Rice debacle could spell the end of Thai government

[OregonBlue]

Bangkok: Just when beleaguered Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra needs them most, rice farmers have angrily turned against her and joined protests that threaten to topple her government.

“All of the people in my district supported Yingluck (Shinawatra) in the past but now none of us do,” says Narumol Klysiri, a 55 year-old farmer holding a receipt for seven tonnes of rice she sold to the government four months ago.

“Where is my money? My family has no money to eat,” she says.
A farmer waves a Thai national flag on a combine harvester during a rally by rice farmers in Bangkok.

Mrs Narumol is one of more than one million farmers who have not being paid for months as a rice subsidy scheme that helped sweep Ms Yingluck into power in 2011 teeters on collapse, with losses that economists say could be as high as $12 billion. Thousands of farmers have been left in deep debt and there are reports of increasing rural suicides.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/rice-debacle-could-spell-the-end-of-thai-government-20140207-hvblv.html

So the Shinawatra's screw Thailand again. They have the government buy up all the rice and then set an export price way above it's market value. Now they can't sell the rice and they are refusing to pay the farmers. The farmers could have sold to independent exporters but were required to sell to the government. What did they government do with the money for the 50% of the rice crop that was sold? No one seems to know. The farmers are badly in debt and have no money to live on.

[grahamhgreen]

1. Let's hope the people oust these thugs and soon:)

[OregonBlue]

2. They are the Thai oligarchs.

[Igel]

3. It was predicted.

Reasonably so.

The predictions were ignored at the time. In fact, some thought it a great thing--government subsidies for the farms (which, unlike in the US, are mostly small, self-supporting family-based things). Not most. Thai populism pretty much struck American populists as misguided, focusing on all the wrong people. The DU "revolution" is much more proletarian than agrarian, overall.

The current government could distribute the rice to the poor. Which would impoverish additional farmers when the rice price dropped. Kaynes would probably say just to bury it and just remove it from the system, then borrow to pay the farmers to grow more.

At the same time, the "opposition" that many DUers like are the petty bourgeois and educated urban classes. Their general attitude towards the rustic rural bumpkins is dimissive, because everything important is in the city and involves them and their "needs". Yeah, that's a bit of an overgeneralization. But only a bit of one.

[Quantess]

4. I thought this was going to be about Condoleeza for some reason.