I'll try and chip in here with my tuppence worth. Personally, I don't see much wrong at all with the proposals put forward by The Democrats in the OP.
It's all politics and damn lies etc etc, but all The Democrats are doing is laying out a manifesto for the poorer parts of the country.
It's done all over the world. For instance, in the UK, a party will promise more money for healthcare, more for education, they'll give sudsidies to the farmers when they claim to be "hard up", they'll redirect monies from the more affluent south to the less well-off areas in the north to help regeneration, they'll step in with monetary policies to try to help people out of debt - the list just goes on. And the money comes from the taxpayer - where else. How a party will spend our money is what determines our votes and eventually ends up appointing a government.
I won't bother going over old ground with TRT as a lot's been said already on the thread. But with Thaksin, he was using his own money to buy votes - that's illegal (mind you, I'm not saying that other parties were blameless). Here The Democrats are only talking about how they intend spending taxpayers money - and to reiterate, that's politics the world over.
As far as wiping out debts for the farmers is concerned, it was Mr T who put them in the situation in the first place. He was dishing money out like it was going out of fashion and most of us knew that that the poor old farmers up there in Isaan would be beholden to him, or successive governments, probably forever.
Of course The Democrat's announcements may lead to the same thing as well, but at least they're trying to get rid of the debt burden. And yes, it will and has to be the taxpayer who pays for it.
Finally, my missus tells me that The Democrats are promising "proper annual budgets", if elected. That would be a huge step in the right direction, in as much as a government here may actually report back to its people about how their money's been spent. The performance can then be matched against what they pledged to do pre-election.
So, to recap, I see nothing sinister in the original news article.
Don't forget that The Conservatives in the UK would never have come to power unless some 50% (I forget the actual figure) of working class voters opted for them. Every political party, everywhere in the world needs that - unless you've got a military junta in control
