WINNERS
HE Gen (Ret) Prayut Chan-o-cha
The prime minister asked the court for 20 years, and the judge gave him 10 — but with a strong possibility of an extension. Gen Prayut went through the “too early to talk about that yet” stuff at the Bangkok Post Forum 2016, where his 60-minute speech went Castroesque, about 120% over the limit. The bottom line, politically speaking, was that it will take 20 years to turn Thailand from “developing” into “developed” and a concurrent 20 years to wipe out corruption, completely. The Constitutional Court, by coincidence naturally, said that an unelected prime minister could certainly serve for eight years after Election 2017 or … let’s just call it 10 years. There are few blank spots left in the jigsaw puzzle now.
Sansern Kaewkamnerd
He was just an army colonel “hired” to spin the violence of the army’s campaign against the red shirts in downtown Bangkok in 2010. As of today, he’s a three-star general, effectively the head of the ruling military regime’s Ministry of Truth. Along the way he became the most photographed, most pawed, most fawned officer in Thai history. Calling him “the handsome celebrity spokesman” is an understatement. He is closer to rock-star than mere spin artist. But as Truth Minister, he has his work cut out for him. Will people really watch stilted Channel 11 and read turgid Thai News Agency articles when they have Facebook, Line and streaming Korean soap operas. Can he make them?
Censorship
A couple of Amnesty International folks flew in to talk about torture. To be fair, they were treated better than Thais who want to talk about torture. Thais get threatened and charged with criminal defamation for telling the stories of torture victims. Everyone knows, and the new Minister of Truth and handsome celebrity spokesman Lt Gen Sansern Kaewkamnerd confirmed: There has never been torture in Thailand. Rather brusque soldiers told the visiting Amnesty people they … um … lessee, oh, right, they didn’t have a valid work permit so they couldn’t hold a media conference. “We won’t be intimidated,” said the thoroughly intimidated AI people, as they cancelled their talk in case they might be arrested and martyred.