Regarding Cambodia, the editorial claims:
In Cambodia, in recent days, military police officers have opened fire on protesters, killing several people. The protests started after Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled Cambodia through intimidation and violence for nearly three decades, was declared the winner of an election in July that international monitoring organizations say was riddled with irregularities.Then, regarding Thailand it states:
In Thailand, the country’s Election Commission said on Friday that elections scheduled for next month would go ahead despite efforts by protesters to sabotage them. Led by opposition politicians, the protesters want to replace the country’s elected government with an appointed council of technocrats because they have been unable to win elections against the party of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.Astoundingly, while the NYT editorial admits elections in Cambodia were "riddled with irregularities," it omits entirely that elections in Thailand were contested by a party openly led by a convicted criminal, fugitive, and accused mass murderer, Thaksin Shinawatra, who is the older brother of nepotist-proxy and current Thai prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra. These are the same disingenuous and quite intentional omissions made by the Western media over and over again (BBC, Reuters, NYT, Wall Street Journal) in regards to Thailand.
However, it was the New York Times itself that admitted in an early 2013 article titled, "In Thailand, Power Comes With Help From Skype," that:
For the past year and a half, by the party’s own admission, the most important political decisions in this country of 65 million people have been made from abroad, by a former prime minister who has been in self-imposed exile since 2008 to escape corruption charges.
The country’s most famous fugitive,Thaksin Shinawatra, circles the globe in his private jet, chatting with ministers over his dozen cellphones, texting over various social media platforms and reading government documents e-mailed to him from civil servants, party officials say.The NYT piece would also report:
“He’s the one who formulates the Pheu Thai policies,” said Noppadon Pattama, a senior official in Mr. Thaksin’s party who also serves as his personal lawyer. “Almost all the policies put forward during the last election came from him.”
There is no question then, that an accused mass murderer and convicted criminal hiding abroad from a 2 year jail sentence, multiple arrest warrants, and a long list of pending court cases, is illegally running Thailand by proxy - meaning that protesters aren't merely "unable to win elections," the election process itself is rigged, illegitimate, and in desperate need of reform.
Ironically, the NYT's description of Cambodia's dysfunctional "democracy," ruled by dictator-for-life Hun Sen, is in fact what Thailand will eventually become if left unchecked under the hereditary regime of Thaksin Shianwatra. Tellingly, Thaksin Shinawatra is a close ally of the entrenched former-Khmer Rouge dictator - another fact conveniently omitted from the editorial.
Already, Thaksin Shinawatra has mass murdered nearly 3,000 innocent people while in office, curbed free press, and eroded Thailand's checks and balances. He employs Hitleresque "red shirt" enforcers that not only use violence and intimidation to silence political opposition in the streets and villages of Thailand's rural north and northeast, but also to threaten judges and the nation's Election Commission itself if ever faced with rulings against his party.
This New York Times editorial is throw-away propaganda, describing "Asia democracy" in terms that suit Western interests, not reality. The fact that the West is so uniform in its support of the illegal, illegitimate regime of Thaksin Shinawatra exposes another dangerous dimension to his entrenched power and another reason it must be uprooted expediently and completely.
