Post by Admin on Sept 29, 2013 11:31:25 GMT 7
Fairer elections, more justice, better media 'all offer hope'
The Sunday Nation
September 29, 2013 1:00 am
Neither staging another coup nor granting an amnesty to all could provide Thailand with a solution to its political divide, former President of Parliament Uthai Pimchaichon said yesterday.
Uthai made the remark at a panel on solutions for Thailand, organised by the Thai Broadcast Journalists Association. Uthai said Thai politics was heading towards a dead-end if people were not prepared to provide a way out. People were also fed up with politicians, but he warned that staging another coup would send the Kingdom into "a coma".
Uthai urged people to sort out their political differences through parliamentary means. Instead of correcting politicians, the former president of parliament said citizens themselves should improve and not succumb to vote buying and as long as they don't change, the quality of politicians would reflect the quality of voters. If it was too late to change this generation of Thais, then the country would have try and wait until a more responsible generation of people replace old people and this may take 10 years or so, he said.
Uthai said it was a waste of paper to keep on rewriting the charter, as that wouldn't solve the problems either.
Constitution Court judge Charan Pakdeethanakul said the electoral system was neither clean nor fair while improving the "quality" of citizens would be difficult. The most dangerous thing, said Charan, was collusion between politics and businesses.
He said there were more poor people in India, but vote buying wasn't as big a problem as in Thailand.
"They have hundreds of billions [baht]. They can conduct political business," said Charan, stressing that clean elections were the solution. Instead of focusing on distributing wealth, Thailand needed to distribute justice as well, he said, adding that corrupt politicians must be cornered so they had less room to manoeuvre.
Powerful people in Thailand were also "undeveloped", leading to abuse of power. So the media should to try to educate the public more, he concluded.
Meanwhile, former finance minister MR Pridiyathorn Devakula criticised the government's handouts and populist policies, such as the first-car ownership scheme, saying it had led to lower consumption of other goods at present. He also questioned the legality of Bt2 trillion in infrastructure projects and asked why the Yingluck Shinawatra administration does not want to borrow from normal budget channels.
Thepchai Yong, Nation Group Editor-in-Chief, said Thailand had spent the past three to four years debating solutions without thinking about the future. He said he couldn't see how the parliamentary system would provide a solution while other mechanisms were also stuck.
People had been politicised through partisan media to hate and want to kill one another due to political differences. However, he expected the 24 new digital television channels to help rebalance the broadcast media landscape through the use of more reasoning in TV programmes.
The Sunday Nation
September 29, 2013 1:00 am
Neither staging another coup nor granting an amnesty to all could provide Thailand with a solution to its political divide, former President of Parliament Uthai Pimchaichon said yesterday.
Uthai made the remark at a panel on solutions for Thailand, organised by the Thai Broadcast Journalists Association. Uthai said Thai politics was heading towards a dead-end if people were not prepared to provide a way out. People were also fed up with politicians, but he warned that staging another coup would send the Kingdom into "a coma".
Uthai urged people to sort out their political differences through parliamentary means. Instead of correcting politicians, the former president of parliament said citizens themselves should improve and not succumb to vote buying and as long as they don't change, the quality of politicians would reflect the quality of voters. If it was too late to change this generation of Thais, then the country would have try and wait until a more responsible generation of people replace old people and this may take 10 years or so, he said.
Uthai said it was a waste of paper to keep on rewriting the charter, as that wouldn't solve the problems either.
Constitution Court judge Charan Pakdeethanakul said the electoral system was neither clean nor fair while improving the "quality" of citizens would be difficult. The most dangerous thing, said Charan, was collusion between politics and businesses.
He said there were more poor people in India, but vote buying wasn't as big a problem as in Thailand.
"They have hundreds of billions [baht]. They can conduct political business," said Charan, stressing that clean elections were the solution. Instead of focusing on distributing wealth, Thailand needed to distribute justice as well, he said, adding that corrupt politicians must be cornered so they had less room to manoeuvre.
Powerful people in Thailand were also "undeveloped", leading to abuse of power. So the media should to try to educate the public more, he concluded.
Meanwhile, former finance minister MR Pridiyathorn Devakula criticised the government's handouts and populist policies, such as the first-car ownership scheme, saying it had led to lower consumption of other goods at present. He also questioned the legality of Bt2 trillion in infrastructure projects and asked why the Yingluck Shinawatra administration does not want to borrow from normal budget channels.
Thepchai Yong, Nation Group Editor-in-Chief, said Thailand had spent the past three to four years debating solutions without thinking about the future. He said he couldn't see how the parliamentary system would provide a solution while other mechanisms were also stuck.
People had been politicised through partisan media to hate and want to kill one another due to political differences. However, he expected the 24 new digital television channels to help rebalance the broadcast media landscape through the use of more reasoning in TV programmes.