| Though there are no good guys in Thai politics, one thing Thaksin did do was light the fuse -- the rural poor finally got some attention from the government and they thought that was marvelous. They want more.
The present PM says his government will keep Thaksin programs for the poor that worked, but one has a hard time imagining any type of real change coming from the old elite in Bangkok. It won't be too much longer before the shield behind which they hide is no longer there, and all hell could break loose.
I'm sure all those wealthy Sino-Thais have their backup homes in Hong Kong, the States and England ready. I hope they're required to put them in use soon. Their spoled rotten na-rak kids might have a hard time of it, though, outside the privileged, strange and shallow world they live in now.
I attended a Songkran gathering in Beijing this year organized by a Thai student association and was again struck by the insular and inbred character of the Thai culture. The Thai kids mind their P's and Q's around the Chinese, but they don't like it; it probably also frightens them a bit to a see a nation with great, if raw, power, not the banana republic they come from. They were big ducks in a little pond before; here they're considered some type of Chinese ethnic minority group, which is exactly what they are. |