Koh Phangan Election 2005 – countdown for another free democratic system?

Well … by looking at the picture to the left you might get the wrong impression that Thailand’s Prime Minister Thaksin Shinavatra wants to invite you to the next Black Moon Party here on Koh Phangan Paradise Island 😉

But this is indeed not the case. Instead PM Thaksin Shinavatra is that guy being responsible for that new closing time all over Thailand. Bars, Nightclubs and any horizontal businesses have to close at 1 a.m. Well … except here on Koh Phangan 😉 At the moment there are all kind of parties every single night. Let it be Jungle Party, Black Moon, Half Moon, Shiva Moon, Quarter or No Moon At All Party. Everything works fine here. No closing time or whatsoever here on Phangan Island as long as you know the right people and give them the right tiny pieces of printed paper with all those fascinating numbers on it!

Anyway … recently there has been an increasing number of new political street signs everywhere on the island. The Bangkok Post and The Nation have invented this “Countdown to Election 2005” a la American style and today it just said 30 more days! Should we start worrying? Well … if you have a close look at those political propaganda signs then we should only be very, very grateful for our political leaders. Everything will be fine soon! Free Education! Lots of happy work! Free social security! No more dept! More Quality! Plant trees and increase your earnings! A guaranteed pension when you’re 60 years old! And even guaranteed work for 1 year once you graduated from university!

And finally the long used motto “WORK WILL SET YOU FREE”! Doesn’t all that sound just great 😉

Hmh … still not sure if it will set you free or THEM! By the way, most of those propaganda signs came from the democrat party and not from Thaksin’s ‘Thai Rak Thai’ Party. But anyway … where’s the difference? They appear in sooo many different names like the Liberals, Democrats, Republicans, Christians, Socials and they all promise you the same thing over and over again. A Better World 😉

But at the end of the day all these promises still remain empty spoken words and nothing has changed. Just a couple of days ago the Nation newspaper published an article about the real progress here in Thailand since the last 4 years of Thaksin’s administration. And the awful truth was brutal like expected. Thaksin family and buddies maximized their official profits by 173% and are now multi billionaires and all the rest of Thailand’s population pretty much the same. But wait … there was an increase in wages for the average Thai worker from 165 Baht a day to 175 Baht! Wow that’s an amazing change isn’t it? If you then also realize that the inflation rate went also up by 5 point something percent … hmh … can you follow 😉

Well … I still really don’t understand why so many people still believe … have trust in all this political propaganda nonsense! A guaranteed pension when you’re 60 years old! Do you have any idea how the world will look like in 10, 20 or 30 years from now?

Anyway …in our time of bizarre working e-voting machines without any paper trail and software engineers contacting the FBI and CIA about programming a software for a politician to manipulate the election results we should start thinking about this FREE democratic system and ask the right questions.

What is going on here?