Fun facts about Thailand

The garuda, the emblem of Thailand

Thailand, unlike all of its neighbouring countries, did not get colonised by a European power, then cause a decades-long quagmire of war.

The Guinness Record holder for longest place name is

  Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit. 

Translated, this is 

"The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarma".

Most Thais call it Krung Thep, and most foreigners call it Bangkok.

If that seems excessive, I would remind you that Britain's head of state is Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of Her other Realms and Territories, Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. And that isn't even counting her fifteen other regnal titles, hundred or so chivalric orders, the Duchy of Normandy, the Lordship of Mann, her four honorary doctorates or her position in the admiralty of Nebraska.

In fact, British readers may find some aspects of Thai politics failiar: it's a bi-cameral legislature, ruled over by a little old man with big glasses who has been on the throne for decades, who is head of the church, and who in theory has enormous amounts of power but has wisely not tested it out too often.

King Rama IX, Bhumibol Adulyadej. Image from Thailand's PR.

The King gets fair-to-middling reviews from foreign observers, and is extremely popular inside Thailand. Of course, it probably helps that under Thai law, the Sex Pistols would have got three to fifteen.

Thailand is having an election on Sunday (the 3rd), and it's very fraught. With a bit of luck I'll be able to tell you more about it this week.

The Future of Democracy Fan

I've enjoyed our month together, I really have. This blog started as a project to keep me from the jaws of leisure, and in that it's succeeded admirably: it's only since I let it slide, this week, that I've become bored of games and started getting angry about racist Facebook status updates- both issues that are, to put it as charitably as possible, first-world problems.

The reason I've been letting it slide is that I have, in fact, secured new employment. As is often the case, this is going to seriously cut down on the time I can spend reading internet expat papers from Izmir or Faro. On the other hand, it doesn't mean that I'm shutting down the blog, for these reasons:

1. Long commute. There are only so many puzzles I can do, and I may as well retrospectively justify the purchase of my netbook.
2. The blog came up in my job interview, and seemed to count in my credit. Why? Because the company has a stake in Turkey, and they seemed to be impressed when I was able to join in with talk of EU harmonisation and crazy projects.
3. That international portfolio means I might be spending some weekends in Bulgaria, Kenya or China (or at least looking at spreadsheets from there). It seems stupid not to read about the travails of their prime minister if I'm going to see the newspaper headlines in person.

There are likely to be changes. For one, I'm not going to have two-and-a-half-thousand words with pictures and supporting links each week. The pace is more likely to come down to one long post, or more likely two short ones, per week. I am going to try to keep up with at least something on the main blog every week.

Secondly, if I do end up downloading data from Mazovia or Bahia, I'll probably write about it even if they don't have an election coming up. That is, the focus might shift slightly from cup finals to league games. I will still try to crack open and peek inside any races that make the news, but with only a handfull of posts a month I'm not going to spend time on the procedural argy-bargy (unless it's super-ridiculous, of course).

Tomorrow is my first day in the office, so I might not get much done right away; rest assured, though, that I've stocked my netbook with reading for the train, and my iPod with the jazz music of King Rama IX.

Italy: Its own worst stereotype?

There's no election in Italy necessarily in the offing. It's like our system, where the PM picks the date, and they aren't legally required to have one for a few years yet. Nonetheless, the politics there are fascinating.

Italy's politics have generally been divided on a left-right basis, though the actual parties involved seem to morph and change every few years.

The current PM, as I'm sure you all know, is this guy:

Silvio Beerlusconi: Image from a funny blog post

I have previously described this man as a cross between Rupert Murdoch and Hugh Hefner. To complete the picture, I should say that he is in fact only in government through coalition with Lega Nord, who I would describe as being a sinister mirror-universe version of the SNP, if they'd been founded by Enoch Powell.

I am not the only one to give Silvio, at best, a two-star review. If the recent local elections and referendum are any guide, the bulk of the Italian electorate might also be getting tired of his shit.

The referendum might need some explanation: last year, the parliament passed, over bitter opposition, a law making Ministers immune from legal prosecution. This is good, because Silvio is a massive crook. His opponents managed to get it on to a national ballot, where 94.6% of people voted that being in office isn't reason enough to be above the law. The No campaign were particularly classy, trying just to drive down turnout to the point where the vote wouldn't be binding.

The Left is, as the Left loves to be, fragmented and ineffective.  There is, however, a rising star:

Nichi Vendola, in a an image that seems to be by Giovanni Dell'Orto

Overall, it would be hard for the two men to be more different:

	Berlusconi	Vendola
Background	Milan	Puglia
Regrettable shady past	Conspiracy to overthrow democracy	Communist
Totally dominates...	News media	Poetry
Position on sex	"It's better to like pretty girls than to be gay"	Actually, being gay is fine, and certainly better than 'berlusconismo'
Position on the Mafia	Ambiguous	Anti
Favourite name for each other	Unwashed gypsy-lovers	"the monstrous and extreme version of the Italian everyman"
Libyan Refugees	Send them back	Teach them glassblowing
Economic position	Business knows best	Water belongs to the people

Of course, the facet of Vendola that international media has found most saleable is that he is gay.

The situation of gay people in society, it seems to me, falls somewhere on this scale:

1. Sodom and Gomorrah
2. Unnatural Acts
3. Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name
4. Milk
5. Are you Being Served?
6. Will and Grace
7. Perry vs Schwazenegger
8. Incredulous Future Schoolkids

Britain, I'm happy to say, is edging into category seven along with Scandinavia, Canada and the Blue States (California, Vermont): the Red states, along with the US military, are being dragged unwillingly out of the 2/3 range. Italy seems to be trying to break from 5 into 6.

In some ways the situation has parallels with America in 2008. Vendola is charismatic, idealistic and good with words. Can Berlusconi, like Bush, be so terrible that his country is able to swallow its biggest hang-up for the sake of getting someone else?

Turkey results watch

Image from the Economist

Tonight is election night in Turkey. While there is an official state site, I'm having a hard time making head or tail of it, so I'll probably just be refreshing Wikipedia and keeping an eye on the news.

British news sources have covered a surprising amount of Turkey's election, considering that it's not a horse-race. It may even get more coverage now that Anonymous have decided the best way to get the government to ease up on restricting the internet is to give a practical demonstration of how it can be used as a weapon against the state.

By virtue of Turkey's eastern position, and the efforts they've put into sprucing up their elections, we ought to get results pretty early and pretty reliably. I hear there'll be results out around 6 pm.

UPDATE:
The official website seems to be buckling under the pressure, but the BBC are reporting preliminary results that suggest

1) AKP are over 50% but not at the 67% they want
2) the Republicans (CHP) have done better than 2007, but not well enough to dictate terms
3) the ultranationalists (MHP) stood about steady at 13%
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13740147

Turkey and the Asymmetric Objectives

I have mentioned before that I have been known to spend a pleasant afternoon in the local arts centre playing what are known as german-style games. For all-too obvious reasons, the themes popular in Britain and America are not considered good clean fun there, so German games tend more towards themes like infrastructure, agriculture and bean optimisation. Other common features of German games that I like are that all players tend to be in it to the end, the various players may be in competition or harmony at different times, and that there are multiple paths to victory. All of these, of course, are like elections.

Turkey has proportional representation (in the d'Hondt allocation, if you're interested; you only vote for one party, unlike STV, but it's still proportional). But then, Turkey's system might be better described as "kind-of" proportional. You see, to get any seats at all you have to get 10% of the vote nationally. To see why that might be a problem, consider the UK:

Region	Population, approx	Fraction of total
UK	62 million	100%
Northern Ireland	1.8 million	3%
Wales	3 million	5%
Scotland	5.2 million	8%

If you think a system where the SNP could get the vote of every single eligible Scot and still receive zero MPs isn't very proportional, then you know how Turkish Kurds feel.

There is a workaround, though: obviously an independent MP could never get 10% nationally, so they only have to get 10% in their region. (Obviously they still have to get enough votes to earn a place.)

So, the 2007 election results looked like this:

Image from Wikipedia

Blue for the conservative AKP, Red for the left-wing Republicans, Green for the Nationalists, and purple for the what-me-I-don't-know-anything-about-any-Kurdish-Democrats-party.

You may notice that the AK are pretty close to a two-thirds majority: that's important, because two-thirds is what you need to amend the constitution. The AKP have said that that's exactly what they want to do. The Republicans want to control 1/3rd of seats so they veto, and plenty of people feel that would be a good thing in general. Failing that, they at least want the AKP to have to negotiate with someone.

So, the objectives look something like this:

Party	Polling	Moderate Success	Release the victory balloons
AKP	45%-50%	50%+ of seats in assembly	2/3rds majority
Republicans	25%-30%	Stop the AKP getting 2/3rds	Get a full 1/3rd
Nationalists	10%-14%	Qualify for seats by beating 10% of vote	Overtake Republicans
Kurds	5%-10%	Hold steady	Keep out Nationalists

Now, this is where it gets interesting. The AKP can get a supermajority two ways: by driving up their vote share ten points, or by driving the Nationalist vote down to 9.9% or less. Which might be why Erodgan has started talking tough on Europe, being rude about Israel, and mentioning that Kemal Kilicdaroglu is an Alevi three or four times a week. This last stunt is generally considered about as classy as landing the emphasis on President Obama's middle name.

(The Alevi, by the by, are a Shia denomination, while the rest of Turkey is Sunni. I hadn't heard of the Alevi before, but the comparison seems to be Alevi~ Islam as Quaker ~ Christianity.)

Kilicdaroglu himself hasn't mentioned his own religion or lack of, as is appropriate for the leader of the most pro-secular party. However, there are intimations that the Republicans (who have historically given not one-half a damn what the Kurds think) are starting to pick up ground in the East. That could be partly because of Kilicdaroglu's minority heritage, or the fact that under his leadership the Republicans have backed off some of the One-Nation tubthumping they've done in the past.

So while the AKP are squeezing the Nationalists on the right, the Republicans seem to be trying to consolidate liberals and minorities on the left. They may not get on with the Nationalists, but they'd rather the MHP did get into parliament, because if they do it'll be very hard for the AKP to rule the roost.

I'm off to a job interview tomorrow, but hopefully I'll get another post up before election night on Sunday. Next week we're going into a bit of a dry spell, but we can talk about Thailand, Morocco, maybe São Tomé and Príncipe if I can get interested in it, and perhaps Italy and Latvia's ongoing squabbles if I'm still unemployed. Toodle pip.

Turkey and the Heart of Darkness

Earlier I showed you this map:

2007 election result from Wikipedia

For a quick refresher on who these people are:

AKP- the Justice and Development party: Prime Minister Erdogan's party, and the Muslim world's answer to Europe's "Chistian democrat" parties (which, for the record, are like our Conservatives except they spend more time worrying about social issues and less time worrying about welfare cheats).

CHP- the Republican Party. Originally super-hot on Secularism, but now wandering more towards mainstream Social Democracy (like Labour or the Socialists in Germany and France). Party of Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the only person other than Erdogan who obviously has a chance of being PM in their life.

MHP- the Nationalist Action party. I'd say they're somewhere between UKIP and the BNP, but less cagey about their intentions.

The cyan on that map are "Independents": for now, just think of them as the Kurdish party.

Into the heart of darkness

I should say that the MHP represent a very real and very ugly stream in Turkish society. Like our nationalists, they have the sketchiest possible understanding of history and human decency. They also, like the EDL, like to demonstrate their patriotism by beating up people who look like they might be a minority.

The dark parts of Turkish culture really seem to have ramped up since the invasion of Iraq; general purpose anger (which is understandable) seems to have become mixed up with anti-West, anti-Israel, and anti-anyone-not-Turkish-enough sentiment. The most commercially successful outcome is Valley of the Wolves:

Image from Wikipedia

In many ways it's a standard good-guys vs. bad-guys action film, except that the bad guys are American soldiers, plus a Jew who steals organs from Muslims to sell on the apparently-bustling child-organ markets of New York and Tel Aviv. The Americans, meanwhile, are doing every bad thing they really did, every bad thing other people might have done, and overall stopping just short of goose-stepping and wearing swastikas.

Swastikas themselves are problematic, though: in what I take to be the equivalent of a teenager getting a tattoo of a skull, as the war progressed sales of Mein Kampf went through the roof, to a worldwide chorus of "wtf".

I'm not saying this is anything unique to Turkey. Our own million-selling papers aren't afraid of racist nationalism, or paranoid fantasy, or inciting violence against religious minorities. Just remember that those people are there, and they're important.

To be fair, the MHP aren't alone in having problems: the Republicans have links to certain very enthusiastic military people, the Kurdish parties are like Sinn Fein in that they know absolutely nothing about any bombs that may or may not have been detonated in town squares, and the demons of Islamist thought need no introduction. The difference, I would say, is that while everyone else tries to distance themselves from their own extremist wings, MHP celebrate theirs.

We'll go into the impact they're having on this election (which is both unexpected and possibly quite significant) in a post tomorrow. We'll also go into why Kurds run as Independents, and I can promise we'll also feature the words "d'Hondt allocation". Hold on to your hats.

Peru results

Ollanta Humala, image from peru.com

Exit polls showed Ollanta Humala (the left-wing candidate) beating Keiko Fujimori 52-48. A provisional count of the actual ballots seems a little tighter, but a still with a Humala win outside the 95% confidence interval.

It's not officially been confirmed by the electoral commission and nor has Keiko congratulated her opponent (as far as I can tell), but Humala's giving a victory speech and it'd be a major upset if anything changed now.

(Quick tip for reading Google-Translated coverage: Humala's party is called Gana Peru, literally "Peru Winning". This is why you see sentences like "Humala leader of Ghana and Peru" or "Winning Peru wins".)

Gana Peru already had a plurality in the parliament; if he also gets the support of the liberal Peru Possible party, then he'll have a majority. By all accounts he should, because PP's leader (former president Toledo) endorsed him before the election. It seems likely that Humala will be able to to deliver on his promises.

What he will have to do is play it cool if he wants to keep businessmen and foreign investors from freaking out. Here's hoping he's more of a Morales than a Chavez; if Hugo calls to congratulate him and invite him up to Caracas for a victory lap, Ollanta might be well advised to demur.

Macedonia results

Image from Reuters

The ruling (centre-right) government in Macedonia has declared victory: it looks like they're on about 39% to the oppositions 32%.

The last time around (2009) it was 55% to 15%, so clearly there has been a major swing to the opposition. Quite a lot of it seems to have come late, though as far as I can tell the polling was never very good.

The government will now go from being majority to bringing in a coalition partner. Since they hate each other with a fiery passion, that probably won't be the Social Democrats- everyone seems to agree that it's most likely one of the parties that cater specifically to ethnic Albanians. The second-largest Albanian party has been in coalition with the government before, but it might not be big enough to get the coalition over the 50% line.

So the Social Democrats massively improved their score, the Albanians hold a lot of cards in government formation, and the Conservative Nikola Greuvski gets to stay prime minister. It's been said that the last election in the UK was one that every party lost, but this looks like one where everybody won.

Portugal Results

Image from Internal Ministry results page

Well, much as expected: the centre-right PSD (remember, think of them as the moderate half of the Conservatives and the free-market half of the Lib Dems) has come out first. The Socialists have sagged a bit more than expected, so I really doubt that anyone but Coelho will make it to the PM's chair.

The PSD are probably close enough to run as a minority government. Alternatively, they might bring in the Popular Party as a coalition partner.

Edit: Just to clarify, these are provisional results with abut half the precincts reporting: the percentages will probably shift a bit overnight.

Election Day Guide, Portugal, Peru, Macedonia

Most countries of the world like to vote on a holiday. Some have a national holiday,which seems nice. Most do it on a Sunday. In Britain, of course, our elections are almost always on a Thursday, which might be why we have such bad turn-out rates (around 60%). If anyone can find me an authoritative source for why Thursday, I'd be very interested: I've heard theories that it's because Thursday used to be a customary half-day, or because Friday is payday and it's assumed that Thursday is thus the day that general public are least likely to turn up to the polls drunk.

I will admit that I will be spending my Sunday afternoon with a few beers over a game of Ra in the local arts centre, but I'll also be trying to keep an eye on the election results as they come in.

Logo of the official results

Portugal will probably be easiest; they're on the same time zone as Cardiff, will be putting out provisional results mid-day and will do it all online. Perfect.

Like in a lot of places, polling and campaigning on election day is forbidden (not entirely a bad idea), but the latest numbers seem to have coagulated around a eerily familiar result: The governing centre-left party will probably run in second at around 30%, so the main centre-right opposition will probably form the next government but will have to go into coalition to do it. In the long run this might be good news for the Left, as it means they don't have to be the ones to wield the axe on public spending.

Logo of the election observers

Macedonia may be a little more tricky: They're an hour ahead, but allow Macedonians living overseas to vote, which obviously will take some time counting. On the other hand, it seems very likely that the ruling centre-right will have established an unassailable lead before bedtime.

They are putting out press releases, but they only seem to cover turnout and I don't really understand them, so I guess I'll just keep an eye on the news sources.

Image from flags.net

Peru is a solid five hours behind, and the result is looking unpredictable at this point. Fujimori has a slight lead in the last polls before the end of campaigning, but within the margin of error (not least because 14% say they just can't bear to sign up to either extremist clown. Incidentally, this election is shaping up into a great example of why AV is better than SV.

Fujimori has the edge in the capital and coast, while Humala leads out in the country and mountains; I expect to see a Fujimori lead in the early results, a Humala fightback, and probably going to a recount.

There is an official results page, but I'm having a hell of a time navigating it (not least because so much of their text is actually in jpeg format, therefore making it impervious to automatic translation. Therefore, I'm going to be checking peru.com- though honestly I doubt there'll be much worth reading before breakfast.

Those willing to wait, of course, will see updates posted here and on twitter.

Macedonia

There are three big elections on Sunday: Portugal, Peru and Macedonia. (Turkey is the week after). I have been completely unable to get excited about Macedonia, but to complete the diary here are some quick facts:

Image from Wikimedia

The Country is what I call a C-list european country: Not as good as Bulgaria or Hungary, but a heck of a lot better than Belarus or Russia. It shares that list with places like Bosnia, Turkey and Albania; I'd say Croatia has recently been promoted to the B-list and if everything goes to plan in Egypt and Tunisia they might claw up into the C-list.

There are good things about Macedonia. The economy's not too bad, and most people don't feel like there's a lot of corruption (less than in Italy or Greece, though more than Poland or Spain). I personally would love to go and take a look at it and eat some beans. One thing that might not be so much fun is that if, like for example the A1 television station, you say mean things about the government you might find that your neighbours have their taxes audited. In the middle of the night. By armed police.

Which leads us on to the second point, which is that the parliament is incredibly pissy. After the raid on A1-TV, all the opposition (centre-left) parties stormed out, declaring that they were going to their room and they weren't coming out until there was an election. The ruling (centre-right) party had an absolute majority anyway, but eventually got embarrassed trying to debate empty benches and called the election. I think their campaign slogan has been "Crybaby wants a bottle, wah wah wah".

So yeah. I don't know who'll win: in 2008 the government had a 25-point (!) lead over the opposition, which suggests it'd take some kind of miracle for them to loose; on the other hand, some of the very few polls knocking around have the Government, Opposition, Haven't Decided and Mind Your Own Beeswax all on about 20%. So, don't know.

But hey! Here's something interesting: Greece will veto Macedonia's entry to the EU unless they change their name.

See, when some people hear "Macedonia", they think of this:

Image from a site that says it's all macedonia

Clearly, if you're living in Salonica, you might get a bit nervous about maps that include your street in the next country over. There appear to be a lot more Greeks who believe their Slavic neighbours are itching to invade than there are Slavs who believe their country should rightly have a coastline, but that seems to be the nub of the issue.

There also seems to be some serious resentment among Greeks who think the Slavic Macedonians are horning in on the Alexander the Great heritage which rightly belongs to them.

Image from someone who is super-angry about the Skopje government misrepresenting the words of Strabo  (63 BC to 24 AD)

Mathematically speaking, this is a little bit silly. Greeks and Slavs are both all probably descended from any given individual alive at the time (though not Alexander himself, as his only son died without issue). For that matter, so are 99% of my readers (I make a possible exception for the visitors from Thailand, but definitely not those from Pakistan).

In any case, the effect has been that Skopje has tried to mollify Athens by changing their flag to look less like the ancient Macedonian one, and managed to get into the UN with the stage-name "The Former Yugloslav Republic of Macedonia". Lots of people don't like this, perhaps feeling it's a bit purple-motorcycle, which I can understand.

Much as I normally love wading into specious ethnic arguments, I don't really have a side here. On one hand, I support the idea that people can call their country whatever they like. Call it Atlantis if that's what turns you on, it'll have as much historical legitimacy as most founding myths. On the other hand, I can see why neighbours of country Wherever start getting nervous when it starts throwing around terms like Greater Wherever. Had I been in charge of Macedonia around the time Greece started kicking off, I probably would have said "Fine, our name is now the Republic of the Inhabitants of the Region Around the River Vadar, now can we please get up on some of those EU regional development funds because I am jonesing for real".