Ideology, intolerance and outright ignorance often lead commentators to attribute electoral behaviour to vote buying. Having little experience of grass-roots political behaviour, elite commentators often like to paint simplified pictures of an electorate that is readily mobilised by the power of money. So, I was pleased to see this photo and the accompanying caption on The Nation’s website last week:
This hall is just too big: Peua Pandin leader Suvit Khunkitti speaks to an almost empty hall at the party’s first assembly yesterday at Muang Thong Thani in Nonthaburi. Supporters paid by canvassers to attend left straight after having lunch, without waiting for the party leader’s address.
Not so silly after all!
5 responses so far ↓
1 jonfernquest // Oct 22, 2007 at 1:37 pm
IMHO the best way to get a handle on what “vote buying” is and how other similar, more subtle practices which technically aren’t “vote buying” exactly are, is to **master the literature on this subject**, and IMHO the best place to begin is the wonderful little 350 baht book **”Thai Political Parties in the Age of Reform” by Siripan Nogsuan Sawasdee**, Institute of Public policy Studies, Bangkok, December 2006. I’ve been paging through it for weeks and still haven’t absorbed all of it.
2 Srithanonchai // Oct 22, 2007 at 3:29 pm
It would have been even better if those people had turned down the canvassers’ suggestion to be bussed to Mueng Thong Thani…
3 Srithanonchai // Oct 22, 2007 at 4:19 pm
P.S.: It would have been interesting to know what agreement had been reached between the canvassers and the villagers. When Suwit hired the canvassers to hire the villagers, he certainly did not expect to be left alone in such an embarrassing way. Was he originally scheduled to speak in the morning, and the villagers were scheduled to leave after lunch? Why did all of them leave? How many were there, and from where? What were the communications between the canvassers and the villagers when they started to go home? Did they have to board busses? After all, it would make the canvassers look very bad in the eyes of Suwit etc., having arranged the hall, the press, and planned it as a full show of support. Did the villagers act collectively, and was there some coordination between the groups, or was this collective disapperance the result of individual decisions? Was it engineered by the canvassers to pressure Suwit for more money, or was it engineered by the villagers to pressure the canvassers for more money? Or did the canvassers did not pay them as promised? Or was it a collusion between the canvassers and the villagers to show Suwit that he must come up with more money if he wanted their votes? Etc., etc…
4 col. jeru // Oct 23, 2007 at 12:16 am
So I guess based on the empty halls that Peua Pandin Party will be among those political parties that won’t make it to the starting line.
Maybe the price of the Thai vote has gone up . . . really up. What is the price of the Thai vote now Andrew Walker? That should be have been the main subject of your article Andrew Walker . . . and then we can appreciate better what rural constitution is all about.
5 jonfernquest // Oct 23, 2007 at 2:02 pm
“So I guess based on the empty halls that Peua Pandin Party will be among those political parties that won’t make it to the starting line.”
I think that was a major question raised in yesterday’s political commentary in the Bangkok Post. It seems to be dependent on who can win out with the highest bids in all the political horse trading in the run up to the election.
“Maybe the price of the Thai vote has gone up.”
MPs for sale is the current newsworthy topic, as of yesterday.
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