In Thailand there are certain election laws that say when a politician can start their campaign for election. The reason for this law is to provide an equal chance for all politicians and balance the election playing field. But when you look at the behavior of Yingluck, you see a politician in full campaign mode running through her voter base way before the Election Commission (EC) has given the word ‘GO!’.
We have cited the saying that ‘In Thailand all fatal political moves are self inflicted.’, and with Yingluck, this looks to be the case. The Democrats have already cited her for using state funds to campaign and have asked her to step down, so her actions are not going unnoticed. It seems it may be a case of them giving her enough rope to hang herself and hit her with that after it is too late in the election cycle to regroup.
Seeing that the EC is just newly entered office and this will be their first general election, it is yet to be seen how they will behave. There is little if any doubt that Thaksin Shinawatra has tried to buy the EC, but the results of that are yet to be seen. So far the only difference between this EC and the one they just replaced, is this EC seems a bit more vocal, and that tends to show a lack of neutrality. But then again in Thailand, it is very hard not to take sides as there is little if any common ground to stand on.
Even we at Connecting the Dots have been accused of being bias against Thaksin, but it only appears that way as he has demonstrated time and time again he lacks morals and ethics. So when morals and ethics are lacking and we point it out, it just sounds like we are bias. We will admit Thaksin does give us a lot to wright about because he just rubs people the wrong way time after time without stop. In retrospect his political enemies at least try to respect the law and have enough face to admit when they are wrong, and that is totally out of the question to ask from Thaksin.
So as we are not exactly sure of how the election laws read about campaigning before the starting gun is fired, we do know the EC must first vote on the evidence and see if it violates the election law. If it does, they will issue a red or yellow card to the violator. Then it must be passed up to the court to make a final decision. Seeing that Yingluck is a party list candidate, the penalty could be her Pheu Thai Party (PTP) may face the ax and be dissolved, along with a 5 year holiday from politics for the party list politicians.
So as Connecting the Dots sees it, the part of Thailand that needs the most attention at the moment by the Prime Minister is the south. The south has been ravaged by the weather and is in need of infrastructure repair. But as Yingluck is traveling by train, that could turn out to be a genuine whistle stop tour as blowing whistles at her is the way being used to drive her out of office. With the south being the stronghold of the Democrats, that response is guaranteed. So this is the type of evidence that the EC must look at and weigh. Is she not going there for her personal safety, or is this just premature campaigning for office.
