In New Mandala, blog regarding Southeast Asia political news, I found that the latest column ,written on Oct 14, 08 by Andrew Walker and Nicholas Farrelly is quite interesting. What Andrew and Nicholas wrote about thai politic at this moment; so please be warned that it may be argued from PAD's advocate because what the writer implied in their writing may harm PAD righteousness. If you are hard-core PAD's supporter ,please don't read it.
What make this blog, whose nationality, from its address i guess, is Australian, interesting is that it has different view from mainstream media in Thailand. If you read the column "what happened on 7/10/2008" ,you will receive some information that doesn't exist in Thai mainstream media. However, in "Blood rather than ballots", the writer persuaded reader that PAD prefer blood on the street instead of ballot in the stall. The writer says that it's quite obviouse that PAD intent to benefit from violations in crackdown, or didn't try to avoid this violation. They also analysed that the 2007 election result that PPP almost got a half of members of paliament,but in many electronates, PPP won by very thin margin. Therefore, it is quite clear that if PAD cooporate with Demorate, implicitly or explicitly, Democrat will probably win in the next election. So the election by majority won't be unavoidable tyranny like PAD said. Why did PAD choose the move that risks for their followers' lives instead of supporting Democrat in next election campaign,if their preference is not bloodbath.
In my opinion, their supporting reasons are quite strong and obious. Because in that moment, there is none reasonable stimulant to increase their protest. Everythink were gonna be fine, although their assistant head was captured, there is still no reasons to increase their fighting level. However, thought not related to this column, I agree with PAD that the government should take responsibilities for this violent ,with or without their intention, but because we are in the moment of world's chaos, those responsibilities can be postponed.
That the PAD are against democracy is commonly argued by respected international media, such as the Economist.
ReplyDeleteNichols and Walker persuasively present a view that is held by many, who see Chamlong as a fairly evil person who only cares about forcing his ideas on everyone using any means, and who, as leader of the PAD, as the authors argue, deliberately creates violence and death as political weapons to defeat democracy for Thai people.
But please feel free to disagree.
I like your term "Violence and Death as Political weapons"
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