(Nothing personal to me, at least....)

The recent election mess in Thailand has attracted American press attention:

BANGKOK, Thailand - Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra claimed victory yesterday but acknowledged a strong protest vote in an election held after weeks of demonstrations demanding his resignation for alleged corruption and abuse of power.

Thaksin offered to set up a committee to judge whether he should step down despite receiving 57 percent of the votes cast Sunday. Critics rejected the offer as insincere and called for more protests this week.

With the opposition criticism, and likely legal tangles over technicalities of the balloting, Thailand looked destined to remain locked in a standoff.

For more than two months, Thaksin's opponents have been holding growing demonstrations, drawing as many as 100,000 people, in their attempt to pressure him to leave office.

While appearing to offer his resignation, President Thaksin nonetheless claims he can govern successfully, and cites the Bush-Gore 2000 election in support:

Speaking to the public for the first time since the election, Mr Thaksin repeatedly called for “unity”, respect for the rules of the game and cited the Bush-Gore dead heat in the 2000 US presidential race to back his argument that a nation deeply divided politically could still function. Citing the 16 million party-list votes in Thai Rak Thai’s favour compared to approximately 10 million abstention votes, he challenged his opponents to offer the electorate a satisfactory reason for him to step aside.
“Tell me how the country would be better off without me (as Prime Minister),” Mr Thaksin said in an interview on Channel 11 last night. “There must be good reasons for me to stay or quit. The 16 million (who voted for Thai Rak Thai) should be told how the country will be reconciled if I step down.” Mr Thaksin, who vowed before the polls not to take the premiership again if his party received less than 50 per cent of the votes cast, last night insisted that he had won well above that mark.

Anti-Thaksin forces are led by disgraced former Major-General Chamlong Srimuang and other checkered personalities.

Through previous campaigns, Chamlong made abortion virtually illegal in Thailand, while portraying himself as celibate despite being married.

Chamlong leads a puritanical, anti-alcohol "Dharma Army" of Buddhists, including children, officially cast out of Thailand's majority Buddhist mainstream because their Santi Asoke sect opposes the established Buddhist clergy.

Chamlong, along with a coup-installed military dictator, were jointly scolded on nationwide TV in 1992 by Thailand's widely revered king, after Chamlong led a pro-democracy march in Bangkok to confront the military, which then shot dead more than 50 civilians.

Protesters have also called for a boycott -- widely ignored -- of Singapore's products, to convince the Singapore government to renege on the Thaksin deal, which allows it to profit from Thailand's biggest mobile telephone company, plus a Bangkok TV station, and Thailand's iPSTAR satellite.

Geez. Maybe American politics is easier on the nerves . . .

Election observers claim that the voting was not secret because the booths were open and the ballots were designed so that it was possible to see how people voted.

I suspect that there are probably people who'd abolish secret voting in this country if they could get away with it.

After all, privacy has no more place in politics than it does in one's personal life. All politics being personal, and all personal things being political, why allow private voting?

In non-Thai news, pro-gay, pro-choice Republican Judy Baar Topinka (subject of a previous post) won the Illinois Republican primary. But while the vote reveals a party which (in the primaries, at least) is starkly divided, I'm wondering whether Topinka might have been seen as the candidate who "shut up the loudest" (i.e. did the least ad hominizing):

With 11,012 of 11,700 precincts counted, Topinka had 38 percent and Oberweis had 32 percent. State Sen. Bill Brady had 19 percent, Chicago businessman Ron Gidwitz had about 11 percent and Internet journalist Martin was at less than 1 percent.

On the Democratic side, Blagojevich captured 70 percent of the vote to Eisendrath's 30 percent with 11,012 of 11,700 precincts counted in unofficial returns.

#3. Pro-choice, pro-gay rights Judy Baar Topinka wins IL-GOV primary. Illinois is hardly a red state, but Baar Topinka's primary win is a reminder that pro-choice Republicans can and do win primaries -- and in a Midwestern state where Evangelicals are somewhat of a factor. And Baar Topinka won numerous counties outside Chicagoland, most notably quite a few that are geographically close to Iowa.

Is there a way to make politics less personal? Without getting into the personal?