Following the 1991 military coup, Narong Wongwan became the military\u2019s candidate for prime ministership in the 1992 election. It turned out he was blacklisted by the US for drug trafficking. Narong vowed to fight on, but in the end, he bowed out.
Perhaps back then, there was some sense of shame and decency, no matter how little. Perhaps there were some checks and balances, no matter how little. But one thing is for sure, today in Thailand, there is no shame or decency, no matter how little.
In regards to yesterday\u2019s Consitution Court verdict in favor of Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Cooperatives Thammnat Promow\u2019s drug trafficking past and prison sentence in Australia, General Prawit Wongsuwan said:
\u201cIt\u2019s the court\u2019s business, not the government\u2019s.\u201d
In theory, this is true. However, one would be galactically naive to think the court acts without direction from the Prayut Regime. That aside, the verdict might not be the government\u2019s business, but Deputy Minister Thammanat is.
After all, he\u2019s a government minister and a government MP, making him General Prayut\u2019s business. As well, he\u2019s a Palang Pracharat politician. General Prawit is the party leader. Therefore he\u2019s General Prawit\u2019s business.
Apparently, the political party and the government that lay claim to the description \u201cgood people\u201d is \u201csabaai sabaai, mai pen rai\u201d with Thailand\u2019s latest international embarrassment.
The words \u201cshame, shame, shame\u201d don\u2019t even describe collective nausea experienced from northernmost Chiang Rai to southernmost Su-ngai Kolok. Except for Payao Province, that\u2019s Thammanat\u2019s home base.
But this isn\u2019t about ethics, decency, integrity, or justice. It is about power.
On 11 July 2019, Deputy Minister Thammanat said, \u201cI am the blood vessel that feeds the heart of the government. I hold the secrets. I negotiate the deals. If you can take me down, that means the government would go down.\u201d
On that day, he spoke the truth, and the truth goes even much deeper than what he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Following the 1991 military coup, Narong Wongwan became the military\u2019s candidate for prime ministership in the 1992 election. It turned out he was blacklisted by the US for drug trafficking. Narong vowed to fight on, but in the end, he bowed out. Perhaps back then, there was some sense of shame and decency, no matter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":453,"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":[132,35,12,14,13],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thisurpt","tag-palang-pracharat","tag-prawit-wongsuwan","tag-thailand","tag-thisrupt","tag-whatshappeninginthailand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","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=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":454,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions\/454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}