laying the foundation for populism.
The terms is used with a misleading negative connotation in the Thai discourse and that’s a shame. An honest discussion would look at the benefits and problems inherent in policies and governments, not try to describe them with a word that no one understands in order to manipulate opinion. It’s far more useful to look at whether loans made to villages are being spent on productive enterprise rather than just label them “populist” and therefore undoubtedly bad.
Srithanonchai: I must apologize, I didn’t realize that you were merely suggesting that I write a grant proposal to develop and empirically test a model of Thai rural politics. Are you telling me that in the history of “Thai studies” such a thing has never been done? It seems the field is in worse shape than I had thought.
I also notice your confusion between “validated survey instrument” and “the usual sense of administering a questionnaire.” Having already berated me for not noticing “people” vs. “the poor” in another article, I’m surprised at your presumption – especially after “two decades” of “collecting data.”
I’m sure you understand that proper data collection occurs *after* hypothesis generation – otherwise, you wind up with “research artifacts.” So, of course that must mean that your data collection was done in order to test some hypothesis – you wouldn’t make a major mistake like collecting a pile of data and then later trying to make findings out of them, would you? Of course not – so what were your hypotheses and what did you find?
Finally, your definition of “validity” is one I’ve not encountered before. Are you basically saying that “validity” means that observers did not lie about what they’ve observed? That’s fascinating – because to me validity means replicability, and therefore predictive value. Hence, validity requires multiple trials, inevitably leading to a quantitative dimension (Trial 1, Trial 2, etc.), which is why I was curious about your reference to “qualitative validity.”
Perhaps “TITS” – This Is Thai Studies – an academic field where technicalities are jettisoned in favor of popular usage. Where “survey” means “questionnaire”, where “validity” means “not lying”, where data is collected to develop hypotheses rather than test them… in short a field where science has no presence. Fair enough. Please do carry on.
Mr Srithanonchai – are we in violent agreement here? We both agree that science has had little impact on social understanding – though I contend that’s because hardly anyone uses it.
Your comment about presenting “research artifacts … as the scientific truth” is illuminating. Research should be aimed at validating or disproving a hypothesis, therefore, no “artifact” can ever legitimately be called a “scientific result” – if there is an unforeseen result, it must then be input into a new hypothesis and experiment before being called scientific anything (and “truth” is not a very popular word in science).
Ten good Thai studies works? That’s a tall order. I have yet to see any works regarding Thai society that I have any scientific validity- but I am not a professional, and all I see are in the popular press or on web-boards like this, so maybe there’s a wealth of excellent research out there that I’ve not seen. My presence here is part of an attempt to find some. It’s been rather unsuccessful so far.
It also seems unproductive to me to “eagerly await” work by a non-professional with no exprience or knowledge in a particular area, but if that’s the best you can do, don’t let me stop you.
Mr W: “Scientific method” is not “my position” – it is a means of rational inquiry that goes back to the greeks and egyptians. If this is unfamiliar to you, I suggest a quick google search or check the wikipedia entry under “scientific method”. I would be most curious to hear “complicated, pluralistic and contested” views on this. Of course, one is free to concoct one’s views out of any method, but if it’s not scientific method, it ain’t science. Call it something else, please.
Your statement that “predictability in the hard sciences is easy” makes me wonder how much exposure you’ve had to hard sciences. Outcomes in biology, chemistry and even physics (some would say especially physics) are routinely described in terms of probability distributions – these nuances are usually lost by the time the outcomes get to a lay audience, but if you dig deeply into any result, you’ll see p-values, confidence intervals and outliers. Very few scientific results mean “definitive predictability”, and in fact major advances in science are due to the lack of being able to predict everything.
Further, I find it curious how you feel that “social interactions among humans are emergent, dialectical and dynamic, and thus inherently UNpredictable”- are you seriously claiming that social interactions are more complicated than, say, the birth of the universe, planetary evolution, liver function, or bacterial reproduction? In the absense of systematic study all of these seem like random acts of God. I would suggest that this “inherent unpredictability” of which you speak is a pretty good indication of the poor quality of work that has been done in these fields.
I’m not out to “convince practitioners of other social sciences that your position is the accepted, common sense point of view”, I understand that’s a waste of time. I am looking for approaches to social and political issues that take a scientific approach – meaning developing and testing hypotheses based on proper sampling techniques, data collection, and analysis. Sadly, all I see are varied observations and opinions. I’ve already got Fox News for that, thanks.
I am not sure about the “nature of modern democracy” and the interpretation of winners and losers as being about “national” rifts and fights needing subsequent “reconciliation” under the guardianship of some self-appointed organ claiming that it had the national interest at heart. I haven’t seen European electoral contests or political conflicts in this light, really.
Winners & losers – unfortunately, that’s the nature of modern democracy, and it’s not only a Thai concept.
If there is a new election this year, then democracy in Thailand will have been ‘reset’.
Time will tell if the outcome is any better than the before – a lot will depend on whether people have learnt anything.
The epistemology and methodology of contemporary social sciences is much more complicated, pluralistic and contested that your deceptively definitive claims would suggest. But you do get to the hear to the issue in your latest post: predictability. The problem of course is that predictability in the hard sciences is easy as you are dealing with substances without consciousness. But that is most definately not the case when dealing with humans, which is why most practitioners of modern social sciences recognize the need for standards of epistemological and methodological legitimacy that don’t simply mimic the hard sciences. Social interactions among humans are emergent, dialectical and dynamic, and thus inherently UNpredictable. If science means definitive predictability, then the social sciences CANNOT be a science in those terms, from this perspective. We could get into lots of interesting debates about what adequate predictability for the social sciences should consist of, and whether in fact predictability should be the sole or even primary standard of adequacy for social scientific research, but that would involve a very long, very complicated, and very philosophical debate that would be ultimately distracting.
Suffice to say, I agree with the prior post by Mr. Haughton, and would add that there are even more models of generally accepted social scientific research beyond the statistical and the case study. I would propose, however, that your assertions about the idea (in the singular) of accepted social scientific methodology would not be widely agreed with, as you have stated them here, if you queried the governing boards of most modern social scientific disciplinary associations. I suspect that in part you are actually inserting into this discussion a debate over method and epistemology between economics and other social sciences. And we all know that economics, sociology, anthropology and other social sciences have distinctly different ideas about what consitutes adequate social science. But my main point is this: you will need a great deal more philosophical nuance and robustness in your argument to convince practitioners of other social sciences that your position is the accepted, common sense point of view.
Patiwat you were ‘cheating’ in the Nation debate. You were editing both the ‘Pro-Thaksin’ and ‘Anti-Thaksin’ arguments (you cannot deny it, because your name was in ‘Last Edited by” line.)
Patiwat so which side are you for anyway ? Editing the ‘other’ side to muddy their case perhaps?
But why should, in a democracy, differences in political opinion be interpreted as rifts, or even as fights? Or has this to do with the highly personalized and emotional nature of Thai political culture, where there must be a winner and a loser?
Democracy cannot be reset, because it is not something that can be imposed, handed down, or granted from above. It is a system that can only grow & develop from the bottom up. If you think it can be “reset” then you really don’t understand democracy. This lesson is also being learnt by the Bush Administration and the Neocons who thought they could turn Iraq into a flower of democracy in the MidEast by simply removing Saddam.
I can only hope that democracy is not dead in Thailand, and that the saying “what does not kill you will make you stronger” holds for it.
That’s populism? It sounds more like self-sufficiency. Or maybe Kevin Hewison was basing that on an interview with with Somkid Jatusripitak 🙂
Populism, to me, is more about:
– upward mobility for the lower classes,
– access to credit (and a certain faith that people can responsibly manage it),
– local access to health-clinics (and not just big hospitals in big cities),
– local access to high-quality schools (and not just elite schools in urban areas),
– local access to adult education,
– faith in local elections (and no poll taxes),
– local roads and infrastructure
– cheap energy (since the poor spend a greater percentage of their income on energy than the rich)
– land reform and income redistribution
These have been the central tenets of populism since the days of Huey Long.
I’m not sure if there is an official definintion of ‘national reconciliation’, but I used the phrase in the context of most people getting on with things for the good of the country (rather than continuing the rift/argument/fight).
I can see some hope of that happening after the new election (without Thaksin), IF people act with goodwill.
I know it’s a big IF, but I could not see any chance of it happening under Thaksin.
And Somkid’s old pal, Sonthi Limthongkul, is also back with the government. This time as its propaganda mouth piece. Needless to say, Chermsak Pinthong also got his TV program back. But don’t hold your breath that the same will happen with Samak Suntharavej and Dusit Siriwan…
Surayud defends Sondhi’s controversial TV programme
Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont Friday defend the controversial TV programme of media tycoon Sondhi Limthongkul as a proactive public relations campaign of the government.
Surayud said he thought there was nothing wrong with the Yam Phao Paen Din programme broadcast on Channel 11.
When asked to comment on rising criticism against the TV programme, Surayud replied: “We were criticized when we were not proactive but when we did it, we were criticised again.”
When asked whether Sondhi’s programme was proactive PR campaigns to retaliate against media blitz of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Surayud said: “A proactive PR campaign does not need to a retaliation”.
I still wonder about “national reconciliation.” What exactly is this supposed to be, and why should it be neccessary? Is it not rather a propaganda instrument created by the royalist-bureaucratic-military forces in order to put themselves above democratic politics again?
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Sufficiency makeover: р╕Ьр╕▒р╕Бр╕Кр╕╡р╣Вр╕гр╕вр╕лр╕Щр╣Йр╕▓
Mr Pundit (#4): Thanks for the article, though I’m not sure why you’re so enamored of that particular comment.
A lending busines, whether micro or macro, is all about risk management. To make the business model work, your revenues must cover your operating expenses and capital costs; and your revenues are in turn a function of the amount you lend, your default rate, and the interest rate that the payers pay.
Banks try to lend large amounts of money to a few borrowers they consider safe because that lowers their operating costs (large borrowers means fewer of them to deal with) and limits your default rate; however the cost is in a low interest rate.
Loan sharks on the other hand compensate the other way – to finance their high operating costs, they charge very high interest rates and ensure repayment through unsavory means that keep them from being legitimate.
Microlenders (and increasingly they call themselves micro-financiers, indicating expansion into insurance, deposits, and other financial services), challenge both business models by creating new systems and processes (like group lending) to simultaneously lower operating costs and defaults. How they do this varies widely, as does the performance of various microcredit institutions. Some are destined forever to stay charities, some are attracting hedge fund backers, some are being acquired by tradiional banks.
My issue with SML and other Thaksin era programs is that I’ve been unable to find much operational details or outcome data about them despite having asked people working in those programs. That in itself I find problematic, though I doubt this new cast of clowns will make things any more transparent.
Best regards,
HP Boothe
The Nation’s innovative Thaksin debate
Or bullcrap like this in the so-called “praise Thaksin” board:
Remember the broke of Bird Flu, or the Tsunami, there was always Thanksin Shinawatra, the only
prime misnister who dared eat stacks of chicken in front of the media camera to prove how brave
he really was. How impressed we were, watching the Premier and his Thai-Rak-Thai politicians on TV actively and promptly involved in the rescue of the Tsunami victims?
The Nation’s innovative Thaksin debate
The whole “debate” is a joke. The anti-Thaksin board is full of trolls who are giving him back-handed praise, and the pro-Thaksin board is full of back-handed contempt.
How else can you explain anti-Thaksin crap on the like this:
Another example is the airport. Everybody knows it is a problem. It has forced PM Surayud to reopen Don Muang and already several airlines have threatened to stop services to Thailand. But since you can’t stand to lose face, you bribed 60 airlines, the AoT, the Civil Aviation Department, into claiming that the airport is safe and sound. You even found a way to bribe one of your loudest enemies, Tortrakul Yomnak, into saying that the airport was safe and the cost of fixing would be absurdly low. It is clear that no Thai institution is safe from your claws.
or pro-Thaksin crap like this:
Sometimes you had lots of officials and important people gathered around agreeing with everything you said – which added to the importance of your personage. I liked it when you and all your closest officials would wear starched white naval uniforms. I was impressed that you all had fliers wings on the collars. Are you all naval pilots? Listening to you speak was like having a friend say he would always pay money to make things better.
Populism
Populism is to Self-sufficiency what Capitalism is to Christianity.
Pretty much irrelevant….
They aren’t opposites – the two are just totally unrelated.
Mekong Post
Pardon me for appearing cynical, but is this by-monthly journal of life in Chiang Khong district aimed at the people of Chiang Khong district?
Or is it aimed at teary-eyed academics who persist on imposing their own perspectives on what is happening in that district?
Populism
Mr Walker – are you seriously suggesting a “checklist” for determining whether a policy or government is “populist”? Oh dear, where to even begin…
“Populism” simply means rule by the people (latin: populus=people); that’s it. It’s not inherently liberal nor conservative, but it calls for direct appeal to masses rather than any smaller body of elites. The more a system appeals to masses, the more populist it is.
“Elements of populism” can be derived from two directions – first, by looking at elements that are more prevalent in populist systems than non-populist systems; or by looking a distribution of specific elements across populist systems themselves. However, to use these elements to define and identify populism would be tautological and incorrect. Rather, whether a system is populist or not must be defined by it’s appeal to the people, and then the other elements examined to see whether it fits the general definition or is an aberrant case.
Most modern systems of government have populist elements to them – it’s hard to find many governments which have NO appeal to their populations. Similarly, most governments and systems also have implicit recognition that pure populism must be tempered – for example any representative system is somewhat anti-populist since it establishes an elite rather than relying on constant referenda. Civil and human rights can also be anti-populist in that they establish lines which popular sentiment cannot cross – while ironically laying the foundation for populism.
The terms is used with a misleading negative connotation in the Thai discourse and that’s a shame. An honest discussion would look at the benefits and problems inherent in policies and governments, not try to describe them with a word that no one understands in order to manipulate opinion. It’s far more useful to look at whether loans made to villages are being spent on productive enterprise rather than just label them “populist” and therefore undoubtedly bad.
Best regards,
HP Boothe
The poor stay poor, the rich stay rich
Srithanonchai: I must apologize, I didn’t realize that you were merely suggesting that I write a grant proposal to develop and empirically test a model of Thai rural politics. Are you telling me that in the history of “Thai studies” such a thing has never been done? It seems the field is in worse shape than I had thought.
I also notice your confusion between “validated survey instrument” and “the usual sense of administering a questionnaire.” Having already berated me for not noticing “people” vs. “the poor” in another article, I’m surprised at your presumption – especially after “two decades” of “collecting data.”
I’m sure you understand that proper data collection occurs *after* hypothesis generation – otherwise, you wind up with “research artifacts.” So, of course that must mean that your data collection was done in order to test some hypothesis – you wouldn’t make a major mistake like collecting a pile of data and then later trying to make findings out of them, would you? Of course not – so what were your hypotheses and what did you find?
Finally, your definition of “validity” is one I’ve not encountered before. Are you basically saying that “validity” means that observers did not lie about what they’ve observed? That’s fascinating – because to me validity means replicability, and therefore predictive value. Hence, validity requires multiple trials, inevitably leading to a quantitative dimension (Trial 1, Trial 2, etc.), which is why I was curious about your reference to “qualitative validity.”
Perhaps “TITS” – This Is Thai Studies – an academic field where technicalities are jettisoned in favor of popular usage. Where “survey” means “questionnaire”, where “validity” means “not lying”, where data is collected to develop hypotheses rather than test them… in short a field where science has no presence. Fair enough. Please do carry on.
Best regards,
HP Boothe
Sufficiency economy, insufficient money
Mr Srithanonchai – are we in violent agreement here? We both agree that science has had little impact on social understanding – though I contend that’s because hardly anyone uses it.
Your comment about presenting “research artifacts … as the scientific truth” is illuminating. Research should be aimed at validating or disproving a hypothesis, therefore, no “artifact” can ever legitimately be called a “scientific result” – if there is an unforeseen result, it must then be input into a new hypothesis and experiment before being called scientific anything (and “truth” is not a very popular word in science).
Ten good Thai studies works? That’s a tall order. I have yet to see any works regarding Thai society that I have any scientific validity- but I am not a professional, and all I see are in the popular press or on web-boards like this, so maybe there’s a wealth of excellent research out there that I’ve not seen. My presence here is part of an attempt to find some. It’s been rather unsuccessful so far.
It also seems unproductive to me to “eagerly await” work by a non-professional with no exprience or knowledge in a particular area, but if that’s the best you can do, don’t let me stop you.
Best regards,
HP Boothe
From the archives: funding funerals
Mr W: “Scientific method” is not “my position” – it is a means of rational inquiry that goes back to the greeks and egyptians. If this is unfamiliar to you, I suggest a quick google search or check the wikipedia entry under “scientific method”. I would be most curious to hear “complicated, pluralistic and contested” views on this. Of course, one is free to concoct one’s views out of any method, but if it’s not scientific method, it ain’t science. Call it something else, please.
Your statement that “predictability in the hard sciences is easy” makes me wonder how much exposure you’ve had to hard sciences. Outcomes in biology, chemistry and even physics (some would say especially physics) are routinely described in terms of probability distributions – these nuances are usually lost by the time the outcomes get to a lay audience, but if you dig deeply into any result, you’ll see p-values, confidence intervals and outliers. Very few scientific results mean “definitive predictability”, and in fact major advances in science are due to the lack of being able to predict everything.
Further, I find it curious how you feel that “social interactions among humans are emergent, dialectical and dynamic, and thus inherently UNpredictable”- are you seriously claiming that social interactions are more complicated than, say, the birth of the universe, planetary evolution, liver function, or bacterial reproduction? In the absense of systematic study all of these seem like random acts of God. I would suggest that this “inherent unpredictability” of which you speak is a pretty good indication of the poor quality of work that has been done in these fields.
I’m not out to “convince practitioners of other social sciences that your position is the accepted, common sense point of view”, I understand that’s a waste of time. I am looking for approaches to social and political issues that take a scientific approach – meaning developing and testing hypotheses based on proper sampling techniques, data collection, and analysis. Sadly, all I see are varied observations and opinions. I’ve already got Fox News for that, thanks.
Best regards,
HPBoothe
The Nation’s innovative Thaksin debate
I am not sure about the “nature of modern democracy” and the interpretation of winners and losers as being about “national” rifts and fights needing subsequent “reconciliation” under the guardianship of some self-appointed organ claiming that it had the national interest at heart. I haven’t seen European electoral contests or political conflicts in this light, really.
The Nation’s innovative Thaksin debate
Winners & losers – unfortunately, that’s the nature of modern democracy, and it’s not only a Thai concept.
If there is a new election this year, then democracy in Thailand will have been ‘reset’.
Time will tell if the outcome is any better than the before – a lot will depend on whether people have learnt anything.
From the archives: funding funerals
Mr. Boothe,
The epistemology and methodology of contemporary social sciences is much more complicated, pluralistic and contested that your deceptively definitive claims would suggest. But you do get to the hear to the issue in your latest post: predictability. The problem of course is that predictability in the hard sciences is easy as you are dealing with substances without consciousness. But that is most definately not the case when dealing with humans, which is why most practitioners of modern social sciences recognize the need for standards of epistemological and methodological legitimacy that don’t simply mimic the hard sciences. Social interactions among humans are emergent, dialectical and dynamic, and thus inherently UNpredictable. If science means definitive predictability, then the social sciences CANNOT be a science in those terms, from this perspective. We could get into lots of interesting debates about what adequate predictability for the social sciences should consist of, and whether in fact predictability should be the sole or even primary standard of adequacy for social scientific research, but that would involve a very long, very complicated, and very philosophical debate that would be ultimately distracting.
Suffice to say, I agree with the prior post by Mr. Haughton, and would add that there are even more models of generally accepted social scientific research beyond the statistical and the case study. I would propose, however, that your assertions about the idea (in the singular) of accepted social scientific methodology would not be widely agreed with, as you have stated them here, if you queried the governing boards of most modern social scientific disciplinary associations. I suspect that in part you are actually inserting into this discussion a debate over method and epistemology between economics and other social sciences. And we all know that economics, sociology, anthropology and other social sciences have distinctly different ideas about what consitutes adequate social science. But my main point is this: you will need a great deal more philosophical nuance and robustness in your argument to convince practitioners of other social sciences that your position is the accepted, common sense point of view.
The Nation’s innovative Thaksin debate
Patiwat you were ‘cheating’ in the Nation debate. You were editing both the ‘Pro-Thaksin’ and ‘Anti-Thaksin’ arguments (you cannot deny it, because your name was in ‘Last Edited by” line.)
Patiwat so which side are you for anyway ? Editing the ‘other’ side to muddy their case perhaps?
The Nation’s innovative Thaksin debate
But why should, in a democracy, differences in political opinion be interpreted as rifts, or even as fights? Or has this to do with the highly personalized and emotional nature of Thai political culture, where there must be a winner and a loser?
The Nation’s innovative Thaksin debate
Democracy cannot be reset, because it is not something that can be imposed, handed down, or granted from above. It is a system that can only grow & develop from the bottom up. If you think it can be “reset” then you really don’t understand democracy. This lesson is also being learnt by the Bush Administration and the Neocons who thought they could turn Iraq into a flower of democracy in the MidEast by simply removing Saddam.
I can only hope that democracy is not dead in Thailand, and that the saying “what does not kill you will make you stronger” holds for it.
Populism
That’s populism? It sounds more like self-sufficiency. Or maybe Kevin Hewison was basing that on an interview with with Somkid Jatusripitak 🙂
Populism, to me, is more about:
– upward mobility for the lower classes,
– access to credit (and a certain faith that people can responsibly manage it),
– local access to health-clinics (and not just big hospitals in big cities),
– local access to high-quality schools (and not just elite schools in urban areas),
– local access to adult education,
– faith in local elections (and no poll taxes),
– local roads and infrastructure
– cheap energy (since the poor spend a greater percentage of their income on energy than the rich)
– land reform and income redistribution
These have been the central tenets of populism since the days of Huey Long.
The Nation’s innovative Thaksin debate
I’m not sure if there is an official definintion of ‘national reconciliation’, but I used the phrase in the context of most people getting on with things for the good of the country (rather than continuing the rift/argument/fight).
I can see some hope of that happening after the new election (without Thaksin), IF people act with goodwill.
I know it’s a big IF, but I could not see any chance of it happening under Thaksin.
Nothing to do with politics
The Old Soldier still knows a trick or two.
Coup de grace, perhaps.
Nothing to do with politics
And Somkid’s old pal, Sonthi Limthongkul, is also back with the government. This time as its propaganda mouth piece. Needless to say, Chermsak Pinthong also got his TV program back. But don’t hold your breath that the same will happen with Samak Suntharavej and Dusit Siriwan…
Surayud defends Sondhi’s controversial TV programme
Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont Friday defend the controversial TV programme of media tycoon Sondhi Limthongkul as a proactive public relations campaign of the government.
Surayud said he thought there was nothing wrong with the Yam Phao Paen Din programme broadcast on Channel 11.
When asked to comment on rising criticism against the TV programme, Surayud replied: “We were criticized when we were not proactive but when we did it, we were criticised again.”
When asked whether Sondhi’s programme was proactive PR campaigns to retaliate against media blitz of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Surayud said: “A proactive PR campaign does not need to a retaliation”.
The Nation, February 16, 2007 (web version)
The Nation’s innovative Thaksin debate
I still wonder about “national reconciliation.” What exactly is this supposed to be, and why should it be neccessary? Is it not rather a propaganda instrument created by the royalist-bureaucratic-military forces in order to put themselves above democratic politics again?