Global Voices » Enda Nasution

Thailand: Situation on the street

Enda Nasution — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 17:06:38 +0000

Thailand under military rule day one looks like a regular day here albeit there were fewer people on the street.

Banks and schools are closed, and most of the offices too.

Internet and cellular connection are all fine. CNN and BBC broadcast were blocked until this afternoon, but then has been available since.

After trying to figure out what is really going on in Bangkok, I decided to look and see it for myself.

All malls and shopping are open. Siam Paragon the newest and biggest Bangkok malls looks normal. MBK the favorit shopping place for tourists is open, although they are closing sooner than usual, citing a possible curfew that might be enforced.

Public transportation are all normal, buses, taxis, motorcycle taxi, the subway and sky train station (Bangkok MRT) are all functioning as they suppose to with minimum sight of the military personnel's.

Jewie on his blog Lost in Translation posted Happy Military Coup mentioning how everyone seems to be happy.

The TV interviews with common people seem to contradict the expected situation of a military coup. Some on TV even said why the military had taken so long to react to Thaksin. Other seem pretty happy about the coup and they had been expecting it. On the streets, civilians are enjoying the holiday. Bringing food and water to the soldiers, photo taking session, flowers presented to soldiers. I have not seen any news report of anyone against the coup so far. It seems like it’s an all against Thaksin thing now.

Michelle on Brit in Bangkok calling this an Excellent News for Thailand:

Thaksin has been a HUGE problem to Thailand for well over a year now. A new election was coming up next month and Thaksin WOULD DEFINITELY have been re-elected because uneducated Thais in the mostly Northern provinces would vote for him. (Thaksin has given money to many of the poor for years, technically buying votes).

And Metroblogging Bangkok citing poll result how people feels about this coup:

According to a popular public opinion poll, the Dusit Poll [figures not exact as I couldn't here correctly]

83% the people approved the “peaceful” coup as a way to calm the political situation in Thailand.
17% disapproved….

I continue my quest for tanks from Siam Area to Rachadamnoen Nok (Outer Avenue) that is the center of government administration.

Most Government departments, U.N. and ESCAP organizations as well as Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall, the parliament house are also situated on this road

As I arrived, I saw that there were no blockade anymore. The people were crowding the tanks and Humvees, distributing roses and mostly trying to take pictures together with the military personnel's.

There were celebration atmosphere in the air, where everybody like take part of this special day.
Peter, wrote on this forum describe the Thai people reaction of this coup as cool detachment. Other than in the Rachadamnoen area, you can not tell that there is coup going on in the country.

The temporary government has promised that there will be a civil government in 2 weeks period and has come up with new general election date to be held in October 2007
Tomorrow (hopefully) will just be a regular day.

Singapore: Document mistakenly sent

Enda Nasution — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 08:13:41 +0000

Zuco's Blog reports on Temasek Holdings's document that mistakenly sent out as attachment to some journalists. The document entitle “2006-03 Taurus Q&As” was a list of question and answer that designed to help its executives answer media enquiries.

Philippines: The Story of Jolo

Enda Nasution — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 12:00:42 +0000

Blogkadahan tells story of Jolo, a small town in the southwest of the Philippines which she remembers as once one of the most beautiful place in the country. Now, she says, after 30 years of neglect by the government, being torn apart by war, prejudice, and opportunistic vultures, Jolo is transformed: “…from being a place of hope, it has become a place of fear.”

Singapore: Honour your pledge

Enda Nasution — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 11:50:44 +0000

At Diary of A Lucky Singaporean Lucky Tan satirises the pledge of Singaporean politicians by applying its wording of justice, equality and democracy to their actions. He finds the pledge should not be taken for granted.

Singapore: Inreases of failed marriage

Enda Nasution — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 11:43:06 +0000

Ryang Wong doubts that telling people to work hard on their marriage is sufficient to prevent divorce. Statistics show that half of the marriages in Singapore these days do not last more than 10 years, and he writes that the changing nature of societal pressures means peoples mindset toward marriage has to change.

Singapore: Online Petition

Enda Nasution — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 11:20:14 +0000

Singapore Election Watch announces an online petition against linking votes to public housing upgrading in Singapore.

Thailand: Thaksinomics 2.0

Enda Nasution — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 11:18:46 +0000

Bookish reports on Thaksinomics 2.0 that he finds lacking substance especially on the vision for lifting the poor out of poverty.

Indonesia: People are leaving

Enda Nasution — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 11:17:11 +0000

Sarapan Ekonomi notices that many people are leaving Indonesia citing the map provided by Worldmapper and commenting that net emigration is common in poor or developing countries, where the poor are leaving in search of a better life.

Indonesia: Islamist vs. Secular parties

Enda Nasution — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 11:13:52 +0000

Indonesia Matters examines the categorization of Islamist vs. Secular parties in Indonesia.

Vietnam: Annoying government loudspeaker

Enda Nasution — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 11:11:23 +0000

Vietnamese God posts a picture of government's loudspeaker that repeats announcements constantly in his home area. He feels that although in some ways it is helpful, but you will wish it gone, especially on weekend when you trying to relax.

Thailand: The Question of Democracy

Enda Nasution — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 04:45:08 +0000

Does general election ensured a truly democratic government? Is it a necessity? Or an election could come down to a level of merely a tool to keep certain people in power?

The answer, when in come to current political crisis in Thailand might be difficult, and it depends on which side are you on.

Simon Saunders over at One Stop Chiang Mai Blog wrote a long post about Thailand's “Growing pains of democracy”

He asked that:

“A year after sweeping to an unprecedented re-election victory Thailand's PM has called a snap election in the face of growing calls for his resignation. So what went wrong?”

Apparently lot of things went wrong.

In February, predicted a day before by Bangkok Pundit on his post “What Should Thaksin Do: Resign, Dissolve, or Carry On”, PM Thaksin has dissolved Thailand Parliament with general election to scheduled next week, on April 2nd.

Since then, the anti-Thaksin coalition, anchored around the People's Alliance for Democracy, has been pushing hard the same stance that PM Thaksin should resign immediately without conditions and has stated that the opposition parties will not participate in the snap election.

Who is Thaksin of Thailand?
It was Sampsa Daily that asked the important question of “Who is Thaksin of Thailand?” because more and more , this Thailand national crisis seems to centered on Thaksin Sinawatra personality and what he represents.

He noted that besides his usual biography entry that he is an ex-police and a self-made millionaire (now billionaire), he is also symbolized a new phenomenon in Thai politics.

A new phenomenon that in a words of Thailand's opposition Democrat Party, Surin Pitsuwan on International Herald Tribune noted on this MSN Spaces post, means taht PM Thaksin administration has a more aggressive, materialistic and debt-generating style, compare to the more traditional, humble and largely self-sufficient model that is more common among Thai politician.

Bottom line, to his political opponents, PM Thaksin Sinawatra is simply an authoritarian leader who has abused power by usurping constitutional mechanisms, marginalizing the parliamentary opposition and intimidating civil society groups.

That's why, Stuart G Towns over at SGTowns.com noticed, that the opposition is focusing entirely on removing the Prime Minister from power and not about other reform issues such us changing the constitution or removing the TRT Party (PM Thaksin's Party) from power.

Simon Saunders at One Stop Chiang Mai Blog, ponder that it is the ethics of the PM which has so angered all the urban middle class and generated such harsh criticism for him.

Indeed, for a country leader he does seem to have a warped sense of judgment when it comes to ethics and morality, preferring to run Thailand like his own private company where everyone is his employees and should be grateful for a salary, but ultimately the decisions are his to make to suit the ‘bottom line'.

Bhojman on Meandering wonder maybe PM Thaksin simply has became too confident and has taken advantage of his position for his own ends.

And indeed, it was the sale of the Shin Corporation, owned by Thaksin's family and in-laws, to the Singaporean Government's Temasek Holdings for $1.88 billion using a loophole created by Thaksin that excludes capital gains tax, that becomes the last straw that has outraged many Thai's

That does not mean that PM Thaksin never done anything good for Thailand.

Stuart G Town on his post “Thaksin's Record” compiled a list of “for” and “against” in several fronts including Village development, Human rights, The media and The Government.

In fact in five-year rule, he has successfully implementing a raft of populist policies, from universal health coverage and business start-up funds for rural villages to debt suspension for farmers. Policies, which for some, exploit the longstanding income divide between Bangkok and the countryside

Reaction online: Singapore Bloggers and Ribbon Campaign
Anti Singapore stance is one of the issue that demonstrator put forward, with demonstration in front of Singapore Embassy and while they are burning posters of Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong

Waving placards saying “Thailand Not for Sale, Get Out”, several hundred protesters urged a boycott of all things Singaporean in answer to the takeover of telecoms giant Shin Corp by its state investment arm, Temasek, from Thaksin's family.

Jewie a Singaporean who lives in Bangkok wrote:

Thanks to Temasek Holdings Singapore buying up AIS, seems there is a “I hate Singapore” thing going on here now. In addition, I see the red crossy sign of UOB popping up here and there in Thailand. Wonder what other Singapore things I will see next. Singapore… what the heck is Singapore doing… buying up everything here just because its cheap?? I got a call from a friend… asked me to be caution… stay home.

The rally prompted one Singaporean blogger to ask asked American-style question “Why Do They Hate Us So?”

One blog went far giving out a Warning to Singaporeans not go to Thailand, specially Bangkok. But so far there's no violence involved in the street rally.

A blog sprung up from the Anti-Thaksin movement creating the blog with the same name: Anti Thaksin Sinnawat and Thaksin Get Out.org which is the crying rally of the demonstrators (Thakin ok pai in Thai) started an online ribbon campaign similar to makepovertyhistory.org site.

Uncharted Territory

Outside Looking Inside on his post “Hanging By Thread” commented that Thailand is now entering uncharted territory.

With opposition boycotting the April 2 election, there is a probability that Thaksin's Party (TRT) will not fill the 500 minimum members of parliament required to form a government.

“How do you maintain a democracy without democratic process?” he asked. Without an elected government, the national crisis will still not be solved and chance this will become a continuing crisis is bigger.

Epilogos noted in his post Restless in Thailand:

The opposition knows that they cannot unseat Thaksin, but they forget that this is the only democratically valid way to remove him from power, if not today, then next year, if the reasons warrant it.

It is sad to see that a country cannot resolve its political differences through the ballot box, but only through threats and boycotts of parties that provides employment to the Thai worker, no less.

Bangkok Pundit tried to analyze what will happen after April 2 and whether, the matter might need to go to Thailand Constitutional Court (find more interesting discussion at the comment section of the post of the possibilities the whole crisis can be ended).

Currently a called for compromise where all the factions sit together to discuss and finds compromise out from the problems seems to be the best solution even that is not most likely, as the Meadering blog wrote:

Somewhere along the way a compromise needs to be reached. Compromise is the Thai way to restore harmony. This is why so many have been trying to bring the relevant people to the bargaining table. From the news reports it does appear that Mr Thaksin is not playing the compromise game as he should. Why not?

Another way to go is to ask HM the King to enforce Article 7 of Thai constitution to end the political crisis while keeping off possible violences outcomes.

This seems to be undemocratic way to solve the problem, but depends on a few days ahead, Thai people might look at this as solution to avoid a deepening and prolong crisis.

Thailand: BlogconThai 2006

Enda Nasution — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 03:57:18 +0000

BlogCon Thailand 2006, the first blogger meeting that discuss Weblogs, Online Information and Collaboration Thailand was successfully held on Sunday, 19 March 2006 with about 25 participants that came not only from Bangkok, but also from Phuket, Chiang Mai and even Bali.

Took place at Thammasat University Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication in Bangkok, the event will not be as successful without the kind support of the university and faculty that lend us the place (and provided refreshments!), but the highest credit has to go to Paola Di Maio that initiated the WOICT Groups that planned and organized the meeting with the generous help from two outstanding Thai bloggers, Jim Puntasen and Chinarut Ruangchotvit.

Several discussion and interesting information came up from speakers at the conference.

Don Sambandaraksa, the Bangkok Post IT columnist point to The Media Slut, a an anonymous collaborative blog among IT Journalists in South East Asia that has been posting Thailand anti-government rally photos from Bangkok since at the start of movement.

Ric Shreves, who now lives in Bali, another Bangkok Post IT Columnist, mentioned his blog Post DB Open Source Project that carries Bangkok Post logo, which might be the only blog in Thailand associated with mainstream media.

Other discussion range from blog as social tools that brought up by Michael Bauwens the founder of P2P Foundation to more pragmatic issues at hand such as Thai Education and Technology Development for Poor Rural Area and how blogs can help create awareness about these issues also discussed.

Interesting data shared by Derek Brown, who is the Marketing Director of Microsoft Thailand, that there are 990,000 MSN Space users (MSN Blogging application) in Thailand. He estimated that majority of this users, who is also MSN IM users, use the tools to share media online such as pictures, music and videos.

We also introduced to Thailand's brewed blog application, GotoKnow.org (The Gateway of Thailand's Online Knowledge Management) owned and maintained The Knowledge Management Institute (KMI) Thailand, an organization that works towards driving Thai society to become knowledge-based society in government, private enterprise and in particular civil society.

Freely available, the site GotoKnow.org home page work as an aggregator of newest postings on the site with list of blogrolls on the left column identified some of popular bloggers as Superstar or Star blogger.

After four hours of discussion, the meeting end at 5pm with closing remarks, and cheerfully agreed by everybody, that the meeting has been very interesting and a useful learning experience.

For the time being the discussion will move to the online group, however second meeting of Thai Bloggers already been discuss and plan to have in 6 months time in Chiang Mai.

Individuals or Bloggers that interested in the event are suggested to join the group or watch or new information posted on the BlogCon Thailand blog or this wiki.

Blogcon Thailand 2006 MP3's are available to download on this site.

For pictures of the event go here.

Until next time. :)

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand announced a House dissolution

Enda Nasution — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 16:45:06 +0000

At 8.40pm Bangkok time today, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has announced a House dissolution on national television after he was granted an audience with His Majesty the King earlier this evening.

He said that decision as an act to return the mandate to the people in order to uphold the democratic rules.

Snap election to elect the new government is to take place on April 2.

The decision was taken after public pressure escalated calling for for his resignation since the sell-off of his family’s controlling stake in Shin Corp to Temasek, the Singapore’s government investment agency. Critics have accused him of insider trading and structuring the deal to avoid paying hefty taxes, among other irregularities.

This month, we have seen impeachment attemp by 28 senators, Anti-Thaksin rallies of 50,000 protesters joined by student unions from the leading Thailand universities all calling PM Thaksin to step down.

2Bangkok.com on his analysis mentioned that there is a big possibility that Thaksin will fight back and stay in power.

… Thaksin, not being a political animal, but a business leader not adverse to failure, is more interested in regrouping and staying in charge where he believes he belongs. He will not step into the shadows like a canny career politician, but try to weather the storm like an embattled CEO guiding his company through a sales downturn…

..This is where the eventual conflict could come because Thaksin will not play by Thai political rules and step aside once 'society' (academics, politicians, and activists, but not necessarily voters) has judged him to have lost legitimacy to rule…

Indonesia: Blog aggregators, President's new site and Prophet Muhammad Cartoon

Enda Nasution — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 05:46:30 +0000

With the growing numbers of blogs it becomes more difficult to find, read and follow and what each other is posting in their blogs. One can simply solve the problem of reading and following blog posting by subscribing to their feeds and read the posts trough RSS clients or readers, but finding a good blogs for reading to begin with is different matter altogether.

For this we usually depends on a blogger authority figure to point out a blog that worth reading.

For others who would want to find new interesting blogs by themselves they now can resort to blog aggregators.

Currently the Indonesian blogosphere has given birth to several blog aggregators. While several of them are sprung from a blog community, there are others that are a fruit of resourceful individual blogger.

Here are the Indonesian blog aggregators and short description about them:

Planet Terasi
Owned and maintained by Ronny Haryanto, a postgraduate student in Sydney, Australia, Planet Terasi (terasi = dried shrimp paste) is the first and oldest Indonesian Blog Aggregator with a preference for original Indonesian related content with pinch technological/geek taste. It currently aggregates about 60 blogs and updated every hour.

Merdeka.or.id
Lead by Andry S Huzain a programmer who lives in Surabaya, Merdeka.or.id (Merdeka = Freedom) strive not only to make it easier for people to find good blogs but also to motivate the bloggers to provides useful informative posts. Not all blog submission will be aggregate; there is a review and voting process that will decide the fate of a blog. Will my blog make the cut? Yes, if as they described, your blog has kick ass and consistent post.

Komunitas Blogger Muslim
In the most populous Muslim country you will expect there will be Indonesian Muslim Blogger community, and you are right. This blog aggregator, aggregate blogs that is a member of Indonesian Muslim Blogger who lives, not only in Indonesia but all over the world, from Qatar to Denmark, from Bosnia to Pakistan. With slogan “For victorious Islam in Cyber World“, the community has more than 400 active members.

ID-Gmail.info
Sprang from Indonesian Gmail mailing list this blog aggregator, aggregates ID-Gmail member's blogs. This highly active (for some people extremely might be more suitable) relatively new avant garde community has now become a base for anything new and advances in regards to Internet, media and social-cultural trends in Indonesia. With 500 members, one of the milestones of the group is when the exchanges reached to a monumental 30,000 email messages in one month (November 2005).

In the future, hopefully there will be more blog aggregators with special niche/by topic that will surface. Where the added value of a “Blog Aggregate Editor” will enhance the signal vs. noise ratio in the blogosphere.

President SBY's new site
Indonesian president, Dr. H. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (or SBY as he familiarly refers to) has a new, quite “innovative” website.

The website, complete with RSS and Podcast feeds, that reporting day to day President's activities has an English section and a special section for the Indonesian First Lady (in Indonesian)

This well designed and maintained website create blogger reaction (and public as well) when it launched and revealed its monthly operational budget of some Rp 42 million (US$ 4,500 per month).

Where the amount seems high in a country with GDP per capita $3,700 (2005), Priyadi argued that that budget is relatively modest (in Indonesian) for a head of a country website, that has to consider bandwidth usage, hired staff and security and maintenance system.

The other reaction is regarding the domain name chosen: presidensby.info. Why the president site does not use the official Indonesian government domain go.id as what the vice president do.

The decision to select .info domain and putting “sby” on the address raised a question that the site was developed for more a personal SBY's website and less for a head of the country official website.

This conclusion lead to a call by Windede on his post, that President SBY's might as well give blogging a try.

Prophet Muhammad Cartoon
There are many (too many) words have been poured about this one. People killed, embassies burned. In my opinion, what the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, done was analogous with what in Internet known as flamebait. And foolishly the other side takes the bait and feed the troll. And now there's a flamewar going on.

On her blog A pilgrim for life, Eva Muchtar, a PR Professional who took sabbatical leave from her work to study Spanish Language in Sevilla, Andalucia, post about “The cartoons of Muhammad“, she wrote:

People can express whatever they want to express. Shall we express it even at the expense of other people’s privacy and beliefs? … There is also a question of how the Moslem should respond to it. Are they over-reacting? … But if we respond, how should we respond? And if we respond in the same manner as this initial cause of chain reaction, does it mean we are guilty of the same ‘mistake’?

Hopes for a peaceful and productive life, I think, is in order, as she continued:

When will this stop? Why should this unnecessary hatred start?

It is such a difficult subject to discuss. Had we known the answer, perhaps there will be peace on earth. But let us give it a shot anyway. Let us stop having pointless and never-ending cycle of arguments. Let us be more productive, helpful and loving to one another.

Indonesia is discussing about blog

Enda Nasution — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 05:32:10 +0000

Discussion about Indonesian Blogs

It's always a good thing when bloggers meet and got to discuss what we love: blogging. :)

Photos by Hericz

This time the discussion was quite a formal one. Invited and sponsored by Detikinet.com a part of Detik.com the oldest Indonesian Online News Media that specialized itself on technology, IT and Internet news.

Attended by about 20 bloggers, only a fraction of the total estimated 10,000 Indonesian bloggers, the discussion take placed at Detikinet's office [reminding me of the last GVO summit that take place at Reuters's Headquarter].

The attendees represents almost all Indonesian blogging communities such as Blogfam, Blogbugs, Loenpia, ID-Gmail, Merdeka and Blog Indosiar and after short introduction the discussion lead to two main topics that related to one another.

How to get more people to blog; which lead to…
How we can see more blogs with higher standard of posting and whether blog can compete with mainstream media.

Many ideas thrown to the table regarding the above topics. Each community has plan how to introduce blogs to untouched public segments that has big potential to become bloggers.

Priyadi one of the attended was the one who come up with the ideas of providing a definitive source for blogging information in a wiki based site (in Indonesian). The name ‘WikiBlogia” come up for this Indonesian Blog information center. This wiki will be a place where people can go if they wants to know more about what is blog or how to start blogging.

In the same spirit with Priyadi's wiki, Blogfam [a short for Blogger Family] also planned to launch online blog magazine next week.

From the discussion, he also wrote that Indosiar.com blog communities [a part of Indosiar a national TV station] trying for a more proactive roles to socialized blog where they will visit high schools to promote and introduce blog.

Blog Indosiar.com communities also preparing to launch a Blog Awards 2006 this year to popularized blogging to public.

Hericz another attendee represent ID-GMail and Merdeka, posted about a very interesting idea (in Indonesian) that come up at the discussion is a plan to set 2007 as “Indonesian Blog Year”, where one of the target is to get elementary school students to start asking their parents what is blog.

Detik itself, Hericz wrote, has promise to provide a free online banner slot and 5,000 sponsored free CD's about blogging to be distributed.

On it's own publication, Detikinet's Editors Donny BU who himself a blogger and known as activist in the Indonesian IT community addressed the power of blog as people power (in Indonesian) and cited that some of the Indonesian blogs has in-depth quality that can't be match by the mainstream media because the blogger is an expert on the topic.

He also wrote that the big question after public becomes familiar with blogs and its uniqueness would be how to get it to synergize with mainstream media to provide useful and timely information for the benefits of the public.

Photos by Hericz

About the quality of the blog, Benny Dewanto, Blog Indosiar.com Admin mentioned that blog quality closely related with the blogging process itself. The continuous feedback a blog receives and the support from blogging community will contribute to end result of a better blog.

Blog is the right tools for the younger generation. “It's a self actualization media and a place to practice to speak up so everybody can hear their opinions and thoughts.” he added.

Other bloggers that participate at the discussion and blog about it are #direktif (in Indonesian) and Budiyono.net (in Indonesian)

Other interesting thing in the Indonesian Blogosphere this week:

• Angelina Sondakh a member of Indonesian Parliament from Democratic Party and a former Miss Indonesia [2001] start taking on blogging. On her blog Angelina Sondakh's Diary she wrote (in Indonesian) about her love life and her relationship with a fellow parliament member/actors/models Adjie Massaid that receives huge responses.

• Benny Chandra, blogger who live in Surabaya, East Java wrote about his 7 things to celebrate Chinese New Year (in Indonesian) which is a national holiday in Indonesia. His 7 things is rain, parties, cleaning up, Shio [Chinese Zodiac], Ang Pao, oranges and “Gong Xi Fa Chai” that according to him means a wish to be successful and the complete way to say happy new year should be “Xin nian Kuaile” [Happy Chinese New Year].