Newly elected Thai Prime Minister decided to spam the entire nation of Thailand right before the holidays.

Abhisit Vejjajiva was elected the Prime Minster of Thailand on December 15, 2008 and was formally endorsed by the Thai King on December 17, 2008.  As one of his first official acts as the political leader of the country was to send mass SMS messages to a large portion of the nation’s mobile phone users.

He had assigned the deputy leader of the Democratic Party to enlist the help of three cellular network providers in sending out a message to all their subscribers.  The message was a plea for help from the Prime Minister for assistance in solving the country's political crisis.

There was no cost associated with the reception of this message but it did urge those interested to respond with their postal codes at a cost of three baht ($0.10 USD).  The massive spam message has already caused criticism from organizations such as the Foundation for Consumers, a similar body to the FCC. 

The Democratic Party’s official response is that the action was viewed as “an effective way to draw people and the Prime Minister together.”  This is not the first time a politician has used technology to further their exposure and enlist the help of the general public.  The most recent example would be of the President Elect Barack Obama’s use of the social networking tool Twitter during his campaign.