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Published on December 28, 2007

About a month before the election, an "official" made his rounds and paid each agreeable household Bt200 for their promised vote and assured them another payment would come on the day of the election. Sure enough, this past Monday each household got an additional Bt500 for their vote, while their names were recorded in a journal so that when further handouts became available through "populist" schemes, supporters could be identified and rewarded, with non-supporters ignored.

Faced with such a situation, few villagers chose to be identified as non-supporters (who can blame them?), though all laughed with glee when the former PM was deposed so ignominiously.

In the days to come we will hear constant rumours of vote-buying but no solid evidence found. The responsibility for that inevitable failure rests roundly upon the Thai press, who if they had been willing to send a few investigative reporters into Isaan in the weeks leading up to elections, would have found mounds of such evidence.

Democracy will never come to Thailand unless the press realises its essential role in exposing corruption and actively begins reporting it.

Ajarn Chang

Isaan

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PPP leaders need to rein in aggressive members

The Thai people have spoken through the ballot box. Yet the People Power Party, the biggest vote winner and the first party in line to form a coalition by inviting smaller parties to join its efforts, is still aggressively in a campaign mode. PPP members are still attacking their opponents, who are now their potential partners, and those who they allege made Thaksin Shinawatra suffer in the September 2006 coup.

If the PPP doesn't change its stance, it will mean the party's campaign to bring about unity to the country was just a ploy to get votes - that the real intention of the party is to exact revenge on its opponents and to cause trouble in the country yet again.

Thaksin, the de facto leader of the PPP, has stressed repeatedly that he wants to see unity and reconciliation in Thailand. So it's high time the PPP leaders woke up to reality and ordered their rambunctious members to seal their lips and let only the assigned party executives do the talking. In short, be a unifying force as you have promised to be.

Chavalit Van

Chiang Mai

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Watch out Thailand, you're being left behind

Re: "A wasted year of lost opportunities while neighbours grew", Letters, December 27.

I am currently visiting Vietnam and have been reading about Ho Chi Minh City's stunning economic growth this year. The city's gross domestic product in the past 11 months increased nearly 12 per cent, and experts have said the city's economic growth saw equal contributions from its key sectors: services, industry and development investment, of which services grew by 14.1 per cent and account for 52.6 per cent of the city's total GDP.

Certainly our new partner here has been a total delight to deal with and we have set up shop. With regret, in almost five years in Bangkok, I have not witnessed a single Thai company so enthusiastic about what we can mutually offer each other; I assume because of the Thai pricing model that benefits no one.

It is interesting to note that Southeast Asia has always under-regulated competition and over-regulated market access - through restrictive licensing and non-competitive tendering - which has typically guaranteed that merchant capitalists rise to the top by arbitrating economic efficiencies created by politicians, who spend vast sums of money to maintain a grip on power. It is the more efficient political and social institutions that have made the European Union and countries like Japan and the US rich.

The fact is that Southeast Asia, except for its two city states, is still poor as a direct result of political failure. And political and institutional life must change in order for the region to move forward. A recent study in Thailand showed that productivity increases in the past 20 years have been markedly higher in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors than in services, where the "elite" predominate. The politicians and associated businesses "own" this economic sphere and it is in their interests to maintain it.

The export sectors have been the driving force behind Thailand's previous economic growth but because of the heavy dependence on foreign providers of technology and project management it has resulted in no indigenous, large-scale companies producing world-class products and services. Can you think of one single well-known international brand name from Southeast Asia?

Until the near-monopoly structures shift so that Thailand can become an innovator itself in key technology areas, the system is bound to falter. Instead of "tycoon capitalism", where foreigners are invited to dominate in these markets at the expense of retaining cash-rich, over-priced protected cartels and non-competitive tenders for public works in the domestic market, the current economic model will inevitably find no real way to protracted growth.

This is not to say that Vietnam is excluded from the above model but rather incentives have grown and restrictions have been lifted there. If the model being suggested above is correct then, in the first instance, it is vital for businesses and individuals to be allowed to operate in Thailand far more freely, offering technology transfers to indigenous branding and marketing. Once established, a closer look at the wider economic picture is a no-brainer, even if history and culture dictate otherwise.

James Groveway

Bangkok

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Killing of Karenni refugee shows hypocrisy

An Interior Ministry security guard admitted to killing a Karenni youth at Ban Nai Soi refugee camp in Mae Hong Son. The guards conducted a search for arms during a student sports event and had been asked to leave by the students. As reported, the guards reacted impolitely, and were surrounded by hundreds of angry refugees. After the killing, other students destroyed two security volunteer office buildings, 29 motorcycles and two cars belonging to volunteers.

I fully agree with Muang district chief Wachira Chotiroserani, that refugees must respect Thai law. However, Wachira should use this sad incident as an opportunity to dramatically show not only the refugees, but also the world, that we have the rule of law - and that it applies to state authorities as well as to others.

For starters, he should charge the guard - who has admitted to being the shooter - with unpremeditated murder. Nobody, not even the guard, has claimed the dead youth was armed, even with a stick or a stone. How, then, was he a danger to the life of the guard, or his colleagues? Being subject to verbal abuse hardly justifies killing the abuser - as we've seen from the universal scorn heaped upon the state authorities after the Thammasat killings of October 14, years ago.

Thailand has a well-justified reputation for turning a blind eye to killings, whether accidental or otherwise, by the authorities - witness the inaction by then-premier Thaksin, and his successor, General Surayud, after the manslaughter at Tak Bai, or the 2,500 extra-judicial killings by the state during Thaksin's "war on drugs".

Not surprisingly, these gross violations of the rule of law by authorities make it extremely difficult for us to ask others to follow the same laws themselves. As the saying goes, "Physician, heal thyself".

Burin Kantabutra

Bangkok