There is an old story here in Thailand's vast, rice-growing hinterland about politicians who handed out a pair of slippers at election time - one slipper before the vote and the other after they were successfully elected.
Since the earliest days of democracy in Thailand seven decades ago, candidates have used both creative and not-so-creative ways to buy votes. The eve of an election is still known here as the "night of the barking dogs" because canvassers traditionally go house to house handing out cash - rousing hounds along the way.
Fourteen months after the military took power in a bloodless coup, Thailand is returning to democracy. And this, say government officials preparing for the Dec. 23 elections, means the return of money politics.
Phones have started ringing in the offices of the country's Election Commission, and 75 cases of alleged vote buying have been opened based on complaints and tip-offs, according to Suthiphon Thaveechaiygarn, the secretary general of the commission.
"Political parties will definitely try to buy votes," Suthiphon said in a phone interview from Bangkok. "They are trying to develop new techniques."
Vote buying in various forms exists in many countries, whether as last-minute road paving, "lunch money" for voters who attend rallies or the supply of food and provisions. But it is especially well entrenched in Thailand.
Economists have calculated that the economy swells by about 30 billion Baht, or close to $1 billion, around election time. Supavud Saicheua, the managing director of Phatra Securities, which conducts research for Merrill Lynch in Thailand, called this estimate "not far-fetched."
Northeastern Thailand, populous and poor, is a leading battleground for Thaksin; 135 of the 400 constituencies in Parliament will be elected from Isaan, as the region is known. Bangkok, by contrast, elects only 36 seats. [via The International Herald Tribune]
Ed. You will find an interesting article here on the reasons for the coup and the problems the coup has created for Thailand going forward. Some of the content, (and most definitely the comments at the end), are of a sensitive nature so I can't reproduce the article here.
Sierra Tangos
- Australian pedestrian gets hit crossing Central Pattaya Road by a 19 year old Xtreme motorcyke rider in the early hours of Monday morning. Make that Xtreme idiot. [via Pattaya City News]
- Nu-bra defies gravity - no, logic - almost, pressure - most definitely
- Jurgen Klinsman has refused to sell his customised VW Beetle
- Thailand's tourism and Sports Minister Suvit Yodmani on Monday evening said all concerned agencies would put all effort into bringing the culprit in Sunday's murder of a Japanese female tourist in the northern Sukhothai province to justice. [via Bangkok Post]
- She's such a looker I just had to show you this......
- Thailand's military has drawn up a 317 billion baht (9.3 billion dollars) wish-list for new weaponry purchases over the next decade, media reports said Monday. Defence Minister Boonrawd Somtas announced that the armed forces will need 117 billion baht (3.4 billion ) from 2009 to 2013 and another 200 billion baht (5.9 billion dollars) from 2014 to 2018 to keep their weaponry up to regional standards, said the Bangkok Post. Ed Who are they scared of?
- Folder Drives - When you open My Computer you see floppy disk drives, hard drives and DVD drives. Lots of space is wasted in that window and you have to click several times to reach the location that you wanted to. If you do have folders on your hard drives that you use over and over again you might want to consider creating folder drives which would make them appear as drives in My Computer.
The main benefit is of course that you can access those folders much faster without having to click several times. Windows has a build in command line tool that can do this but I prefer to use XSubst which has a graphic user interface and offers the same functionality.
The user selects an available drive letter in Xsubst and clicks on the Connect button afterwards. This opens a Browse for Folder window. Just select the folder that you want to display as the drive letter that you have selected before. Those links between the drive letter and folder are not permanent unless you press the Permanent button in XSubst.
The permanent setting and the drive letter can be removed again in Xsubst as well. I use Xsubst mainly for two folders that I access several times a day, saves me some time every time I access them this way. [via gHacks]
- A man walks into a pharmacy and wanders up & down the aisles. The sales girl notices him and asks him if she can help him. He answers that he is looking for a box of tampons for his wife. She directs him down the correct aisle. A few minutes later, he deposits a huge bag of cotton balls and a ball of string on the counter. She says, confused, "Sir, I thought you were looking for some tampons for your wife? He answers, "You see, it's like this, yesterday, I sent my wife to the store to get me a carton of cigarettes, and she came back with a tin of tobacco and some rolling papers; cause it's sooo-ooo--oo-ooo much cheaper. So, I figure if I have to roll my own .......... so does she.
- Dick Cheney hosted Thanksgiving dinner in Maryland for his family and a few key staffers. They followed a time-honored ritual. Before they begin to eat, they join hands, close their eyes, bow their heads and get their stories straight.
- A Chinese phone company has installed a cell phone tower on Mt Everest. By the way: Experts say the air is so thin at the top of Mt Everest -- you can only yell "Can you hear me now?" three times into your cell phone before you pass out.
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