For some more information on the Erawan Shrine see Trilok Chandra Majupuria. 1993 (new edition). Erawan Shrine and Brahma Worship in Thailand. Bangkok: Tecpress Service, L.P. 148 pp.
Jon: the leader was with the faculty of political science, then president of Thammasat. He later became secretary-general of the King Prajadhipok Institute. He also chairs the present government’s committee to establish a “political development committee.” Somkhit is with the faculty of law, and deputy president of Thammat. He used to be a member of the first CDA. Nakarin is the present dean of the faculty of political science. Wuthisarn is with the faculty of social administration. What makes them close-knit? A long history of shared and successful experiences, I suppose.
Acharn Noranit tought at the Faculty of Political Science and was Rector during the 1990’s. The others wouldn’t neccesarily be from the same faculty – they might have been his vice-rectors or deans.
I’ll let Srithanonchai clarify as to what makes them close knit, except to say that most Thai universities promote their leadership from within. This leads to horrible university politics.
I’m with patiwat on this one. The claim that it they were 100% sure that it was not the fault of the Southern Insurgents came much too fast. It is all much too cute.
I’m happy to add to the speculation and I’ll be putting my money on the culprits as being elements associated with the military or ISOC.
More interesting, perhaps, than Okas is that an almost complete closely-knit phakphuak of academic politicians from Thammasat University has made it to the final 100, namely Noranit Sethabut (the leader), Somkhit Lertpaitoon (his right-hand man), Nakarin Mektrairat (his left-hand man), and Wutisarn Tanchai (an associated member of the phuak). Noranit has variously been tipped to become the chairperson of the constitution drafting committee.
Polo said: \’The other gambit is that the borders of protected forests are not clear or can be shifted slightly to accomodate fraudulent claims – and to slowly erode the borders. So that would make possible someone cutting a piece of reserve forest out to become conservation forest.\’
I thought it would be the other way round (convert conservation forest to forest reserve) – assuming conservation forest was subject to more controls than forest reserve (?)
Anyway, Surayud\’s land case appears to be different in that Surayud has acknowledged that he does not own the land and is leasing it from a local villager (although some other reports say Surayud owns the land).
Looking on Google Earth, even though there are no major roads visible, it is clear that the land is not pristine forest anymore and there seems to be quite a lot of land development in the surrounding area.
If the land is illegal, then Surayud will have a lot of worried neighbours.
It also looks like it would be quite a task to move train carriages on to the property.
It would be interesting to know what Chavalit knows about the region.
Overall, in the Thai context, it does not seem to be much of a scandal – it would have played better if it was very opulent with lavish mansions, golf courses etc
An oral history of the Moei River Valley (c. 1962-1995) along the lines of the Golden Boat project at new Mandala to capture this history before the participants pass away would fill a large historical gap. I only spent two months there in theearly 1990s but the variety of different kinds of people living from Mae Sot to Sub Moei was quite surprising: Father Joseph with his mission in the Jungle, Anglican villages in the jungle with a strange mixture of self-reliant hill Karens and city-town Karens from Yangon or Paan, the Rohengyas in Mae Sot, a Karen-Muslim village, the refugee camps, Thai villages split between a hill Karen Thai government headman and the KNU, a variety of political parties, I remember meeting the head of the Arakan Communist party and a supposedly the sole remaining survivor of U Nu’s jungle resistance movement in the 1960s, that famous elderly female Karen KNU fighter at Bo Ba Ta refugee camp, doctor Cynthia who won the Magsaysay prize, the Burmese students in the ABSDF and their tenuous coexistence in Karen villages, their split, the Christian NGOs and the refugees and the camps and detention centers they were held in, the western soldiers who visited Manerplaw, and the rather morbid joy they often expressed in killing Burmese, one of them was expelled from the KNU for exactly this as I remember, there was also a Soldier of Fortune article on Bo Ba Ta refugee camp, later on when I lived in Yangon, I met Burmese veterans of this war who had a completely different story that needs to be heard too, anyway there’s a lot to do.
It might not be surprising that the person with the greatest number of NPA votes was one of the 100 approved by the junta. But the junta did not just select the 100 people who received the greatest number of votes.
The BMW executive who received the 2nd greatest number of votes (Pharani Leenuthapong) and the Nong Bua Lamphu construction contractor who received the 3rd greatest number of votes (Suwit Pipatwilaikul) were not chosen.
Yet the junta gave an approving nod to 4 NPA members who received the lowest number of votes (7). They were Phisit Lee-Atham (a Democrat), Wichai Roobkhamdee (an academic), Wicha Mahakhun (a Supreme Court judge), and Apichart Damdee (a comedian).
Again, let’s not think too much about this comic horse and pony show. Because these 100 will not be drafting the constitution. These 100 will be distilled by the junta into a group of 25 hard-core loyalists. These loyalists will be “assisted” by another 10 direct junta lackeys. And we all know that Sonthi has his own personal ideas on how the constitution will look.
Although I cannot comment on his credentials, it would be unusual for the person who received the most votes (initially) to be left out in the next round.
Even if he is a stooge/puppet for Sonthi, I am not too concerned for the following reasons:
– He is only one person/voice/vote
– I think it important that Sonthi’s views be known, and argued
– There has been, and will continue to be, intense scrutiny of the drafting process
– The final constitution has to be ratified by public referendum
[…] The good folks over at New Mandala continue their fine analysis and posting (see their current warnings about jumping to conclusions on the recent bombings, e.g.). This piece on the trouble with dams is quite good, and relevant all the way up and down the Mekong, especially in Cambodia, which I tend to think of as Asia’s liver, thanks to the Tonle Sap. I sense that the editors of New Mandala and I disagree on the possibility of dams doing good. I tend towards the extreme of seeing all large dam projects as simply bad, unsustainable, and terribly damaging to the ecology of the area. There are good examples of dams that are both large and productive, but these tend to be radically different in type from the dams currently going up all over Asia’s river systems right now. (Infuriatingly, one of these good dams is to be found at the soon-to-be-closed Ford Assembly Plant here in the Twin Cities; the dam here provides all the plant’s power needs without negatively impacting water flow or local ecology). The New Mandala folks say: Whether villagers receive the prosperity they are looking for is still open to question, as Imhof and Lawrence note, “they have been promised new and improved livelihoods, but if history is any indication, these promises are bound to be broken”. Yet it should be recognised that many villagers in rural Laos worry about the impacts of dams while at the same time actively searching for ways that the dams can deliver them the prosperity they want. […]
[…] New Mandala readers may recall my earlier post about Constitution Drafting Assembly (CDA) dark horse Okas Tepalakul. Okas, a car dealer from Chachoengsao province (and classmate of coup supremo Sonthi) gained the most votes from members of the National People’s Assembly (NPA). […]
Police claim that the Muslim janitor of the mosque confessed to making the Chiang Mai bomb.
This raises quite a few possibilities, all of them quite troubling:
1. Muslim insurgents are behind both the Chiang Mai bombings and the Bangkok bombings. They are using Muslims of all races, not just southerners, to execute their plans. They have extensive local networks. They bombed the mosque in Chiang Mai to deflect blame away from themselves.
2. Muslim insurgents are behind the Chiang Mai bombings, but someone else was behind the Bangkok bombings. The insurgents are merely taking advantage of the situation to create unrest, but also want to deflect blame away from themselves.
3. The police tortured or forced the confession out of the mosque janitor. The junta wants the bombing(s) to appear to be the work of either insurgents or Northerners.
I saw that Sorayuth claimed that he had papers showing he and previous owners had paid taxes on the land. If I recall from earlier years, that is one of the first steps in turning paperless land to deeded private property. Both out and out thieves of state land, and peasants who had occupied deedless land with government permission for decades, seek official papers showing them in possession of the property. For the crooks, if you can’t bribe the MinInterior official to create ownership deeds (NSKXXX papers if I recall), you get revenue officials to acknowledge possession by accepting tax payments. Once you have that kind of proof, you can sell the land at a higher value than that with no papers whatsoever.
The other gambit is that the borders of protected forests are not clear or can be shifted slightly to accomodate fraudulent claims — and to slowly erode the borders. So that would make possible someone cutting a piece of reserve forest out to become conservation forest.
[…] Matichon is carrying a report suggesting that Surayud’s land holdings in Nakhon Ratchasima are located in “conservation zone” forest. Previous reports have stated that the land lies in “forest reserve”, a rather general category that covers a range of different land uses. But conservation forest is a rather different matter and it is generally regarded as warranting a high level of environmental protection. Government agencies and conservationist NGOs often express alarm about farming activities in conservation zones (often with exaggerated claims about dire environmental impacts). I wonder how they will react if it is confirmed that the PM is a high-profile forest encroacher? […]
I believe the AEC is wrong to try to make the sale subject to capital gains tax. As Patiwat has righly stated there is no capital gains tax applicable to market traded shares sold by individuals.
If I was the AEC I would be making the children pay income tax on the difference between what the shares were worth on the day they received the shares and what they paid Ample Rich for the shares (just like Ruangkrai had to when he got shares from his father at below market value).
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Blaming the undercurrents
A recent posting at jotman.com entitled “Thai-Style Propaganda Headlines” provides a follow-up to this observation by Andrew.
Charles Keyes on Sondhi Limthongkul
A very late comment: “RBA” (comment 1) is Robert B. Albritton.
Thaksin and the occult
For some more information on the Erawan Shrine see Trilok Chandra Majupuria. 1993 (new edition). Erawan Shrine and Brahma Worship in Thailand. Bangkok: Tecpress Service, L.P. 148 pp.
Another opportunity for Okas
Jon: the leader was with the faculty of political science, then president of Thammasat. He later became secretary-general of the King Prajadhipok Institute. He also chairs the present government’s committee to establish a “political development committee.” Somkhit is with the faculty of law, and deputy president of Thammat. He used to be a member of the first CDA. Nakarin is the present dean of the faculty of political science. Wuthisarn is with the faculty of social administration. What makes them close-knit? A long history of shared and successful experiences, I suppose.
Another opportunity for Okas
Acharn Noranit tought at the Faculty of Political Science and was Rector during the 1990’s. The others wouldn’t neccesarily be from the same faculty – they might have been his vice-rectors or deans.
I’ll let Srithanonchai clarify as to what makes them close knit, except to say that most Thai universities promote their leadership from within. This leads to horrible university politics.
Another opportunity for Okas
Srithanonchai: “closely-knit phakphuak of academic politicians from Thammasat University”
You mean they taught there? Law, I presume. What makes them close-knit?
Blaming the undercurrents
I’m with patiwat on this one. The claim that it they were 100% sure that it was not the fault of the Southern Insurgents came much too fast. It is all much too cute.
I’m happy to add to the speculation and I’ll be putting my money on the culprits as being elements associated with the military or ISOC.
Another opportunity for Okas
More interesting, perhaps, than Okas is that an almost complete closely-knit phakphuak of academic politicians from Thammasat University has made it to the final 100, namely Noranit Sethabut (the leader), Somkhit Lertpaitoon (his right-hand man), Nakarin Mektrairat (his left-hand man), and Wutisarn Tanchai (an associated member of the phuak). Noranit has variously been tipped to become the chairperson of the constitution drafting committee.
Surayud’s conservation zone
Polo said: \’The other gambit is that the borders of protected forests are not clear or can be shifted slightly to accomodate fraudulent claims – and to slowly erode the borders. So that would make possible someone cutting a piece of reserve forest out to become conservation forest.\’
I thought it would be the other way round (convert conservation forest to forest reserve) – assuming conservation forest was subject to more controls than forest reserve (?)
Anyway, Surayud\’s land case appears to be different in that Surayud has acknowledged that he does not own the land and is leasing it from a local villager (although some other reports say Surayud owns the land).
Looking on Google Earth, even though there are no major roads visible, it is clear that the land is not pristine forest anymore and there seems to be quite a lot of land development in the surrounding area.
If the land is illegal, then Surayud will have a lot of worried neighbours.
It also looks like it would be quite a task to move train carriages on to the property.
It would be interesting to know what Chavalit knows about the region.
Overall, in the Thai context, it does not seem to be much of a scandal – it would have played better if it was very opulent with lavish mansions, golf courses etc
Phil Thornton on General Bo Mya
I forgot to add that the whole epic tale of Manerplaw and the Mowei river valley resembles this Ming dynasty classic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Margin
Phil Thornton on General Bo Mya
An oral history of the Moei River Valley (c. 1962-1995) along the lines of the Golden Boat project at new Mandala to capture this history before the participants pass away would fill a large historical gap. I only spent two months there in theearly 1990s but the variety of different kinds of people living from Mae Sot to Sub Moei was quite surprising: Father Joseph with his mission in the Jungle, Anglican villages in the jungle with a strange mixture of self-reliant hill Karens and city-town Karens from Yangon or Paan, the Rohengyas in Mae Sot, a Karen-Muslim village, the refugee camps, Thai villages split between a hill Karen Thai government headman and the KNU, a variety of political parties, I remember meeting the head of the Arakan Communist party and a supposedly the sole remaining survivor of U Nu’s jungle resistance movement in the 1960s, that famous elderly female Karen KNU fighter at Bo Ba Ta refugee camp, doctor Cynthia who won the Magsaysay prize, the Burmese students in the ABSDF and their tenuous coexistence in Karen villages, their split, the Christian NGOs and the refugees and the camps and detention centers they were held in, the western soldiers who visited Manerplaw, and the rather morbid joy they often expressed in killing Burmese, one of them was expelled from the KNU for exactly this as I remember, there was also a Soldier of Fortune article on Bo Ba Ta refugee camp, later on when I lived in Yangon, I met Burmese veterans of this war who had a completely different story that needs to be heard too, anyway there’s a lot to do.
Another opportunity for Okas
It might not be surprising that the person with the greatest number of NPA votes was one of the 100 approved by the junta. But the junta did not just select the 100 people who received the greatest number of votes.
The BMW executive who received the 2nd greatest number of votes (Pharani Leenuthapong) and the Nong Bua Lamphu construction contractor who received the 3rd greatest number of votes (Suwit Pipatwilaikul) were not chosen.
Yet the junta gave an approving nod to 4 NPA members who received the lowest number of votes (7). They were Phisit Lee-Atham (a Democrat), Wichai Roobkhamdee (an academic), Wicha Mahakhun (a Supreme Court judge), and Apichart Damdee (a comedian).
Again, let’s not think too much about this comic horse and pony show. Because these 100 will not be drafting the constitution. These 100 will be distilled by the junta into a group of 25 hard-core loyalists. These loyalists will be “assisted” by another 10 direct junta lackeys. And we all know that Sonthi has his own personal ideas on how the constitution will look.
Surayud’s conservation zone
2Bangkok.com locates the resort home at 14┬░47’39.83″N 101┬░33’2.37″E.
Google Earth doesn’t give enough resolution to see the individual train compartments that appeared on the front page of Khaosod.
Another opportunity for Okas
Although I cannot comment on his credentials, it would be unusual for the person who received the most votes (initially) to be left out in the next round.
Even if he is a stooge/puppet for Sonthi, I am not too concerned for the following reasons:
– He is only one person/voice/vote
– I think it important that Sonthi’s views be known, and argued
– There has been, and will continue to be, intense scrutiny of the drafting process
– The final constitution has to be ratified by public referendum
Dont let me spoil the mud slinging though.
Dams and prosperity in Laos
[…] The good folks over at New Mandala continue their fine analysis and posting (see their current warnings about jumping to conclusions on the recent bombings, e.g.). This piece on the trouble with dams is quite good, and relevant all the way up and down the Mekong, especially in Cambodia, which I tend to think of as Asia’s liver, thanks to the Tonle Sap. I sense that the editors of New Mandala and I disagree on the possibility of dams doing good. I tend towards the extreme of seeing all large dam projects as simply bad, unsustainable, and terribly damaging to the ecology of the area. There are good examples of dams that are both large and productive, but these tend to be radically different in type from the dams currently going up all over Asia’s river systems right now. (Infuriatingly, one of these good dams is to be found at the soon-to-be-closed Ford Assembly Plant here in the Twin Cities; the dam here provides all the plant’s power needs without negatively impacting water flow or local ecology). The New Mandala folks say: Whether villagers receive the prosperity they are looking for is still open to question, as Imhof and Lawrence note, “they have been promised new and improved livelihoods, but if history is any indication, these promises are bound to be broken”. Yet it should be recognised that many villagers in rural Laos worry about the impacts of dams while at the same time actively searching for ways that the dams can deliver them the prosperity they want. […]
Who is Okas Tepalakul?
[…] New Mandala readers may recall my earlier post about Constitution Drafting Assembly (CDA) dark horse Okas Tepalakul. Okas, a car dealer from Chachoengsao province (and classmate of coup supremo Sonthi) gained the most votes from members of the National People’s Assembly (NPA). […]
Blaming the undercurrents
Police claim that the Muslim janitor of the mosque confessed to making the Chiang Mai bomb.
This raises quite a few possibilities, all of them quite troubling:
1. Muslim insurgents are behind both the Chiang Mai bombings and the Bangkok bombings. They are using Muslims of all races, not just southerners, to execute their plans. They have extensive local networks. They bombed the mosque in Chiang Mai to deflect blame away from themselves.
2. Muslim insurgents are behind the Chiang Mai bombings, but someone else was behind the Bangkok bombings. The insurgents are merely taking advantage of the situation to create unrest, but also want to deflect blame away from themselves.
3. The police tortured or forced the confession out of the mosque janitor. The junta wants the bombing(s) to appear to be the work of either insurgents or Northerners.
Surayud’s conservation zone
I saw that Sorayuth claimed that he had papers showing he and previous owners had paid taxes on the land. If I recall from earlier years, that is one of the first steps in turning paperless land to deeded private property. Both out and out thieves of state land, and peasants who had occupied deedless land with government permission for decades, seek official papers showing them in possession of the property. For the crooks, if you can’t bribe the MinInterior official to create ownership deeds (NSKXXX papers if I recall), you get revenue officials to acknowledge possession by accepting tax payments. Once you have that kind of proof, you can sell the land at a higher value than that with no papers whatsoever.
The other gambit is that the borders of protected forests are not clear or can be shifted slightly to accomodate fraudulent claims — and to slowly erode the borders. So that would make possible someone cutting a piece of reserve forest out to become conservation forest.
Surayud’s forest retreat
[…] Matichon is carrying a report suggesting that Surayud’s land holdings in Nakhon Ratchasima are located in “conservation zone” forest. Previous reports have stated that the land lies in “forest reserve”, a rather general category that covers a range of different land uses. But conservation forest is a rather different matter and it is generally regarded as warranting a high level of environmental protection. Government agencies and conservationist NGOs often express alarm about farming activities in conservation zones (often with exaggerated claims about dire environmental impacts). I wonder how they will react if it is confirmed that the PM is a high-profile forest encroacher? […]
Thaksin, Phone Home
I believe the AEC is wrong to try to make the sale subject to capital gains tax. As Patiwat has righly stated there is no capital gains tax applicable to market traded shares sold by individuals.
If I was the AEC I would be making the children pay income tax on the difference between what the shares were worth on the day they received the shares and what they paid Ample Rich for the shares (just like Ruangkrai had to when he got shares from his father at below market value).