\u201cThere\u2019s a claim that the \u2018High Institution\u2019 wants to replace the prime minister. This is gravely wrong! I\u2019m the only one who can make official requests! No one else! Is this clear?\u201d General Prayut Chan-o-cha said yesterday.
But no one ever made that claim.
In the latest nausea of Thailand\u2019s politics, General Prayut brought the institution into play in his conflict with Palang Pracharat\u2019s Party Secretary Thamanat Prompow.
The big story over the past two days is MP Thamanat allegedly offering five million baht each to coalition MPs for a no-confidence vote against General Prayut in a bid to remove him from power.
When the story leaked, all hell broke loose.
General Prayut went straight to General Prawit Wongsuwan to ensure his loyalty. MP Thamanat drove directly back from the province to give a press conference denying everything. Former coalition partner, Thai Civilized\u2019s Mongkolkit Suksintaranont said General Prayut plans to sack MP Thamanat from his Deputy Agricultural Minister post.
General Prayut denied the sacking.
Then there\u2019s the \u201cI match your five with my five\u201d accusation.
During yesterday\u2019s censure debate, Pheu Thai\u2019s MP Visarn Techateerawat angrily said:
\u201cAllow me this chance to tell the world. Right now, General Prayut Chan-o-cha is paying five million baht to MPs on the third floor!\u201d
\u201cThis action is outrageous! Corrupted! Do you want to stay in power this much? MPs taking five million baht from the prime minister! How can this happen in Thailand? Is this what you do while the people are dying? Dissolve it! Shameless! It\u2019s time the spirits curse you all!\u201d
Six MPs were caught in the general\u2019s office, including Palang Pracharat\u2019s Veerakorn Kamprakob, who protested against the accusation on the parliament floor, saying he and others went to the general to give supports and to talk about water management and agriculture zoning.
\u201cWhat are you talking about with the money? This is too insulting! What MPs would accept four or five million baht? And in this building? Nonsense!\u201d said MP Veerakorn.
When asked by reporters, General Prayut replied, \u201cI don\u2019t do this crazy thing! I don\u2019t make snack bags!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThere\u2019s a claim that the \u2018High Institution\u2019 wants to replace the prime minister. This is gravely wrong! I\u2019m the only one who can make official requests! No one else! Is this clear?\u201d General Prayut Chan-o-cha said yesterday. But no one ever made that claim. In the latest nausea of Thailand\u2019s politics, General Prayut brought the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,12,34,14,13],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thisurpt","tag-prayut-chan-o-cha-2","tag-thailand","tag-thamanat-prompow","tag-thisrupt","tag-whatshappeninginthailand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions\/207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}