Chulalongkorn and Thammasat Universities students held their 72nd football match with traditional satire parades under the theme “Our Rise” – a message calling on people to fight against injustice in society, including corruption, authoritarian rule and the widening income gap.

During the pre-game parade, students followed their tradition of serious fun, using political satire and papier-mache puppets to reference controversial issues, including the scandal over Deputy Prime Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan’s large collection of luxury watches and the new charter.

Ruangkrai leekijwattana, from Pheu Thai’s lawyer team, called on the government to take legal action against those involved in the parades, saying their activities may have violated the political gathering ban.

Phumtham offered a public apology over the statement, saying Ruangkrai’s opinion was a personal one that contradicted to the party’s ideology. The party would talk to Ruangkrai and create an understanding, he said.

Phumtham said the parades reflected the students’ views about the country, and they should be supported as an example so citizens will be more aware of political issues and learn how to exercise their rights and freedom.

Any attempts to interfere in the students’ affairs, as reported in the news, violated their rights and freedom, Phumtham said.

Phumtham also called on the government to hold the election this year, as previously announced, and stop suppressing people who exercised their rights and freedom, which were protected under the charter.

However, some social media users have complained that their names had been put forward as supporters of the campaign without their consent.

A woman named Sarinee Achavanuntakul said in a Facebook message that her email address had been used without her knowledge to support the campaign. She added that she had later withdrawn her name as a supporter.

As of 1pm on Monday, the campaign was supported by at least 366 people. An observer who asked to remain anonymous said the original number of supporters had been more than 10,000 but many were found to be spam addresses so the number had been revised downwards.

The sponsor of the campaign, which is titled “Supporting General Prawit to remain in office for national security and the live broadcast of the 2018 World Cup”, was not known on Monday.

Prawit has a plan to pool funds from the private sector and the Sports Authority of Thailand to buy the World Cup broadcast rights so that all the matches will be broadcast live on free TV.

The campaign’s page on Change.org said it had been initiated by 250 people three days ago.

Prawit has been hit by a scandal in which he claims that more than 20 luxury watches he has worn over the recent years all belonged to a deceased wealthy friend.

In a separate Change.org campaign initiated by children-rights activist Ticha Na Nakorn, more than 61,000 people have called on Prawit to resign based on comments that he made last month that he would step down if “people do not want him”.

Other surveys have found that most respondents wanted Prawit to step down.

THE JUNTA could have shot itself in the foot after its online information operation (IO) targeting websites and social media was revealed, casting its credibility in a bad light, which could eventually lead the public to lose trust in the military government, analysts said yesterday.

The military has been thoroughly embarrassed in its attempt to distort a poll held by the whistleblower Facebook page CSI LA, which played a major role in exposing Deputy Prime Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan’s possession of luxury watches.

The poll asked netizens whether they wanted Prawit to resign after the general made a pledge last week, saying “if the people don’t want me, I’m ready to leave”.

During the first days after the poll was posted, the result was clear as tens of thousands of online voters said they wanted Prawit to leave. Then over the weekend, the numbers changed dramatically, showing more people wanting him to stay.

However, the page administrator, who claims to be a data scientist, has reported irregularities in the data demonstrating that votes in favour of Prawit had come from the same computer network and users had voted multiple times.

In addition, screenshots of an online conversation were posted on the page in which junior officials explained to the page administrator how soldiers had been ordered to vote in the poll.

Almost as soon as Prawit made his comments last Wednesday offering to resign, several sites – including the Teenee Thai PBS news programme on the public broadcasting channel Thai PBS – launched online polls asking people to cast votes on whether the deputy prime minister should stay in office. The online poll results indicated a clear majority wanted Prawit to leave office.

The junta number-two has made no comment about the poll so far.

The disclosure of the operation targeting the CSI LA page has led many members of the public to conclude that it was an attempt to save Prawit and his position in the Cabinet, with an often repeated view that “the regime’s desperation” has become another joke.

The deliberate manipulation only reflected the regime’s ignorance of and inability to keep up with the changing world, said political critic Sirote Klampaiboon.

“When they act on the Internet or social media, there are always footprints that are traceable,” the political scientist said. “And when people find out that it’s all made up, their feelings can turn to antipathy.”

Sarinee Achavanuntakul, a key member of the Thai Netizen Network, said she also saw the operation having an adverse effect for the junta government, which had “only made a fool of themselves after being busted”.

“That is the case now more than ever as the government’s popularity is in decline. More and more questions are being raised about corruption and the election,” she said. “They have to go hard on the IO. But it is difficult to distort the truth or say that the criticism [of the junta] isn’t true.

“Consequently, they were forced to use old tactics, like attacking the previous government. And it doesn’t look good. Everything just goes further south for them,” Sarinee added.

For one thing, the case showed how the military’s mentality focused mostly on warfare, she said, questioning in this case who the “enemy” was.

“Is it the people? They taking to the Internet and dissimulating all these half-truths, in an operation funded by the taxpayers’ money, to fight against who exactly?”

And given that the military was already viewing the Internet activity negatively and as being deceitful, operations that relied on propaganda only worsened the situation, Sarinee said.

Meanwhile, Army spokesman Lt-General Kongcheep Tantrawanich denied speculation about the issue on Saturday, saying if poll respondents really were soldiers, the number would have been in the hundreds of thousands, given the total number of soldiers across the country.

Given the “dignity of the military”, it was unlikely that it would do such a thing, he added.

Marcia Eugenio, director of the Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor and Human Trafficking under the US Labor Department, acknowledged efforts by the Thai government, but said there were complications.

File photo: Marcia Eugenio

“Some laws might be complicated, for instance, as to who has the responsibility to monitor enforcement,” she said. “There are also issues related to recruitment and access to resources. [Workers] tend to end up being exploited if they don’t have enough resources, including social services and social protections.”

Human trafficking in Thailand, notably in the fisheries sector, has been watched closely since the country was issued a “yellow card” for illegal fishing by the European Union. Thailand also remained on the Tier 2 WatchList of the US Trafficking in Persons report last year.

Eugenio noted that the Thai government was also chastised in a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on rights abuses and forced labour in fishing.

While regulatory controls on improving conditions of work at sea have been made stronger, the HRW report blamed poor implementation and enforcement that “has perpetuated a culture of abuse and impunity”.

Its research indicated practices such as retention of identity documents, wage withholding and recruitment linked to debt, forcing workers to work very long hours and end up in slave-like conditions.

The HRW report also blamed the Thai government for delaying the implementation of articles in the new labour law, which will harshly punish employers of unregistered workers.

“In the absence of strict enforcement measures to compel brokers to obtain formal licences or employers to use only licensed brokers, it seems unlikely that this legislation will disrupt the deeply entrenched informal systems driving recruitment in the fishing industry,” the report reads.

HRW has called on the US, one of Thailand’s main seafood export destinations, to urge the Thai government to pass such laws as well as investigate and prosecute government officials who may enable forced labour and trafficking.

In 2016, processed fish and crustaceans sent from Thailand to the US accounted for 27 per cent (US$623 million or Bt19.6 billion) and 22 per cent ($517 million) of the market respectively.

The HRW received a prompt response from the Thai Foreign Ministry, which cited various legal moves, including the implementation of the 2015 fisheries laws imposing higher fines, resulting in severe punishments that have led to a curb in human trafficking.

During past two years, the ministry claimed, more than 4,249 cases had been brought before criminal courts, 85 of which were prosecutions for human-trafficking crimes. More than 50 defendants were punished with the maximum jail term of 14 years and fined the maximum of Bt2.5 million.

A law governing recruitment agencies was also issued, resulting in the prohibition of debt bondage and the licensing of more than 100 agencies.

Eugenio acknowledged that the Thai government had gradually engaged more with the US and the EU, which closely monitors Thailand’s fisheries situation, by taking a greater leading role, passing legislation to provide additional protections to labourers and gearing more towards the private sector.

“Still, it can be a bit hard to control since many of the cases happen at sea. There is more that could be done,” she said.

Thai Foreign Ministry spokesperson Budsadee Santipitaks said the Thai government had allocated more than Bt3.6 billion in the 2018 fiscal year to fight human trafficking and measures to speed up the legal procedure to prosecute human traffickers.

NOTED sufficiency economy practitioner Wiwat Salayakamthorn was invited to join the fifth Prayut Cabinet as Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Cooperatives amid speculation that he, along with other ministers who have long experience working with the masses, have been invited to sit in the Cabinet to help shore up the government’s popularity.

Wiwat has dismissed the speculation, saying it had nothing to do with votes. The government, he said, just wished to see him help push forward sufficiency economy and self sufficiency.

AS PEOPLE SAW [YOU] ENTERING THE AGRICULTURE MINISTRY, THEY SAW IT AS SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE GOVERNMENT’S POPULARITY AND VOTES IN THE FUTURE. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO THAT?

I admit that as soon as I entered the office, there were political comments in the media, both pro and anti, but I must say that I decided to take up the offer as I saw we were in the middle of a crisis once again.

How? You may have heard about the economic cycle: like a plane, it parks and then takes off. It later flies to the sky before landing, or sometimes, nose-diving, just like what happened during the 1997 crisis.

Thailand is no different from other parts of the world. Our late His Majesty the King [Bhumibol Adulyadej] once warned us not to be too extreme, but to take the middle path and we would be able to withstand any turbulence. Unfortunately, we took another path, putting money first, despite having other special qualities including self-sufficiency.

Thailand has taken the wrong path. The US that we followed barely survived the crisis. Our late King, on the other hand, received much praise from all over the world, and his sufficiency  economy philosophy won praise and acceptance as part of the new doctrine for the world’s survival: the Sustainable Development Goals.

So, it’s a good time for us to review what went wrong and help one another out of the crisis.

IS THIS THE ASSIGNMENT YOU HAVE RECEIVED FROM THE GOVERNMENT?

I think this is a good opportunity and this government is supportive. My social networks told me that I would face very hard and exhausting work. Actually, we have been working on our belief. This government has just opened up a chance for us to steer it forward in a wide scale.

One day, the PM’s secretary just called me that he would like to invite me to join his Cabinet. I asked him what he would like me to do. And he simply told me that it was just steering what I have been doing, along with the other two ministers. I checked their work experience and was okay with them. So, I accepted the invitation.

Actually, the PM even sent some military officers to learn the way from my centre. The point is people learn things from us and can create similar centres or expand their networks. We would change people, not by power, but by knowledge and mindfulness.

We have been doing this along with some universities, but this time, the head of the government has requested this. So, I think this is a good chance.

(Wiwit, the late King’s long-time development project official, founded Mab-uang Natural Farming Centre with self-sufficiency-based farming in Chon Buri.)

IT’S A GOOD OPPORTUNITY, AS YOU SAID, TO EXPAND THE SUFFICIENCY PHILOSOPHY NATIONWIDE?

I think it is. When I went to a village, as Ajarn (teacher), I may be able to introduce it to five people who are interested in the idea. But as a deputy minister, there will be more influential followers than before, who are ready to take my words and practice.

With such strong support, the opportunity for us to see the idea introduced in our society would happen fast. And I personally believe that it would be introduced more widely than ever, though we cannot say to what extent it will be.

DO YOU EXPECT IT TO REPLACE MAINSTREAM DEVELOPMENT?

I would say that now we have it in our national policies. The challenge will be how we can transform the idea into practice, let’s say, in the 20-year national strategy plan. I personally believe that we could, given the global trend that needs similar changes.

Besides policies, our academic arena has adopted more of the idea and helped introduce it to people. So, I quite believe that people will see more the importance of sufficiency in the future. It may not yet replace the mainstream trend, but at least it has provided a new possibility. Bhutan, for instance, has adopted sufficiency lifestyle as its national goal. We Thai people have walked a long way along the development path, and if we are serious enough, I think we can make it, and make it our mainstream path.

It’s the way, otherwise we would be at war. Mainstream development does not distribute wealth, and that [would lead to] a war.

By saying this, it’s not that I am against the mainstream trend of capitalism. Capitalism has its bad side and good side, and we can pick the good ones and apply them to our thinking.

HOW WOULD YOU MATERIALISE THE IDEA HERE AT THE AGRICULTURE MINISTRY?

It sounds like a joke, but I think our temples, at least 40,000 temples nationwide, could be good educational centres. Our temples used to function like that before, and they can again.

At the ministry, I’m responsible for 10 departments and agencies under the ministry, covering land and water issues.

To start with, I’ll work on water issues first. To be self-sufficient is to be able to stand on our own feet, and that’s the challenge: how we can preserve water in a sustainable way? Royal rain-making would be introduced nationwide to help bring water to people, while small-scale water storage would also be introduced so that people can manage water by themselves.

As I said, the challenge is how to transform the idea into practice, and the operational plans that follow are crucial.

Again, my standpoint is clear. Every political party that announces the idea as part of their policies would win my support, not just the junta government.

But nobody talked to me about helping woo votes. I think if they take the idea seriously enough, they will win praise and votes accordingly.

Most respondents to the poll, which covers a nationwide sampling of 1,212 people, suggested they were happy after the NCPO stepped in to end political violence and social chaos before May 2014. Besides political stability and social order, respondents were also happy about the Pracharat programme, which helps low-income earners and makes government services more efficient.

Overall, 47.5 per cent of respondents were not sure if the government would be successful in tackling issues concerning people’s economic well-being, while another 37.3 per cent of respondents said they were worried about the rising prices of petrol and cooking gas.

Regarding the political outlook, 37.1 per cent of respondents said they were worried about the general election timeline, while 48.2 per cent said the NCPO should have achieved its goals more quickly.

They said they hoped the NCPO would be able to reduce corruption before the general election, and successfully tackle economic issues, while boosting the prices of agricultural products.

Meanwhile, Nipit Indarasombat, deputy leader of the Democrat Party, said the NCPO was facing a serious challenge and would find it difficult to retain people’s support even though it may have decided to speed up the general election due to growing opposition to a further delay of the polls.

By taking legal action against students and other groups preparing to hold rallies against the earlier plan to delay the election, he said the NCPO had entered a critical stage of its existence. Moreover, political history showed that it would be difficult for the NCPO to regain popularity having not been careful enough in exercising its special power following the coup.

At this stage, Nipit said, there was no “medicine” to cure the illness so the NCPO had to accept its fate. Previously, the NCPO’s roadmap to return to a democratic path was to hold the general election around November this year. However, there has been an attempt to postpone the polls beyond the end of this year, resulting in growing opposition.

In response to the election delay, students and other pro-democracy groups have stepped up their campaigns against the government with a series of rallies in defiance of the NCPO’s strict enforcement of law and order, especially on political rallies.

If they wished to remain in the house, they must ask for permission first, he said. As long as the house is not sold, they |would be allowed to stay, but the state could also turn that permission into a rental contract.

Yingluck’s family would have to negotiate with the Finance Ministry and the Legal Execution Department, he added.

These conditions would be applied once the authorities have officially imposed a seizure announcement for the house. At present, this announcement has not been imposed, so they have not been informed and continue to stay as usual.

On Friday, Norawit Lalaeng, one of Yingluck’s lawyers, criticised Wissanu after he suggested that Yingluck’s husband and son may have to pay rent while staying at the house.

Norawit said the case had not yet been finalised and Wissanu should not have made a statement that was hurtful to the ex-premier’s spouse and child. He added that if the house were rented to other people, the rental income may have to be returned to the government in the event of the asset being declared state property by the court.

The fugitive ex-premier was convicted for negligence in performing her official duty while supervising her government’s rice-pledging scheme, resulting in massive financial damage to the state.

The court ordered Yingluck to pay huge compensation to cover the loss.

However, Yingluck, who fled the country late last year just before the Supreme Court sentenced her to a five-year jail term, sought an injunction against the administrative order to seize her assets, pending a full trial by the Administrative Court.

SERIOUS POLITICAL, social and economic issues were highlighted by Chulalongkorn and Thammasat University students yesterday, as they satirised Thai politics under the junta government before a football game.

The 72nd match was celebrated under the theme “Our Rise”, a message calling on people to fight against injustice in society, including corruption, authoritarian rule and the widening income gap.

During the pre-game parade, students followed their tradition of serious fun, using political satire and papier-mache puppets to reference controversial issues, including the scandal over Deputy PM General Prawit Wongsuwan’s large collection of luxury watches. They also mocked Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha in drawing an analogy to “Nonthok”, a demon from the Ramayana story with the magical power to cause anyone’s death with the point of a finger. In the story, the demon is enticed to point his finger at himself, causing his own demise.

Prawit has denied any corruption regarding his controversial collection of luxury watches, while netizens have launched campaigns demanding his resignation.

The message on the back of the Prawit puppet also lampoons the controversial death of a junior student at a military academy. The message apparently refers to a statement from Prawit that when he studied at the academy he had also been physically punished but had survived.

The student parade also attacked the junta regime’s authoritarian rule, which they suggested had resulted in reduced freedom and misuse of tax revenue.

Thammasat students used a puppet to allude to the new constitution giving a green light to outsiders being able to serve as the prime minister after the general election.

They pointed to Prayut’s use of the powers under Section 44 of the interim constitution to limit people’s freedoms and to accelerate investments in mega-infrastructure projects. Thammasat student created models of a tank and a submarine alluding to the government spending tax money on shopping trips for weapons, actions that have been heavily criticised by the press and the general public.

The inequality of opportunities and income between the leaders of big business and average people also was mocked by referring to the monopoly power of big business to take advantage of small businesses and ordinary people.

Lattapon Yimlamai, the leader of Thammasat University’s political satire club, said the parade saw the biggest cheers for the first and the last puppets, which lampooned the watch scandal and the undemocratic constitution. He said neither police nor military officers disrupted the parade.

“The parade went smoothly,” Lattapon said.

However, he told The Nation on Friday that the university’s executives had sought the club’s cooperation to not target individuals or organisations.

Chulalongkorn students also took on the watch scandal as the centrepiece of their political satire, portraying a male model wearing a Hawaiian shirt, along with a large poster saying that satire on watches is prohibited, along with making fun of the rulers. Students were chained around the model, suggesting the lack of freedom of expression under junta rule.

The students used the pre-game parade to satirise the luxury watch scandal involving Defence Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan.

They also targetted what they saw as double standards in the judicial system and the use of special powers under section 44 of the interim constitution by Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha.

The inequality of opportunities and income between the leaders of big business and ordinary people was also mocked by caricatures used in the parade.

At this stage, the process is to seize Yingluck’s assets based on the civil liability case.

The fugitive ex-premier was convicted for negligence in performing her official duty while supervising her government’s rice-pledging scheme, resulting in massive financial damage to the state. The court ordered Yingluck to pay a huge compensation to cover the loss.

However, Yingluck, who fled the country late last year just before the Supreme Court sentenced her to a five-year jail term, sought an injunction in the civil liability case pending a full trial by the Administrative Court.

A Finance Ministry source said if the court eventually dismissed Yingluck’s petition against the ministry’s civil liability case and such a ruling was upheld by the Supreme Administrative Court, then the Finance Ministry and the Justice Ministry’s Department of Legal Execution could go ahead and auction off the assets. The proceeds could be treated as part of the compensation under the civil liability lawsuit.

Meanwhile, Norawit Lalaeng, one of Yingluck’s lawyers, has criticised deputy premier Wissanu Kreungam after he suggested that Yingluck’s husband and son may have to pay rent while staying at Yingluck’s house.

Norawit said the case is not yet final and Wissanu should not have made a statement that was hurtful to the ex-premier’s spouse and child.

He added that if the house was rented to other persons, the rental income may have to be returned to the government in the event of the asset being declared state property by the court.

However, the government has resorted to another legal avenue by filing a civil liability lawsuit against Yingluck so there are still several legal challenges before the assets could be sold.