Abhisit, Kasit, Chavalit, Thaksin, Hun Sen - gaining headlines at the expense of a hitherto unknown Thai engineer
Published: 12/12/2009
(Posted by CAAI News Media)
On Tuesday, Dec 8, a Cambodian court ruled that Thai engineer Sivarak Chutipong was guilty of supplying former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's flight details to the Thai embassy's first secretary in Phnom Penh and sentenced him to seven years in jail with a fine of 10 million riel (100,000 baht).
The court ruled that even though the flight information was not a secret and the technical staff were entitled to know, the information should not have been leaked to the Thai embassy official because it could affect Cambodia's security as Thaksin came to Cambodia as the government's economic adviser as well as a personal adviser to the Cambodian prime minister, noted a Thai Rath writer (prior to yesterday's announcement of a royal pardon).
Even though Sivarak and his lawyer explained to the court that he supplied the information with no ulterior motive and he did not personally know the Thai embassy official, the court deemed that Thaksin maintains a special status in Cambodia and his security was the concern of the Cambodian authority. For this reason, Sivarak's defence could not be justified.
Now that the Cambodian court has given its ruling, there are two options for Sivarak to pursue: to appeal to a higher court to overturn the criminal court's verdict or to accept the court's ruling and seek a royal pardon.
It seems that Sivarak has decided to take the latter option as indicated by his mother who flew to Phnom Penh to hear the court's ruling.
If a royal pardon is sought, normally a convict must serve two years in jail before seeking the pardon. But in a special circumstance the petition for a royal pardon can be submitted in one month. It seems the Foreign Affairs Ministry is ready to act on behalf of the Thai government to request the Cambodian government to petition for a royal pardon on Sivarak's behalf.
However, according to news reports, Mrs Simarak na Nakhon Phanom, Sivarak's mother, insisted she would not seek help from the Foreign Ministry as the Thai government and the Cambodian government did not have friendly relations and she blamed the Thai embassy official for seeking flight information from her son which led to his conviction.
Mrs Simarak would rather seek help from Puea Thai Party chairman Chavalit Yongchaiyudh and the real boss of Puea Thai, Thaksin Shinawatra, to act on her son's behalf.
On this issue, the Thai Rath writer thought that Puea Thai and Thaksin were trying to paint the Thai government as attempting to meddle in the internal affairs of the Cambodian government by ordering the embassy staff to obtain Thaksin's flight information. Now the Cambodian court has ruled Sivarak guilty as charged, Thaksin has been successful in discrediting the Thai government.
The writer deemed the issue a political game because it seems Puea Thai knew in advance that Sivarak would be found guilty and that Gen Chavalit was reported to have already signed his name to a request to the Cambodian government to seek a royal pardon for him, as if to demonstrate that the Thai government is powerless in helping a Thai national in trouble in a foreign land.
Other evidence pointed to a political game being played in that Sivarak's defence lawyer provided by the Thai embassy was last week dropped in favour of a lawyer recommended by Puea Thai, as revealed by Mr Sivarak's mother.
All this political manoeuvring shows that Thai politicians are trying to score political points against each other without regard to any decency, even to the point of using a Thai national as a pawn in their political game and involving a foreign country to discredit the Thai government.
This could be seen in the actions of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been blasting both the Thai prime minister and the foreign affairs minister constantly, regarding both as the enemies of Cambodia. Hun Sen even went to the extreme of calling on the Thai government to dissolve the parliament in line with the wishes of his friend Thaksin.
This was the ultimate act of diplomatic transgression, but Hun Sen does not care as long as it benefits him and his friend. So Sivarak is the victim of a political game to win power to rule Thailand, concluded Thai Rath.
Thailand lacks the will to enforce the law
The ruling of the Supreme Administrative Court to affirm the decision of the Administrative Court to halt dozens of investment projects in the Map Ta Phut Industrial Estate in Rayong until the government solves the pollution problem was greeted with dismay by both the government and the private sector for affecting the investments and the growth of the country's economy, noted Nualnoi Trirat, a Matichon writer.
Nualnoi did not think too highly of the government's reaction as it was well-known that the pollution problem in Map Ta Phut had been going on for a long time and the conflicts between the industrial plants and the local community periodically popped up but had never been tackled seriously by the government.
The pollution problem in Map Ta Phut, which was affirmed by the Supreme Administrative Court, will make it harder to expand industrial estates in other areas as the surrounding communities fear the government's mechanisms cannot enforce the existing regulations to compel the private sector to abide by pollution standards. The case of Map Ta Phut pointed out that the affected local community had to resort to the Administrative Court to fight against the polluters while the government stood on the sidelines.
The weak, or total lack of, pollution control enforcement by the government reflects the fact that successive governments care more for economic development than the quality of life and the environment. The fact the Map Ta Phut community was successful in taking Map Ta Phut Industrial Estate to court and winning means communities now no longer need to accept the status quo but can fight to protect their health and environment. If this fight spreads to other communities where pollution problems exist, it will mean more industrial projects will be halted and that will surely affect the country's economic development.
During the recent annual Thailand Development Research Institute seminar on Economic Reform for Social Justice, the institute's Duenden Nikhomborirak noted that big businesses with integrated manufacturing, trade and services have very high bargaining power and are monopolistic in nature while the state's enforcement of fair competition during the past 10 years has totally failed as the state's mechanism is influenced by politics and/or dominated by big business.
Nipon Poapongsakorn, the TDRI president, studied the state's farm products support schemes for rice, longan, cassava, rubber, sugar cane and milk and found that for rice, longan, cassava and rubber the state resorted to price pledging schemes by offering higher prices than the prevailing market prices. For sugarcane, the state prescribes a minimum price domestically higher than the global price. For dairy farmers, the state requires that school milk vendors must buy milk from dairy farmers in the same zone as the schools and pasteurised milk factories.
Mr Nipon noted that by intervening in the market mechanisms, economic rent is generated and this surplus benefit often falls into the hands of traders rather than farmers and well-to-do farmers get more benefit than poor farmers.
For this reason, he concluded that the oft-quoted policy that price support schemes benefit poor farmers was only an illusion because most benefits line the pockets of traders, millers and a few large exporters.
TDRI director Somkiat Tangkitvanich studied economic rent obtained by concessions granted by the government to private sector operators, especially telecommunications, radio and TV as creating monopoly or semi-monopoly enterprises that exploit public assets and the nation's resources. This was possible due to collusion between business people, politicians, high-ranking government officials and academics.
Adisorn Isarangkul na Ayudhya studied how influential people obtained economic rent from the state's land and forest. Often, these influential people buy the land from poor farmers, who were allocated land by the state, and then turn it into housing estates, resorts or golf courses.
With the collusion of Land Department officials, the original occupation title deeds can be used to issue permanent land title deeds.
Mr Adisorn also noted that major infrastructures such as the Suvarnabhumi airport, new roads and subways undertaken by the government have increased land values nearby several fold. Often the land belongs to influential people who know in advance the state will invest in certain areas and thus buy property very cheaply from the original land owners, reaping tremendous economic returns.
Nualnoi summarised the TDRI findings that the concentrated wealth among a few from the economic rent is the main factor widening the gap between the haves and have-nots in line with the country's economic growth.
The TDRI conducted an opinion survey of people throughout the country on the issue of economic disparity and found about 40% of respondents believed the poor were poor because they were born poor while 57% believed the rich were rich because they were born rich. They did not say why they felt this way.
Another finding revealed that even though the gap between rich and poor was widening, the majority still accepted the disparity. But looking at the 20% most poor category, the ratio of those who did not accept such a wide gap in wealth was more than those who accepted it. This means the poorest people are beginning to realise they can no longer stand the status quo.
Nualnoi concluded her article saying that once the poor begin to change their attitudes towards accepting their lot, it is not possible that the rich can continue to exploit them unchecked, as in the case of the Map Ta Phut Industrial Estate.
