Bangkok elections the psychological picture

Perhaps it is not the best and most accurate title for this entry, but then again finding one that fits may require more words than allowed. Aside from this being one of the more interesting elections in Thailand, it sends plenty of messages to all politicians. Most of those messages say the voters in Bangkok are not voting cattle.

Connecting the Dots did not want to comment on the elections before they were done. One of the reasons there were a lot of conflicting indicators. One of the most highlighted anomalies was pre-election polling that seemed at the very least tainted and influenced by some unseen force. Other factors that did not seem to match included people forgetting the political violence from recent years and who is generally seen to blame. There were some other critical things that did not seem to line up with more recent moods and attitudes towards some politicians and namely Thaksin Shinawatra.

If you were to listen to the polls, you would tend to think that all had been forgiven with Thaksin and he was being welcomed back. However the reality on the streets simply said that is not true. With that said it is easy to conclude that false poll results were being published, and the results could be seen to help Thaksin achieve his goals. Seeing that tampering with the poll results is not beyond Thaksin, and his ramrod approach to getting back by changing the Constitution and amnesty proposals is not looking like an easy sell, most people can conclude Thaksin’s influence was somehow involved based on his past behaviors.

In reality the only way to clear this up is to conduct another poll with one question being when did you finally decide on who to vote for. If the answer is more than 72 hours before the elections, it is fair to assume tainted poll results. With the spin being that decisions were made in the last few hours before the election and no supporting data, one can only conclude poll problems.

Seeing that the Election Commission (EC) weighed in weeks before the election citing the polls possibly being tampered with, it becomes a game of psychology to influence votes based on Sheep Mentality. With the EC sending up that warning flag, it snapped a lot of people out of a hypnotic trance of sorts. Even the candidates did not know what to believe as to how they stood with the voting public.

The fallout of all of this is the polls will not be trusted for a long time. Even the most reputable polls would be tainted if is was seen or even assumed that Thaksin was somehow involved in the published results. It could take many years to recover from such a dance with the devil.

So even as the Polls try to recover their reputation from this, it is just a reminder of how cutthroat Thai politics really is. Get too close and even people with all the right and best intentions can become a casualty. Even writing about it can bring problems as some corrupt politicians do not enjoy the bright lights.


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