News Forum - Let’s try that again: US to attempt another donation of 1 million vaccine doses

[Pinetree]

6 minutes ago, Stonker said:

"elected government"

I will only make one more comment.  Its not the 'election',  it's who makes the laws and who has the control and the overall power.  The 'elected government' ; as you call it here, does not have that power or control.  Therefore what the people voted for is a mirage of democracy, not the 'real thing' such as it is.  As I say, I have no problem living under this kind of regime, but neither do I delude myself that I live in a western style democracy , where the power lies with the people, it clearly does not. 

[EdwardV]

8 minutes ago, Poolie said:

They do  to the recipients.

Why? If they are not expired, they are perfectly fine to use. If they are not needed by the US, why would that matter? 

[Stonker]

40 minutes ago, Haole.TH said:

Wrong!  This is not a fairly elected gov.

This gov won a coalition by changing the rules after the election happened.
The smaller political parties, by the new Thai Constitution) had to garner 70,000 votes before they could be allowed to join a coalition.  The change was to allow the smaller political parties to join a coalition regardless of the # of votes they received.  

Without this change this gov would not have been able to gather together a majority coalition to rule.

Sorry, but that's not at all correct and you're confusing two very different issues although it's going way off topic.

The "changing the rules" by the Constitutional Court was about party-list seats for parties who'd received less than 71,065 votes, ensuring proportional representation which it did - nothing at all to do with whether smaller parties could join the coalition or not which they're at liberty to do even though 18 of the 27 parties had no directly elected (constituency) MPs:

"For the first time, Thailand applied a “mixed-member apportionment” system (MMA) in
the 2019 elections. Voters were allowed to directly select 350 lawmakers from single-seat
constituencies. The ballots that they cast would count as both votes for the candidates in
those races and simultaneously votes for those candidates’ party in the allocation of party-
list seats. The total number of votes that a party received nationwide via this single vote
would determine the number of party-list members of parliament allocated to each party.
Parties that were eligible to gain party-list seats in the first round of calculation should
secure the minimum threshold of 71,065 votes. The threshold is by dividing the total of
35.53 million valid votes by the number of 500 MPs. However, parties that already garnered
more constituency seats than the number for which this first calculation made them eligible
would not be allocated more party-list seats, as in the case of the Phuea Thai Party in this
election. The 150 party-list seats would then be distributed among parties according to the
proportion of the votes that they received. Article 127 of the Organic Law on Elections
stated that the ECT would announce the election results when the returns from at least 95
per cent of constituencies were ready. On 6 May, the ECT finally endorsed the majority of
results in the 24 March national ballot, but warned that it was still investigating allegations
of wrongdoing that might affect the final tallies. If there were reported electoral fraudulence
in any constituency, the votes from that constituency would be subtracted from the party’s
proportional representation total and the ECT would organize a new election. Votes gained
in this new re-election would be used to re-calculate the allocation of party-list seats, and
the ECT, according to Articles 130 and 131 of the Organic Law on Elections, could
repeatedly re-calculate the allocation of party-list seats for up to one year after the contests
of 24 March. Some incumbents holding party-list seats might thus be replaced by new
parliamentarians as a result of the re-calculation process.

Concerning the formula to calculate the allocation of party-list seats, there were two
opposing ideas. In the first method, finalized by the Constitutional Drafting Committee, all
seats remaining after the allocation of seats to eligible parties are to be distributed to small
parties that won votes less than a quota of approximately 71,065 votes. The opponents of
this formula argued that it may violate the condition that no party can get more seats than it
is entitled to. It was feared that the formula would thus have a serious impact on the
formation of a legitimate government. If the eleven small parties receiving fewer votes than
the 71,065-vote threshold on 24 March won places in the Lower House, those small parties
will, it was argued, be easily wooed by the conservative faction – a development that will
ultimately handicap the anti-military side. In challenging this first method, the pro-
democratic parties proposed that party-list seats be allocated only to those parties that have
received the quota of approximately 71,065 votes. To resolve this matter, the Ombudsman
decided to call on the Constitutional Court to judge on the alleged contradiction between
these two methods, which has raised controversy over the Election Commission’s counting
formula for party-list MP seats.

On 8 May, Thailand’s Constitutional Court ruled that the contentious condition related to
the formula to allocate party-list seats in the Organic Law on parliamentary elections did
not violate the country’s 2017 charter. This meant that a total of 27 parties, a new record in
Thai politics, will join the parliament. The inclusion of small parties has dropped the
threshold from one party-list seat per 71,065 votes to one seat per approximately 30,000
votes.

Allocating party-list seats to smaller parties would benefit the pro-military coalition, which
is more likely to get these small parties on its side. At the time of writing, there has been no
official report on the number of coalition parties. However, on 13 May, eleven small parties
with one or two seats each announced their support for General Prayut remaining prime
minister and for the PPRP forming the government. If these small parties join the pro-
military coalition, the new government will face many challenges, because it must manage
a coalition of more than 20 parties. The number of coalition partners will also be a new
record for the Thai parliament.

Although politicians and scholars have criticized the prospect of having such a large number
of small parties in the coalition government, claiming that it would lead to unstable
government, the presence of such parties in parliament reflected the constitution’s intention
to make every vote count. During the drafting process, drafters expected a large number of
political parties to gain seats under this new system. Allowing small parties to secure seats
in the parliament may be the first step for those new and small parties to develop their
organizations and put them in better position to compete in subsequent elections."

If you wade through that, it gives one of the most representative and democratic systems in the world, but it still can't change the rest of Parliament and the rest of the Constitution which is where the problem lies.

The problem isn't with the electoral system - it's with the Constitution.

Sorry if this has gone way off-topic, but it's what all the protests over the last two years have always been about so it's probably worth understanding properly.

[Stonker]

25 minutes ago, Pinetree said:

Its not the 'election',  it's who makes the laws and who has the control and the overall power. 

I'm not disagreeing with you in any way about that - I'm agreeing 100%!

27 minutes ago, Pinetree said:

As I say, I have no problem living under this kind of regime, but neither do I delude myself that I live in a western style democracy , where the power lies with the people, it clearly does not. 

Well, those who "live in a western style democracy" may like think that means "the power lies with the people", but for those who live in countries and democracies elsewhere they think its the West which is "deluded", as has become very obvious over the last decade or two.