Transcript of the above video:

The thumbnail for this video comes from the movie Heat. I just thought of it because I said "Oh, it looks like basically Anutin is being placed under a lot of heat going into this possible upcoming election. It looks like we are probably going to see an election some time in quarter one of next year; exactly when remains to be seen. There is some speculation he is going to dissolve Parliament on the 12th, again remains to be seen. That being said, I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Thai Examiner, that's thaiexaminer.com, the article is titled: Major setback for PM Anutin as Southern voters turn back to the Democrat Party and Abhisit Vejjajiva." 

Now look, I don't have any problem with Abhisit but I think that this headline is just wildly off base. I mean if you've been following Thai politics with any frequency in the past few weeks, the fact of that the matter is the UTN which just made major gains down in the South, and frankly the Democrats had a terrible showing in the last election - both in Bangkok as well as in the South up against UTN - they effectively merged with Bhumjaithai. So this notion that the Democrats are coming in as some sort of like I don't know battering ram or something it's like well, yeah, you know. I mean what's that line from Infinity War I think it was, where Thanos is talking to Loki and Loki says, "I have experience", he says, "well if you call failure experience!" - I mean no offense to the Dems here but their last outing at the polls was bad, okay? Now I'm optimistic for them that Abhisit can forge together a new platform and forge together a new party that can turn things around but that said, they have got a long road to hoe and the Democrats had all kinds of internal factionalism it seemed like; I commented on this, the fact that the Exec. Board and the Party membership, the folks that are actually in the Parliament, I think there was a lot of disconnect between those things, especially back during the week when we were watching this sort of rump coalition be held together by spit and duct tape in the final weeks of the last government before we saw it sort of reconstituted under Anutin. 

That being said, the point I am trying to make is Anutin seems to be receiving heat from a ton of different sides. People have been I think Big Joke has now even come out and said that he failed involving the floods down in Hat Yai. I mean failed at what? I mean this just happened. He's just now responding. Anutin himself, I actually did a video we ultimately trashed because it didn't feel right, the tone of it, and I didn't quite feel like it was covering anything. It was just sort of immaterial. I talked about it in another video, in that draft video I guess I should say, deleted scene, where somebody was giving him guff about the response and he said, "well we've already deployed 20 people. I've got 40 people on hand. We are getting them deployed." On multiple scenes again I'm not trying to necessarily just defend him because I have serious problems with this Government. I have videos upcoming; they've been talking New World Order nonsense, this kind of globalism stuff. That said, it's more been coming from folks within the Cabinet and the periphery around Anutin; I'm curious as to how much he's into all that especially in light of the fact that he touts national sovereignty to the level he does. So my hope is he's going to stick to that refrain because our national sovereignty here in Thailand is very important. I mean it's arguably one of the most important things that we need to constantly be aware of and protect, for our own safety as a nation. But that being said, he's been receiving a lot of flak. Now politics is politics. He's the PM. People are going to give whoever's in that Chair some flak, but a lot of it I think it's somewhat disingenuous. Like for example, from the Pheu Thai quarter, in Parliament there seems to be this underlying, "oh you're not handling the Border crisis well." It's like they're trying to gin up this narrative against him on the border crisis. It's like, you mean that thing you guys caused that he's having to clean up the mess on? Yeah, I mean reasonable people can maybe disagree, but I can't fault him especially he's only been in six weeks. I mean he didn't get on the phone to Hun Sen and basically sell the place out, so what are we talking about at the end of the day? Meanwhile, again some of the criticism is that he's not, I guess I don't know, hawkish enough or something. This is a fine line to walk. On the one hand we'd like to see it de-escalate so we can get trade back on that border region going. On the other hand, there's a lot of animosity up there I'm sure, possibly because the people on the other side of the border were lobbing mortars and things over on people on this side of the border. So again, it's a very fine line to walk. I don't envy Anutin's task; I don't think he's perfect. I will be criticizing him in certain ways, but credit where credit is due and criticism where criticism is due. I don't see where some of this he's really due. That said, this notion that the Democrats are some big threat I find hard to kind of swallow. 

That said, quoting directly: Major setback that for PM Anutin as Southern voters abandon Bhumjaithai and flock to Abhisit and the Democrat Party amid floods." Well, okay. Southern voters abandoned Bhumjaithai. Well the South was never Bhumjaithai's major stomping ground to begin with. Their sort of centre of activity if you will, is Buriram; I mean it's E-san. So okay, voters they didn't really necessarily have in the bag to begin with are maybe looking around at their options, I don't really see where that's headline worthy. Quoting further: "and flocked to Abhisit Vejjajiva and the Democrat Party amid floods, rising corruption and high public anxiety, wrecking Anutin's plans for next year's general election in the South." Again, as I talked about, UTN who just went in there and took names and kicked butt in the last election against the Democrats have signed on with Bhumjaithai, so, quoting further: "An authoritative National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA) poll" - an authoritative Nida poll. I have talked about these NIDA Polls in the past, especially during COVID when I questioned the authenticity and the sample size of the pools and things. What is a Teddy Roosevelt said? There's lies, damn lies and statistics. Authoritative poll! Come on. Quoting further: "released Sunday delivers more bad news for Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul. In office less than three months, he is already in trouble as Southern voters turned back the clock toward the Democratic Party." Again, I mean and read the article for yourself. I see where they're sort of looking at one element of an overall broad situation and just kind of concentrating on that. Again, I thought it was pretty big news when UTN basically sort of had a merger if you will with Bhumjaithai; I think that was more telling than this.

That said, I do think the Dems are very likely to go ahead and probably do better in the next election, probably in Bangkok especially. That said, not a foregone conclusion, that remains to be seen. "Traditionally the South's Party of choice and Thailand's oldest Party," - yeah traditionally, but not recently. I mean look at the polls from the last election, okay. I mean to say that this is like a major sea change based on the polls from the last election, it's just not the case. Quoting further: "The Democrats gained support amid this week's flooding crisis and rising reports of corruption in the police, government, financial markets, and agencies." So Anutin is responsible for floods, police corruption generally, and I mean, yeah are people thrilled with the way things are right now? No. What do they really want? They want an election and it's going to be Anutin that is going to give it to them one way or the other it looks like. It is what it is. Quoting further: "The South had been targeted as a key base for Anutin to propel the Bhumjaithai Party to next year's general election." Now this is the misread here. This is what I think people are not getting going into this next election. Now barring and it's possible, some kind of blowout by The People's Party, I don't think that's probably going to happen under these current circumstances. What we are actually more likely to see are a bunch of midsized parties that all sort of win, depends on who will be at the forefront of that sort of grouping, and then those Parties are going to coalition together to form the next government. That's what I see is likely. So to sort of view this through the prism of the old Thaksin sort of politics days where it was all about gaining a full simple majority and then governing, I don't think that is the rubric to look at now. And I think the past 5 years have borne out my thinking on that. That said, quoting further: "However, those plans are now in tatters as a revived Democrat Party prepares a more prominent role in politics." Well, come on. Again this would be like saying, "well the Republican Party has got a lot to worry about in the upcoming midterm elections in 2026 from a resurgent Libertarian Party." Is that really going to be the case in American politics? Probably not. 

Yeah do I think the Democrats are probably going to turn it around from what they've done roughly the last three or four or five years? Yeah I think they will; I think they will probably gain seats compared to last time. But let's be clear, in the Democrat's position right now, there's nowhere to go but up. They did not do well in the last election. To view this as some kind of “big loss” for Bhumjaithai is I think very unwarranted. Meanwhile again, all this blame, the disaster response, "oh you're not doing good enough for that", I just think it's kind of undue. I mean he's been down there. The photo, we will go ahead, and the photo is, I'll put this photo up from Bangkok Post in the video because I'm using the thumbnail, but I mean he's down there. What do you want me to say? Everything I've been reading about him; I mean he apologized at one point. In my opinion that was a political move to get ahead of the momentum of people trying to sort of “generate a hue and cry” against him, but he's been down there. They've moved with alacrity to deal with the floods; it's not something that's easy to deal with. I mean my question is okay, if he's doing such a bad job, what's your idea? Who are these people? What is it that line from Teddy Roosevelt, "it's not the man in the arena" or "it is the man in the arena that's important, it's not the critic, the spectator, the person who is on the sidelines". I mean it feels a lot like that right now. 

Again, I'm not saying this government is perfect. I have my criticisms of it especially as it pertains to a lot of this again these continuing narratives of we need to be worried about our standing in the World and Global whatever. As far as I'm concerned, Thailand needs to be most concerned with national sovereignty and taking care of this country and it appears to me Anutin overall does actually care about those issues. Now that said, it remains to be seen how all this place out so we will certainly be keeping you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.