Another cooking show and swallowing defeat

PPT has been somewhat amazed at the way the mainstream media has been “handling” their election loss last week. The papers are full of sour grape stories.

Illustrative of the lengths the losers will go is The Nation’s “story” reporting on a complaint lodged that Yingluck Shinawatra engaged in vote-buying in Korat by stirring a few noodles for the cameras. This is indicative of the kinds of media attack, couched as stories from “sources,” all unnamed, that amount to unsubstantiated nonsense.

Then there’s the stories that claim that the Puea Thai Party didn’t win the election, but the Democrat Party lost it because… you choose: they were inept at developing a campaign, Abhisit wrote his own speeches, they had no PR strategy, they waited too long before calling an election, etc. It just goes on and on, and never mentions the fact that the electorate spoke with a resounding rejection of the Democrat Party and a stunning acceptance of Puea Thai’s platform.

The Bangkok Post has a classic example, by Anchalee Kongrut, said to be a feature writer at the newspaper. She asks, as so many others have: “Why did the Democrat Party suffer such a crushing defeat in the general election? Was it a backlash against the military for the 2006 coup? Or were rural voters in the North and Northeast waging a class war on the bourgeoisie, a group that has long supported the Democrats? Or could it simply be that this 65-year-old political party is completely inept at PR and marketing strategy?”

None of those it seems and nor could it have been that the Democrat Party was the core of a regime that killed people, locked them up, played monarchism, censored and repressed. Nope, for Anchalee, it is “a testament to how successfully Thailand’s half-baked democracy has been married to advertising techniques.”

Note that Thailand’s democracy, following a Puea Thai victory, is “half-baked.” And it seems that all that was needed to thrash the incumbent government was branding and communication/marketing. Of course, the very deep and intelligent loser for the premiership doesn’t read marketing books, but Yingluck does. So that must be an advantage over the hapless Mark.

The damned party of the peasants – to be fair, those are PPT’s words – used a U.S.-like campaign team. Mark scribbled his own notes while the scheming Puea Thai “assigned people the specific responsibility of handling a public-relations campaign for Yingluck Shinawatra and writing speeches for her to deliver.” Why, even the Bangkok Post “revealed” that Yingluck’s “PR team choreographed … every move and posture; advising her when she should turn left or right to face the cameras, when she should swivel, or raise her index finger to make that signature No.1 gesture or flash that winning smile of hers.” Goodness, she even “came across as accessible, pleasant and likeable.”

Now how unfair is it! Fancy that nasty Puea Thai being professional about a campaign. Why didn’t the Democrat Party campaign in a professional manner? Too high-minded and intellectual? Too elitist even? PPT thinks that the defeated Democrat Party just thought they could stroll back to government. After all, they had killed people, locked them up, played monarchism, censored and repressed. And with the military and big Sino-Thai business on-side, it should have been a cakewalk.

Poor Anchalee is forced to reveal something: “I have to admit, though, that it was fun to watch Yingluck’s campaign.” Poor Mark just looked uncomfortable doing everyday things. He “came across as the epitome of an elite caste.” Abhisit, it seems, just didn’t understand that you have to give the masses dross and dough. He is said to have been “drawing up policies – not for what the people wanted, but for what he believed they deserved.” Too high-minded, but a good lad.

Of course, behind all of this professionalism and political-business acumen is the Svengali-like Thaksin Shinawatra who has “mesmerised by his … perennial appeal to the proverbial man on the street.” He’s got everyone under his trance and voters as consumers are “too tired to look for the remote to switch channels.”

The thing is, they did “switch channels.” They threw out the Democrat Party and now look forward to something different. They didn’t do that in a trance but as a deliberate and thoughtful attention to the events since 2006. They hope for a better Thailand. They rejected the military and the coup – recall they talked of pressing the reset button on Thai democracy – they didn’t like and took the country backwards in fast rewind.

Giving the electorate some credit just seems too difficult. It’s just impossible to see how “we” – those born to rule and who know best – could have been defeated by the decision of the dark, hot and sweaty masses. It can’t be admitted that the Democrat Party is a failed and essentially unelectable party, beaten this time by a party running its third-string candidates.