Updated: Floods and politics I

For our posts on much larger and wider impact 2011 floods, click here to begin or simply click through to our home page.

PPT has posted on the flooding that has inundated parts of Thailand since about 10 October 2010. We mentioned the incompetence of the Abhisit Vejjajiva government. We also noted the corruption involved in the allocation of relief. We have also commented, in the same post, on the way in which the leaders of the current regime seem to have neglected the level of the crisis, with more than 100 dead and millions impacted.

It’s three weeks and PPT has been talking with a few villagers sitting above flood waters in a part of the northeast for two weeks. PPT asked them what they had received from the government so far?

Nothing. Nothing at all, they said. What of the 5,000 baht the government promised? Not seen yet.

What are local officials doing, we asked. The response was really very interesting. The new nai amphur is said to have been put in place because he is a Phum Jai Thai Party man. He’s telling the villagers that they are getting no help because they voted for the wrong party in the 2007 election. He’s supported by a PJT headman, elected for almost ever thanks to the post-2006 coup junta, who also tells the villagers they are being politically punished. He says the party they voted for better help them.

The villagers are probably right to assume that these heartless bastards are pocketing the relief money.

PPT is not exaggerating. We don’t say this is happening every where. We do say that the punishment of red shirts is ongoing and even deepening.

Update: Maybe the elite read PPT? We have no idea, but a reading of today’s (Tuesday) suggests that they have seen the political problem emerging from the floods. They are dumping in money. Will that just permit greater corruption?