Capitalising during a national crisis

Forgetting how unethical this is, it reminds you of how Thaksin set himself up as the hero in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami and won the election held thereafter in a landslide.

On February 3, 2005 right after the tsunami and subsequent election, the US number-one circulation newspaper USA Today carried this headline: “Thailand’s Thaksin rides crest of tsunami disaster”.

The article said: “The tsunami that struck Thailand on December 26 brought death and destruction. It also brought opportunity for Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

“Immediately after the tragedy, Thaksin descended on devastated areas, walking among the victims, offering sympathy and government help and snapping orders to underlings like the billionaire CEO he used to be. He refused offers of international aid, saying Thailand could take care of itself.

“Before December 26, Thaksin had been losing ground to opponents who charged that his heavy-handed rule threatened Thailand’s young democracy; that he needlessly inflamed a Muslim insurgency in the South; that his populist economic policies are risky and unsustainable; and that he has adopted policies that enrich his friends and his own business empire.

“’The tsunami saved his butt,’ says James Klein, the Asia Foundation’s representative in Bangkok. ‘The whole anti-Thaksin movement ground to a halt the month before the election.’”

See link at www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-02-03-thailand-pm_x.htm.

In the same way as with the tsunami, Yingluck did not warn of the disaster (same as no warnings for the tsunami), refused both US and UN aid (same as with the tsunami – don’t let foreigners be the hero), managed the disaster itself poorly, gave poor and untrue information (virtually no reporting of terrible floods in places like Ratchaburi), and tried to grab credit for the clean-up (this can be shown happening with the relief signs quoted above). Even the cast of characters is largely the same.

So, as bad as the government’s allowing this to happen is, there are a lot of the same elements that turned the tsunami into a PR success for themselves. The cynical operating theory is the Thai country folk will favour whoever is seen as giving them the goodies.

There was a famous Nazi phrase: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

A Hitler

Chonburi