Yingluck Indicted by Junta Appointed Legislature

[TotallyOz]

I am not sure why they decided to pursue this or aggressively go after an ex-Prime Minister but this may be more trouble for them than what it is worth.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/world/asia/in-impeaching-ex-premier-junta-revives-thailands-divisions.html

[vinapu]

 but this may be more trouble for them than what it is worth.

 

 

hope you are right, unwillingly perhaps they are creating martyr

[Guest shamahan]

I am not sure why they decided to pursue this or aggressively go after an ex-Prime Minister 

 

 

What else did you expect? Besides, in case of possible elections (which I doubt will happen anytime soon), she would win again hands down. And now she is out for at least 5 years.

[Guest abang1961]

 

I am not sure why they decided to pursue this or aggressively go after an ex-Prime Minister 

 

 

 

Every generation blames the one before.. 

Every time a new leader is appointed (by the public or otherwise), he belittle the previous regime.

 

As a causal tourist, I really think that the "old" money is most dis-satisfied with the "new" money.

Mind sets need to change with time and as far as I can see, things are moving very slowly in Thailand.

Thailand needs to beef up its infrastructure and revamp its education system.

 

As a teacher for many years, I have visited Thai schools several times and the lack of English in the syllabus is my major concern.  No, I am not saying that English is the only language to pursue, I meant to add that English is so widely used and unless the Thais are equipped with this language skills, how are they going to broaden the scope of economic advancement.

 

Tourist numbers suffered in 2014 due to the coup and the continuing saga of power struggle is not going to help in raising the numbers.  The question on my mind is "Why she repeat her brother's route - go exile somewhere else?"

[vinapu]

staying home she is thorn in old establishment asses, going away she would risk of being forgotten, she is probably following a lesson  of Lady Aung in Myanmar

[Bob]

The way this has all played out has been rather pathetic to me.

(1)  First, a man with some guns takes power, abolishes the constitution, and deposes the elected Prime Minister.  Then the guy with the guns appoints what he has the balls to call a national legislature (filled, of course, with a bunch of military cronies).  Then, lo and behold (surprise, surprise!), the hand-picked bunch of "legislators" unanimously picks the man with the guns as Prime Minister (hmmm....has any legislature anywhere at any time in history ever unanimously picked a prime minister of a country?).  Then the military boys (whoops, I mean the "legislature") impeach the old Prime Minister who really isn't the Prime Minister anymore (because the man with the guys said she wasn't!).  And, adding to that little scenario is the "technical" problem that the only power to impeach was enshrined in the constitution that the man with the guns already abolished (and, forgot, in his military wisdom, to include in his interim charter)!

(2)  Second, somebody failed to mention or even submit any evidence on the subject of how the former Prime Minister even benefitted by a single satang due to the rice-pledging scheme created by the last/only elected legislature.  She, as Prime Minister of a country is supposed to micromanage the socialist program?  I really can't see David Cameron bothering with that all too much.

(3)  Finally, the "bad" thing that happened was that this socialist program (not dissimilar to the prior rice-pledging program passed by the Democrats!) actually lost money!  Damn, wasn't that fully expected?  Since when has any give-away program been expected to do anything other than cost a government a ton of money?  I'm almost beginning to wonder if the new "Prime Minister's" recent cash donations to the rice farmers made any money. 

 

I'd note that the rice-pledging program was likely a stupid idea in the first place.  Letting any government handle any economic program of this sort is probably a surefire way to lead to huge losses.  And adding in the Thai penchant for corruption at every level (buying the rice, storing the rice, safeguarding the rice, and selling the rice) only guaranteed the losses were going to be even bigger than normal. It's funny, though, that I haven't read a single newspaper article describing a single arrest of any individual who allegedly miss-appropriated or miss-used any of the rice or funds involved in the whole process. One almost begins to wonder as to what color shirts are worn by all those middlemen....

[TotallyOz]

Bob, that is probably the best summary I have read about all of this!

[Guest shamahan]

 

 

(3)  Finally, the "bad" thing that happened was that this socialist program (not dissimilar to the prior rice-pledging program passed by the Democrats!) actually lost money!  Damn, wasn't that fully expected?  Since when has any give-away program been expected to do anything other than cost a government a ton of money?  I'm almost beginning to wonder if the new "Prime Minister's" recent cash donations to the rice farmers made any money. 

 

I'd note that the rice-pledging program was likely a stupid idea in the first place.  Letting any government handle any economic program of this sort is probably a surefire way to lead to huge losses.  And adding in the Thai penchant for corruption at every level (buying the rice, storing the rice, safeguarding the rice, and selling the rice) only guaranteed the losses were going to be even bigger than normal. It's funny, though, that I haven't read a single newspaper article describing a single arrest of any individual who allegedly miss-appropriated or miss-used any of the rice or funds involved in the whole process. One almost begins to wonder as to what color shirts are worn by all those middlemen....

It is a good summary but a bit inaccurate.

1. This is not a give away program. Farmers are paid for rice (or rubber, because there was a similar program for rubber) more than

market price. It is a subsidy program. And I would not call it socialist. Agriculture subsidies exists in USA, European Union, Japan

and many other places: too many socialist places to my taste

2. There are well-documented cases (and corresponding arrests have been made) for the cases of inevitable fraud related to this program. The idea is very simple: (the cheaper) rice has been smuggled from places like Burma and sold as Thai produced

rice to this scheme. There has never been any proof that any of the high level government officials were involved in this. There is an allegation by NACC that the rice owned by the government was sold to a Chinese company using market prices, never delivered to China and then resold back to the scheme using subsidized prices. In other words, the same rice was sold twice to the scheme. That would be a clear example of government corruption. However, my understanding is that the only thing that NACC established is that above mentioned Chinese company was not authorized in China for government to government deals.

3. I would not call this program stupid. What one suppose to do when the cost of production is comparable with market price?

A separate question is why the cost of production of rice in Thailand is higher than in Vietnam and Burma? The partial answer is because many peasants in Thailand are landless and need to rent the land to grow the rice. In some estimates around third of the average price is due to this factor.  And why so many landless peasants? Because Thai land reform of 1973 (one of the most progressive in the region and is still the law of the land) has been squashed by the (last elected) Democrats government of Chuan Leekpai (the land intended for landless peasants was "distributed" to several wealthy families by then agriculture minister....Suthep!).

The idea of the rice pledging scheme is quite clever: by withholding the rice (and rubber) from the market to increase the market prices and later sell the rice with a profit. It could very well succeed but unfortunately in this part of  world economic cycle all commodities got much cheaper than on the average. In any case, in Thailand right now either subsidies or no agriculture.

And that is the bottom line.

 

I

[Up2u]

Yingluck's post impeachment statement in English.

 

http://www.khaosodenglish.com/detail.php?newsid=1422007143&typecate=06&section

[Bob]

I didn't mean in any respect that the program was "stupid" in the sense it was intended to provide money to the poor farmers....as I think that's a great idea.  It's only "stupid" in the sense that the government ran much of the program (the government renting warehouses, the government handling commercial sales, etc.).  Governments generally totally screw things up when they get involved in private enterprise or intervene in  commodity markets.

 

And it was dumb as hell in my opinion to buy rice from the farmers at prices way above market prices (and way above what Burma, Vietnam, and others were selling rice for on the open market).  Couldn't they envision they'd end up screwing up the market (and that this almost guaranteed they'd be sitting on a whole lot of rice that would rot over time in the warehouses)?

 

It would have been cheaper and smarter to just pay some money directly to the farmers to raise their living standards and to let the farmers and local mechanisms work out the market price of rice.  But, like in the US, I would have definitely limited how much a single farmer or business would have been paid so that a few big corporate farms didn't suck up most of the government handouts.

[bkkguy]

from Yingluck's post impeachment statement:

 

 

I hope that the individuals who administer justice of the country will not allow any group who disrespects democratic rules and disregards rules of law to be influential ever again

 

as is usually the case one needs to be careful what one wishes for

 

bkkguy

 

[Guest shamahan]

I didn't mean in any respect that the program was "stupid" in the sense it was intended to provide money to the poor farmers....as I think that's a great idea.  It's only "stupid" in the sense that the government ran much of the program (the government renting warehouses, the government handling commercial sales, etc.).  Governments generally totally screw things up when they get involved in private enterprise or intervene in  commodity markets.

 

And it was dumb as hell in my opinion to buy rice from the farmers at prices way above market prices (and way above what Burma, Vietnam, and others were selling rice for on the open market).  Couldn't they envision they'd end up screwing up the market (and that this almost guaranteed they'd be sitting on a whole lot of rice that would rot over time in the warehouses)?

 

 

I believe the idea was that by withholding the substantial amount of rice from the market they hoped to raise the market price and eventually sell what they stored without big losses.  If the market conditions were right, they could succeed. They actually corrected subsidies down at some point. Besides, in the end of the day, they were not allowed to finish this experiment anyway.

You can increase the price of a commodity by cutting the production (like OPEC did with oil in the past). One can argue that it proved to be not a good policy after all but definitely not a crime.

[vinapu]

 

One can argue that it proved to be not a good policy after all but definitely not a crime.

You summed it very neatly.I like this very civilized discussion above.

 

Calling rice pledging scheme socialist is not excessive, after all Obamacare was called socialist scheme by some and there are Americans who are calling Canada communist country because of her universal health care system.

 

Communists were no better by calling capitalistic even most minor private enterprise. So labels are misleading at time.

 

One bad rice harvest in some big producer country may turn now wasteful rice pledging scheme  into very far sighted policy.

 

Some may recall similar situation in the coffee market sometime in 90-ties. Bad harvest in South America was mitigated by good one in Africa and Vietnam or other way around.

[Guest abang1961]

From a very naive viewpoint, it looks like the government scheme of purchasing the rice at a higher price was, by default, a failure from the start. If the market retail value is $1, why would anyone want to pay more?

 

Yingluck's administration was admirable in coming out with a scheme to boost the income of the poorer farmers but at what price?  It sucks up the nation's fund and as rice cannot be stored for a long time, all produce became a burden for storage.  As an Asian whose staple food is rice, how can I stomach more than 2 bowls daily?  Use your brain to figure out how to "dispose" the extra production....

 

Actually to me, the charge (against her) is quite inappropriate.  She may be wrong in her estimations and she has already left the post.  Why would the current regime bother to beat a dead animal?  Isn't this simple vendetta? 

[vinapu]

 

Why would the current regime bother to beat a dead animal?  Isn't this simple vendetta? 

Their very actions are certifying that they don't consider her dead animal, it's not vendetta rather attempt to neutralize her and her brother by creating 'legal' frame to prevent her from running for the office for a while.