Dogmatix

Sorry Suraphong. 30 March will be too late for you. The Constitution requires the HOuse of Representatives to be convened 30 days after the elections, i.e. 4 March. Another 30 days your caretaker status expires. So bye, bye CMPO, Foreign Ministry, Deputy PMship et al. Prepare to be an ordinary citizen.

So he threatened them with popcorn.

The courts said you're allowed to protest without consequence. I hope to see them soon in Bangkok. It's the only way that the Sino-Thais will take them seriously and respect their political rights.

Rightly or wrongly, rural people see this as another coup executed by the Sino-Thai elite who want to install a government that will enrich them even more at the expense of rural Thais. That's the perception and it's a perception held by rural Thais for good reason.

So they want to hang on to another Sino-Thai elite that has been enriching themselves at their expense and even stole so much from the rice pledging scheme there was nothing left to pay the farmers.

Another Chinese Southerner who is hated by the people in the South. Why can't Isaan people find leaders of their own instead of these Southern transplants like Jataporn, Nattawut and Veera who only use them for their own ends?

Thida joined the Communist Party of Thailand but claims she rejected their ideology, even though she was selected for special training in Hanoi with the other hard core leaders. She is riding on the coat tails of the red shirts until the time is right to ditch Thaksin and the other capitalist scum and start a proper Maoist revolution.

Mr Chada is a coalition MP and I am sure his boss, Banharn, had some words with him after Thaksin or someone else in PT had some words with him. I think the person who received convincing assurances that he would be paid for calling off the rally is more likely to be Mr Chada than any of the farmers.

Seems like a nice house and a large plot of land. I wonder what Kwanchai actually does for a living. He is said to be able to arrange transfers of senior police in Udon.

Having read the Khao Sod article it seems there literally nothing left of the Emergency Decree except the immunity to officers who enforce it. But there is nothing lleft to enforce.

No doubt Chalerm, Tarit, YL et al will refuse to recognise the authority of the court again but that will lead to criminal prosecutions, if they try to continue enforcing the SOE and courts won't approve arrest warrants under it. Rules of evidence are tougher under other laws.

I am not sure if the ruling is retroactive which could lead to prosecutions for actions already undertaken under the decree.

Maybe Thaksin will have a chance to fight with a mystery man-in-black armed with a pillow in his hotel room like that Hamas leader did in Dubai.

I don't know if it was hate speech but it was certainly a pack of lies written by Thaksin's paid toadies in a pathetic attempt to shift the blame for rice pledging scandal on to anyone other than herself and the other perpetrators.

I think Suthep is probably fitter after all those 17km marches and Chalerm usually has a hangover. But Chalerm would probably finish it by pulling out one of those .32 Berettas registered in his wife's name that were found to have disappeared after the mystery shooting of Sgt Suwichai a few feet from where his son was standing.

Then the mystery killer Puet, a forerunner of today's unidentified man-in-black, who has been on the run for all these years, despite Chalerm's pledge to track him down, could be blamed again.

It is nasty stuff but Tarit has rehearsed all the speeches about this when he was a member of Suthep's CRES fighting the red shirts' MIB. Unfortunately armed militants that everyone denies all knowledge of were proved a very effective tactic by the red shirts and now they are here to stay.

They are now seeking an arrest warrant for Chitpas Kridakorn (nee Bhirompakdi), the attractive Singha beer heiress. Dumping her in the woman's remand prison with all the toms would be highly unsporting.

Good. No more idiotic pushes to disband the protestors. Now that the court has ruled against using violence, they can't legally disband the protestors. If they try and someone dies, Chalerm and his band of official thugs can be held liable.

Does the court ruling effectively lift the security forces' immunity under the Emergency Decree I wonder? If police are ordered to shoot someone under the SOE they might still have immunity but the people who gave the orders might not, since the court has ruled that is unlawful.

Legally they are probably better off now by rescinding the SOE and reverting to the ISA and CAPO. At least tourism will take a lesser hit, as many trips are automatically cancelled in a SOE. A good excuse to get rid of Chalerm whose performance can't have been very pleasing to his master. He is more of a liability than an asset.

Good. No more idiotic pushes to disband the protestors. Now that the court has ruled against using violence, they can't legally disband the protestors. If they try and someone dies, Chalerm and his band of official thugs can be held liable.

Any other Western and modern country wouldn't tolerate what Suthep is encouraging, let's be thankful that this is not in the Great USofA, Britain, Australia or elsewhere as there would be a whole lot more blood running down the streets.

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Which Western democracies would tolerate the massive graft and vote buying of the Thaksin regime? You need look no further than the rice pledging scheme on both counts.

So not much for Chalerm and CMPO to do any more. Guess the police rank and file dragged in from other provinces will be happy.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Dubai also beckons

...the thought police are back

The thought police are the government that controls virtually all free TV in Thailand.

"Deputy Government Spokesperson Lt. Sunisa Lertphakhawat said CMPO Director Chalerm Yubamrung had assigned the PRD to produce the special television program “Peace for Bangkok Mission” on the NBT channel."

I have expect Lt. Sunisa (author of best selling ghosted fiction works "Thaksin where are you " and "Thaksin are you OK" to say the protestors kille by the police on Chalerm's orders with the nod from Thaksin OK in Dubai were killed to international standards.

The only problem with the G 2 G deal was that it was with local Government in China rather than National Government. These deals have been going on for years with no problem. Now they make a big fuss just to put more pressure on YL.

That the government was not selling G2G s just one point. What is more important is that the rice was not exported at all but sold to cronies domestically for B4-6k per tonne. It may even have been re-pledged to the government after that. The first point is misrepresentation. The second is fraud.

The payments were due in October. The protests started in November and Parliament was dissolved on 9 December. They didn't prepare the funding for the farmers on time and intended to default on them from the beginning. Then dissolved Parliament without bothering to approve the necessary cabinet resolutions for government guaranteed borrowings.

Something doesn't stack here. The woman is not playing with a full deck.

Doesnt anyone just do their job anymore here without messing things up and sticking thier noses in anothers pile of dung ? ... <deleted> does it have to do with the BAAC where the money comes from surely they are charged with paying the farmers and thats it... you got some bloody money now pay some farmers with it... jesus if its a f up by the gov let them get crucified for it and not the poor farmers.

<deleted> use the money to pay the farmers now you have it.... these people in these pin head depts dont give a crap about those they are supposed to be helping its all political...

Boy are we seeing one screwed up system and country ive never seen anything like it here all at once in so many depts ... its like watching someone having seizures, on purpose.

Would you pay your neighbours mortgage, if he asked for your neighbourly help, and said "I promise you, if I can't pay you back what I ask to borrow from you, you can have my car worth the same amount you lend me." (when the car hasn't been paid off too!!!) ???

The ones having seizures are the gits in PTP who siphoned off the money in the whole big scam. Are you waking up yet?

The PTP is interested in only the amnesty bill and making themselves rich. They've achieved nothing else since being in power. And the supporters haven't figured this out yet.

You are right. The point is that the BAAC could be left holding the bag, since the government is unable to borrow legally to pay the farmers. It only issued a non-binding comfort letter to GSB to guarantee its inter-bank loan. The current government decided to dump the Finance Ministry's debt incurred in bailing out the insolvent financial institutions in 1997 onto the Bank of Thailand's balance sheet to make itself look better. BAAC could be left with a similar hole in its balance sheet. We are not talking bout debt backed by the full faith and credit of the Royal Thai Government here. We are talking about unsecured loans which should rate for a much higher interest rate than GSB was offered. Similar problem with the govt's attempts to auction B20bn in notes to commercial banks. They got bids for some of it but for more much higher interest rates than they were prepared to pay. Same even happened to the government guaranteed bond auction of B50bn that did have a govt guarantee before the dissolution of Parliament. Kittirat cancelled the whole thing because he didn't like the bids which were only for a portion of it. Now he would probably give his right arm to bids at those prices. He seems to be constantly two or three moves behind the game and always trying to overplay a weak hand.

So this is what has become of Yingluck's announcement that the Finance Ministry had successfully managed to secure funding to pay the farmers from a secret sources through its own monumental efforts - a short term inter-bank loan from another state bank. And now it has to be repaid due to a run on the lender and threats from BAAC's union. So basically the Finance Ministry has achieved nothing after attempting a cheap sleight of hand trick to deceive BAAC's union.

Why didn't Yingluck and Kittirat prepare the funding to pay in October on time? Poor farmers.

Not unusual at all. People don't want their money to disappear into the the shin clan pockets via the rice scam.

I'm amazed that Thai banks hold that amount of cash 10 million =£200,000

Go to a UK high Street bank and try to withdraw £20,000 without notice and they will tell you they do not hold the funds,

except MAYBE Monday morning.

At the start of the Great Depression in 1929 when there was no deposit insurance and lots of small iffy banks in the US Americans rushed to withdraw their savings in $20 gold eagle coins, not trusting bank notes. Obviously deliveries of gold coins couldn't keep up with the demand and the fractional reserve banking system meant that banks became insolvent fast. Thousands of banks went bust across the country destroying not only the savings of their depositors but also the businesses that depended on the banks for credit.

These things can spiral out of control if not managed properly. Time for Kittirat, Yingluck and the other clowns mismanaging the Thai economy to be locked safely away in an asylum with the keys thrown into a deep ocean.

Doesn't amount to a full scale bank run yet but, if GSB continues with its inter-bank lending to BAAC, it could turn into one. That would mean GSB would have to turn to the inter-bank market to borrow funds itself and ultimately might have to be propped up by the government which has no authority to borrow money to support failing finance institutions. Kittirat has already dumped the the debt created by the Finance Ministry in the bail out of insolvent institutions in 1997 on to the Bank of Thailand's balance sheet. I wonder where he would try to get money from this time.

At any rate the inter-bank loan to BAAC is odd because BAAC has plenty of liquidity and was a net lender in the inter-bank market until it reversed course and started borrowing from GSB. Inter-bank loans are usually overnight or for a few days and never more than 30 days. For BAAC to pay back GSB within 30 days it will clearly have use its own liquidity which BAAC's union had objected to. So Does Kittirat think the union is so stupid they won't figure out this is a scheme to use BAAC's own liquidity with a 30 lag effect? When they do figure it out, there is a significant risk that GSB will not be repaid on time.

I used to think that Jonathan Head's pro-Thaksinite reports on the BBC were rock bottoms as far as red foreign journalists were concerned but this one from Thomas Fuller in the NYT now takes the biscuit http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/world/asia/thai-police-clear-areas-of-protesters-as-their-numbers-ebb.html?_r=0

He suggests it is unfair for the NACC to probe Yingluck promptly over the rice pledging scandal which is perhaps the most egregious fraud ever perpetrated on 1.4 million poverty stricken farmers with catastrophic results. He even stoops so low as to imply that the Crown Property Bureau is supporting the protests.

I hope that being able to obtain a Thai visa and work permit are not important for his career. Perhaps he can find employment with Robert Amsterdam, if he can no longer travel to Thailand.

"He even stoops so low as to imply that the Crown Property Bureau is supporting the protests." Huh - are you saying the foreign press shouldn't report what the Thai media has claimed, that Sontiyan is an advisor to the CPB? So you're advocating self-censorship for the foreign press despite the fact that even the Thai media has reported it? Strange comment, but if you don't believe in a free press, understandable I suppose.

As for the rice pledging scheme - perhaps it'd be better to separate out the issues of corruption and non-payment because they're not really related. The corruption was certainly perpetrated on the Thai taxpayer, as is all other corruption. But the farmers benefited from the scheme when they were getting paid. So the fraud wasn't 'perpetrated on' them. They were getting more money, perhaps not as much as they should have due to the corruption issue, but more money nevertheless. The non-payment is a seperate issue which relates to incompetence rather than corruption. Incompetence because they should've expanded the scheme and made sure they borrowed the money before house was dissolved. Of course, now their hands are tied. They've tried to exercise the few options they have to get hold of the money and have only managed to come up with a fraction so far. It can't be fully resolved until parliamentary quorum is achieved.

Fuller describes Sonthiyarn thus right up front in his article, "Sonthiyarn Chuenruethai-naitham, who has been described by the Thai media as an adviser to the Crown Property Bureau, the agency that manages the massive royal fortune,..."

He doesn't mention anything else about Sonthiyarn's professional life, deliberately trying to the make impression that his profession was being an adviser to the Crown Property Bureau. None of the references in Thai media to Sonthiyarn's connection with the CPB seem to suggest that is an adviser to it. This one from Kom Chad Luek, which is typical, suggests that the CPB's move into media via Siam TV provided Sonthiyarn with an employment opportunity before he moved on to INN which is rather different from being an advisor to the CPB. http://www.komchadluek.net/detail/20140211/178693.html#.UwIig1kYvcs

Can you cite any Thai media references that support Fuller's assertion that Sonthiyarn has been described by Thai media as an adviser to the CPB? Does Fuller read Thai or was his research only second hand hearsay?