Dogmatix

Thaksin may face some tough choices too, if Pita fails to form a government and the baton is passed to his nominees to form a government without MFP. 1. To get senate support they would have to agree to Prayut or Prawit being PM which would piss off the residual red shirt support base. 2. They need either BJP or the Dems to have a majority in the lower house. BJP will never accept Thaksin's policy to recriminalise cannabis ASAP. The Dems would be a laughing stock, if they joined a Thaksin government as a teeny partner of their historic enemy. That would alienate the residual die hard yellow shirt supporters. Even with the Dems a PT led government would have a wafer thin majority. They would really need both BJP and Dems to have an unassailable majority.

They offer to send the fine notification by mail but, if it's the same price, most will opt to pay on the spot and avoid getting points off their licence, assuming they have one.

Military appointed senators bowing to the will of the people would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.

I once went to Immigration on this holiday without realising it and found it closed. As a result I had to delay a business trip to Singapore because I couldn't re-endorse my PR books.

Even though worthless, he should have transferred them to someone else.

Thai conscription is obviously completely wasteful and useless. If they need a military at all, they need a much smaller number of well trained, motivated soldiers with good pay and conditions and with better education than the average conscript, so as to be able to learn to use hi-tech equipment. Training unwilling recruits to serve for only two years just ties up the NCO corps and produces substandard soldiers.

My company had a driver who had deserted, although I think he was a volunteer but couldn't stand it anyway. My secretary liked him and colluded to employ him without military exemption papers and he didn't dare renew his ID. At first he said he would get the papers from his home upcountry but he never did and she figured out the truth but didn't fire him. Apparently the statute of limitations is 10 years and he was planning to wait it out before getting a new ID card. I left the company and he left soon after and I don't know what happened to him. There must be a lot of conscripts who desert. Perhaps the army is scared of adverse public opinion, if they go after them. May also not get cooperation from police and district offices.

But no ban on sales of weed.

There are very few aspects of the Thai sex industry that are illegal, if you read the current Prostitution Act. How often do you hear of people being arrested for prostitution?

This seems to be all nonsense because the only aspects of prostitution that are illegal are: * Soliciting so as to cause a nuisance. This depends on the victim filing a complaint with the police. * Being a brothel keeper. * Having commercial sex with a sex worker under 18 in a place of prostitution. They plan to up this to 20. I can't see how making a it legal to keep a brothel or cause a nuisance by harassing blokes who are not interested is going to change their lives, whereas upping the age to 20 will make a lot of existing hookers illegal to their customers who will steer clear of any younger looking girls.

The finger print database is definitely digital. The Bangkok gun licensing office has its own fingerprint scanner and sends the scans to to be checked in the fingerprint database which takes three weeks. If they take prints with ink the fingerprint office will scan them.

Definitely an election gimmick. There is no way he is willing to come back and risk even a second in jail, although he didn't mind taking the risk that Yingluck would go to jail. His plan is gain enough power through his nominee daughter to amnesty himself and come home after that but not before. He is very transparent.

Not only do most Thais have little or no knowledge of recent regional or global history, they also know very little about recent Thai history. Try asking someone who wasn't alive at the time about the 1976 Thammasat massacre and you will get a blank stare. They are only taught fictionalised accounts of heroic wars with Burma and about historical figures who may not even have ever existed.

MFP’s resurgence from the ashes of its previous dissolution is nothing short of astonishing. In the last election FFP had a windfall due to the dissolution of Thai Raksa which left many seats undefended by Pheua Thai. That made them too much of a threat. Hence the dissolution of FFP and banning of Thanathorn on trumped up charges. Many MPs were lured away and didn't join MFP. The voting system in the constitution was amended restoring the dual ballots to favour Pheua Thai (obviously a nod to a hoped post electoral alliance between Prayut/Prawit and Thaksin) and to be a supposed disadvantage to MFP, since FFP had picked up many of its MPs from the party list due to the single ballot. Then there was bitter infighting between MFP leader Pita and external advisor Piyabutr. At least in the opinion polls MFP seems to have overcome all these setbacks by articulating a solid platform of much needed reform which is clearly anathema to the dinosaurs who no doubt will look to another dissolution to offset the risk. But protests would be worse than last time without the excuse of COVID to declare emergency and, yes, another coup would be quite possible - not to maintain Prayut and Prawit in power but to elevate a new generation of army leaders.

Apart from all else, one of the MFP policies that really resonates across the country is the plan to abolish wasteful and pointless military conscription. Anyone with a young son, grandson or nephew should want abolition, would rather not worry about their loved one being murdered in hazing rituals by sadistic NCOs or killed by insurgents in the South, not to mention the waste of a couple of years of their life. The military would also benefit hugely from having a professional force of willing soldiers, rather than a constant turn over of unwilling conscripts who tie down NCOs in training for months and then quit. Volunteers who actually want to join the military would benefit from better pay and conditions. The only losers would be officers wives who would have to do their own housework and gardening.

Quotas were already in place when the current Immigration Act came into force in 1979. They date back to the early 1950s in the wake of the communist revolution in China when the military government decided it was time to pull down the shutters on Chinese immigration out of fear of a communist fifth column. That was effective as PR was relatively easy to get apart from the quota and there wasn't any other visa available to migrants. Fees were increased substantially at the same time. The quotas have only ever been aimed at the Chinese. 100 per nationality and 50 stateless persons is the maximum quota allowed by law. So the cabinet only has discretion to set a lower quota or not set any quota. But neither of those options have ever been exercised, so it is completely pointless for the cabinet to have to make a resolution every year. Without that applications could be made any time like citizenship.

I think that's right. You don't want to apply under the humanitarian category for supporting or being supported by Thai wife or kids as that is a PITA and criteria are the same, i.e. work permit required, and they don't like the category but someone put it in the regulations years ago to make it look like they were the nice guys they aren't. You also don't want to apply under the investor category as that is also a PITA and criteria the same, WP needed from own company. think the answer is that there is no specific married category apart from humanitarian category but you apply under the business category and ask for a discount on the basis of having a Thai wife.

Being married to a Thai doesn't make it easier but gets you a big discount on the final fee. I am unaware of any length of time requirement for the marriage before applying but they will scrutinise the marriage in their half arsed way,. e.g. have you photograph yourselves jumping up and down on the marital bed together and may quizz neighbours to see if you really live together there. Applications take place towards the end of the year following the announcement in the RG of the routine cabinet resolution to set quotas for PR (always 100 per nationality) as required by the Immigration Act. The annoucemennt can happen anywhere between May and December but usually from October onwards. Of course quite pointless since there has never been any variation in the quota but that's Thailand for you.

By Intelligence Police I assume you mean National Intelligence Agency )NIA). It’s not part of the police. It is under the Prime Minister’s Office.

They make it very easy for Thai men to get Thai citizenship for foreign wives. No profession or job in Thailand required for the women and the Thai husbands only to show they received income of 180,000 baht from any source the year before. Foreign men to have a job in Thailand earning 80,000 a month for 3 years or 40,000, if married to a Thai. Now it is proven that foreign women get Thai citizenship this way for criminal purposes and divorce the Thai hubby, they might want to look at cancelling the gender discrimination and make foreign men and women apply on the same basis.

Can't wait to pick up my 10,000 baht worth of The Square Face digital currency.

Obviously the government’s heart was not in this bill or why would they announce it after parliament has already been dissolved and there is no chance of it going through any of its parliamentary readings, let alone being passed into law? New governments rarely pick up old bills left behind from the previous government. Can only assume it is to allow Prayut to claim he is doing something for women's rights or something on the campaign trail. Seeing as only soliciting to the extent of being a nuisance to someone and keeping a bawdy house are illegal in the current Act, this one is no big deal. But the bill would make it illegal to have sex a hooker under 20 (previously 18) not mentioned in the article. However, there were very few successful prosecutions for this under the current law because it is difficult for police to prove that it was commercial sex, since the customers can easily pay more to get the hooker to say it was free of charge. So police never tried hard to enforce this but do go for statutory rape prosecutions for sex with under 15s under the Criminal Code which is much easier to prove since it makes no difference if no money changed hands or if consent was given. But given the large number of 18 and 19 year old prostitutes on the game to support their fatherless kids this provision may be a bit ridiculous and perhaps lucky that the government didn't attempt to pass the bill into law.

Articles in Thai say the female employee was fired for stealing 10,000 baht from the resort which she denies.. The deceased allegedly deducted the 10,000 from her severance pay, which would be illegal without a court case convicting her of the theft. The husband was a cook at the resort and took a knife from the kitchen to murder his boss who was celebrating his birthday at the time. Very sad. RIP.

Those indicted were 1 major, 2 captains and the rest sergeants. I wonder why the roadblock in Rachada at night needed to be so top heavy. Oh silly me. Of course.

Thaksin is not planning to go to prison. That is just his election propaganda. Somsak probably did him a much bigger favour in assisting with the Supreme Court decision that gave Thaksin back 36 billion in assets confiscated by the lower court and confirmed by the appeal court in what looked an open and shut guilty verdict. That was obviously intended as a war chest for the election and two of the 3 Ps must have signed off on it two hoping Thaksin would support one of them for PM. There is no independent judiciary in important political cases for sure. Actually rotten from the beginning. He started off by bribing and suborning the constitutional court to get off in his asset concealment case where he put his shares in the names of gardeners and drivers. Without that initial criminal act he would never have been PM at all.