As a gift for the Thai beauty pageant winner, Prayut offered her a job with the government spokesperson team to promote tourism.

As an ambassador of goodwill, Maria immediately accepted the offer. “I wish to promote Thainess for the international community to see and understand,” she said, flashing a smile.

Prayut also said Maria, who is of mixed Thai and Swedish derivation, could set an example of a Thai person speaking English with a “sophisticated accent”.

“We’re fixing the Thai education system to make Thai people speak English with a good accent,” he said.

Maria’s trip to Government House with her mother was one of her earliest agenda items since returning to Thailand on Sunday night from a one-week break after the competition in Las Vegas. Although not claiming the crown, the 25-year-old achieved the best showing for Thailand since Porntip Nakhirunkanok Simon, who won the Miss Universe contest in 1988.

Maria is no stranger to the spotlight, as the 1.8-metre-tall model began her career when she was 13, has recorded singles and performed some acting roles. She also holds a master’s degree in marketing from the Stockholm Business School in Sweden.

She not only won the hearts of Thai people but also triggered a debate about the term “social movement”, which she was asked about during Miss Universe’s question-and-answer session.

On stage, she stumbled in her answer, confusing demographic shifts in society with social advocacy, which drew criticism from some commentators. Off stage, however, she continues her advocacy against teenage pregnancy and yesterday gave promotional materials to Prayut.

The premier also displayed his particular brand of humour as he met the model, who was said to be “very glad, excited and honoured” to meet him in person.

“No matter what rank you gained, what’s done is done. Thai people support you,” Prayut said. “In my opinion, Maria is certainly more beautiful and taller than them but a bit too skinny. She should work out more.”

Assets worth Bt30 million have been seized from the couple, senior police told a press conference in Bangkok on Tuesday.

Luke Joshua Cook, 34, and Kanyarat Wechapitak, 40, were arrested at Suvarnabhumi International Airport on Sunday.

Following their detention, police raided nine properties in Pattaya and Bangkok and seized assets worth Bt30 million, including five luxury cars and motorcycles, cash and three properties in Pattaya.

A third suspect, American Tyler Joseph Fulton Sheen Gerard, 23, was previously sentenced to two years in jail over his involvement in the abduction and murder of Australian national Wayne Schneider, 37, in December 2015, police said.

Cook was last year sentenced to three months in jail, which was suspended for two years, for helping Australian kick-boxer and businessman Antonio Bagnato flee Thailand to Cambodia after he murdered Schneider.

This drug case against Cook stems from the discovery of 50.45 kilograms of methamphetamine which was allegedly part of a batch that washed ashore in Rayong’s Mae Rampeung Beach on June 22, 2015, said Pol Lt-General Weerapong Cheunpakdee, director of the centre for suppression of trans-national crime and illegal entry.

A police investigation led to Cook and Kanyarat who operated a boat sales and rental business under Global Marine Solution Co, Weerapong said.

Police alleged that Schneider, who was looking for a business investment in Pattaya in 2015, had entrusted Cook with $10 million to buy and transport 500 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine to be stored in Thailand pending transport to Australia.

After Cook allegedly bought the drug from a Chinese supplier in international waters on June 22, 2015, he encountered a Thai patrol ship on the return journey and dumped some of the drugs into the sea, Weerapong said.

Later that day, four sacks holding 50.45 kilograms of the drug, washed ashore.

After gathering evidence against Cook, police were granted a court-issued arrest warrant for Cook on a charge of drug smuggling.

Weeapong said Schneider allegedly demanded that Cook repay the money after the drugs were lost. However, he was later abducted and killed.

Police found that Cook, Kanyarat and Gerard were allegedly involved in a transnational drug trafficking and other crimes, Weerapong said.

The arrest of Cook and Kanyarat followed the arrest last week of three Australians and a Canadian, also believed to be Hells Angels members, aged between 32 and 42. Guns, ammunition, knives, an Audi sports car and a Ford GT 315 car were seized after their arrest in Pattaya.

Police have also promised to ensure a transparent investigation amid concerns that officers might take sides with a teacher who claimed the winning tickets were his and received the backing of a local police chief.

“National Police Commissioner Pol General Chakthip Chaijinda has already made clear that the investigation must be fair and in line with the proper process,” deputy police spokesman Pol Colonel Krisana Pattanacharoen said on Tuesday.

He was speaking amid reports that the retired policeman, Pol Lieutenant Charoon Wimul, and his lawyers would call on the National Police Office for help.

Charoon is fighting allegations that he had not legitimately owned the winning lottery tickets.

The allegations were raised by teacher Preecha Kraikruan, who has produced a female lottery vendor as a witness that he was the actual buyer of the winning tickets. Preecha has been a regular customer of the vendor.

Preecha said he had lost the tickets after purchasing them.

Charoon and Preecha both live in Kanchanaburi, the province where the winning tickets were sold.

Krisana said Tuesday that if Charoon was uncomfortable having local police handle the investigation, it was possible that the National Police Office might assign the Provincial Police Region 7 to take over the case.

“But for now, forensic tests are already ongoing,” Krisana said.

Charoon has filed complaints with police against Preecha and the lottery vendor, accusing them of reporting false information to claim the lottery winnings.

Meanwhile, Buri Ram police on Tuesday announced that latent fingerprint tests had already given police crucial clues about the identity of the real winner of a Bt12-million lottery in August.

Nang Rong Police Station superintendent Pol Colonel Sompop Sangkornthong said tests had not found the latent fingerprints of Phansak Suachoomseang on four winning lottery tickets, which he had claimed were stolen from him after his purchase.

Phansak lodged a complaint with police about the theft on August 20 after learning of the lottery results in the August 16 draw.

The four winning lottery tickets are linked to Bt12-million prizes.

A couple who lives in Roi Et have already claimed the prizes.

“Latent fingerprint tests show the fingerprints of the couple on the tickets,” Sompop said.

He added that the couple had in fact cashed in six tickets for Bt18-million prizes.

These services will be available on December 16 and 23, 2017 and January 6 and 13, 2018 from 8.30am to 3.30pm.

The temporary offices are at MRT Khlong Toei, Bang Na (Thanya Park Srinakarin) and Pin Klao (SC Plaza in the New Southern Bus Terminal). Anyone who wants more information can call 02 572 8442 around the clock.

Don’t Drive Drunk Foundation secretary-general Dr Taejing Siripanich said Thailand last month ranked highest in per capita road fatalities on the World Atlas website. The previous top-ranked country, Libya, was not even in the top 30 because many deaths blamed on accidents had been re-evaluated to reflect violent deaths in that country’s civil war.

As a result, Thailand, previously ranked second, unofficially took the top spot with an estimated road accident death rate of 36.2 per 100,000, but the World Health Organisation has not yet announced formal statistics, he said. After Thailand on the list are Malawi (35), Liberia (33.7), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (33.2) and Tanzania (32.9).

Such finding were in line with his foundation’s studies, Taejing said, which showed that Thailand saw 22,000 deaths in road accidents in 2016, or approximately 50 to 60 cases per day, while 1 million people were wounded and sought hospital treatments each year, 60,000 of whom were permanently disabled.

“Various measures have been implemented in the past 20 years to boost road safety but they weren’t so successful because Thais know what actions break the law but do them anyway as they have become conceited after not getting caught,” Taejing said.

The cameras would help to discourage traffic violations as motorists would know that the chances of being caught on video were heightened, while footage could be posted on social media, leading to public condemnation that would be worse than legal punishment, he said.

“If all cars on Thai roads had cameras, traffic law violations would be greatly reduced,” he added.

Taejing said his foundation had proposed the measure to Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha, who had agreed and issued instructions in May last year for the Finance Ministry to consider tax incentives for dashboard cameras and for Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam to implement the plan in the national road safety strategy.

However, there had not been any concrete action to date, he said.

Police’s Special Branch Bureau 3 commander Pol Maj-General Ekkarak Limsangkat said video and audio from dashboard cameras could also be used as evidence in court, which could incentivise installations so motorists would have a record to protect themselves in case of a conflict.

The application of technology could also help protect innocent people and punish wrongdoers because the culprits in many hit-and-run cases escaped justice after fleeing the scene, he said.

People would be dissuaded from breaking the law when all cars are equipped with cameras and carry the “Photo in Car” sticker, he added.

The comments were made during the 13th Thailand Road Safety Seminar held at Bangkok’s BITEC Bangna Exhibition Centre last week.

It was found that the system was too slow for the large numbers of commuters during rush hours, resulting in traffic jams, a source at the agency said.

The coin boxes would have become obsolete within two years anyway, the source said, since an e-ticket system and “Spider” stored-value cards are to be introduced on all buses and rapid transit systems in Bangkok.

Authority board chairman Natthachart Charuchinda made the call to halt installation of the devices on 1,800 more buses.

The agency will renegotiate its contract with private firm Ch Thavee Plc, which was to outfit 2,600 buses in total.

The technical glitches were noted during a trial period at the outset of a Bt1.665-billion, five-year project, during which the agency intended to rent the cash boxes and an e-ticket system from Ch Thavee.

AN ONLINE campaign has taken off with the clear objective of pressuring Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister General Prawit Wongsuwon to step down over his offhand comments about the death of a cadet that has seized national headlines.

The campaign founder is prominent figure Thicha Nanakorn, the long-serving director of Ban Kanchanapisek Vocational Juvenile Training Centre for Boys, former charter drafter and former member of the National Reform Council.

“Prawit should resign to take responsibility for what he said about the death of cadet Phakhapong Tanyakan, or ‘Meay’,” Thicha wrote on Change.org.

She started an online signature campaign on Sunday and promoted the petition on Facebook, with more than 1,400 people having signed their names in support of her petition as of press time yesterday.

Phakhapong, an 18-year-old student at the Armed Forces Academies Preparatory School (AFAPS), died in suspicious circumstances at the academy on October 17.

His family broke their silence last month to demand a transparent investigation into his death after the Central Institute of Forensic Science (CIFS) told them that some of Phakhapong’s organs had been removed in an earlier autopsy at a military-run hospital.

The case has caught the national spotlight with members of the public questioning whether the teenager might have been killed by excessive corporal punishment.

Prawit responded to the scandal with the suggestion that Phakhapong had died because of his own health problems, but he also suggested that hard training and corporal punishment were common for cadets.

He said he had lost consciousness when he was punished at the AFAPS as a cadet but he had survived.

His interview drew overwhelming negative feedback, prompting him to apologise soon thereafter.

However, Thicha apparently believed the apology was insufficient and started the online petition to pressure him to resign.

“When giving the interview, he did not pay attention to the facts or feelings of the family who had lost their beloved son at all,” she said.

An unidentified supporter of the campaign said he had never seen Prawit show signs of empathy for any other human being.

Thicha said the results of the autopsy on Phakhapong’s body confirmed that he had not died because of poor health but instead had been abused.

Phakhapong’s family, meanwhile, has not fully released the findings from the CIFS autopsy. After receiving the results, the family held a cremation ceremony for Phakhapong at the weekend.

Many people have come forward to show sympathy for the family.

About 80,000 people have already signed an online petition under the theme “Justice for Meay”.

The petition, which was launched three weeks ago, intends to stop inappropriate practices at the AFAPS and involving military units.

The petition demands that the military investigate every official involved in Phakhapong’s death and release the findings to the public.

Also, the petition states that members of independent agencies such as the National Human Rights Commission should be included on the investigation panel to prevent conflicts of interest, adding that doubts would linger if the investigation is handled only by military officers.

“After the investigation is complete, those found guilty should resign and face both civil and criminal proceedings,” the statement added.

It said neither nepotism nor leniency should be allowed.

In a related development, ACM Chawarat Marungruang – the chair of a fact-finding committee established by Armed Forces Supreme Commander Thanchaiyan Srisuwan – said his panel would conclude its work by Friday.

So far, Chawarat said his committee was simply focusing on what had happened and who was involved.

“We cannot tell what caused Phakhapong’s death,” he said.

However, he added that Phakhapong’s family could rest assured that his committee would present unbiased facts. “We will chronicle what happened and tell what actions were right or wrong,” he said.

“Jomsap’s case is not a special case. We never conducted any investigation related to her,” DSI chief Pol Colonel Paisit Wongmuang said yesterday.

He said DSI officials worked on the case after they had been asked to help by the Justice Ministry.

Jomsap was convicted of hitting a bicyclist with her pickup in 2005, causing his death, and then fleeing the scene. In 2013, the Supreme Court found her guilty and sentenced her to a jail term.

Although Jomsap was released early on a royal pardon, she sought a retrial citing new evidence including the testimony of Sap Wapi who claimed he had been responsible for the hit-and-run accident.

After the Supreme Court reviewed the evidence, it threw out Jomsap’s request for a retrial and cited a plot to falsify evidence. Jomsap and several of her alleged accomplices are now being detained pending the ongoing police investigation into alleged perjury and related crimes.

Last week, police said they were considering whether to press charges against Justice Ministry officials for their alleged roles in the case.

Some of the officials are DSI staff who were on temporary assignments to help the Justice Ministry.

DSI deputy spokesman Pol Major Worranun Srilum said a deputy permanent secretary for Justice had requested that DSI officials be assigned to help at a complaint-receiving centre that was under his supervision.

Although Worranun did not identify the deputy permanent secretary by name, it was clear the official was Pol Colonel Dusadee Arawuit, the deputy permanent secretary for Justice who is facing a probe launched by the Justice Ministry.

In response to the deputy permanent secretary’s request, the DSI administered lie-detector tests to people involved in Jomsap’s case and reported the results to the Justice Ministry.

“We were not involved in how the ministry used the information,” Worranun said.

Dusadee admitted, only after Jomsap’s request for a retrial was rejected, that he had been aware that Sap did not pass the lie-detector test while he was claiming responsibility for the fatal road accident.

Paisit added that he would not protect DSI officials if they are found to have assisted Jomsap in wrongdoing.

THE LAST DAY of the long weekend at Dusit Zoo was busy as usual. Families and couples wandered from one enclosure to the next to see the animals – from flamingos flashing their pink feathers to 51-year-old Mae Mali, Thailand’s oldest hippopotamus, simply enjoying eating the grass.

The scenario has been the same since the zoo was established 79 years ago, allowing people to see its 1,600 exotic animals firsthand and learn about them from educational signage and murals.

But the walls have recently been painted pure white – the first sign of a change to come for Thailand’s most popular zoo, which attracts about 2.5 million visitors a year.

That change will be its relocation, which will be discussed at a meeting today.

The Zoological Park Organisation will meet to decide whether to move the zoo from downtown Bangkok to a 300-rai (48-hectare) property in Khlong Hok, Pathum Thani, about 55 kilometres away.

The plot, granted by His Majesty King Maha Vajiralongkorn last week, will be the new venue for the zoo originally built by the late King Chulalongkorn in 1895 as his private garden adjacent to Dusit Palace.

The zoo officially opened in 1938 after the Royal Family gave permission to Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram’s government to allow public visitors.

Knowing that it will be moved – a process that could take about three years – many visitors yesterday told The Nation that they came for what could be their last chance to enjoy the original ambience of Dusit Zoo.

“This is actually the first time I’ve brought my wife and child to the zoo,” said Jeerapoj Kittichanyapol, 43, who came with his nine-year-old, parrot-loving daughter.

“I just heard the news this morning that the zoo is going to be relocated. Living in Rama I area [in metropolitan Bangkok], I kind of worried that the new place would be very far from my house, so I decided to make it here this long weekend,” Jeerepoj said.

For Kanokwan Potichak, a 36-year-old corporate employee, Dusit Zoo has been a lifetime companion given that she lives just a couple of kilometres away.

“The relocation is quite shocking for me,” she said. “It will be rather boring if it is moved. I will have one less place to go on my days off.”

Anakin Engsirimeechai, a 48-year-old trader, admitted that it was the first time since childhood that he had visited the zoo. “If it wasn’t for the news, I wouldn’t be this keen to come and visit it,” he said, sitting on a grass field besides a standing, sunbathing pelican.

Kittipan Yimprasertsri, a 33-year-old corporate employee, saw things differently, saying that the relocation could be a good opportunity for the zoo’s development.

“I came here to take photos similar to those I used to take when I was young,” Kittipan said with a selfie stick in hand. “The place is sure full of memories, but relocating it to somewhere more spacious will provide more space for the animals as well as facilities for visitors. This zoo has become packed with increasing numbers of animals and visitors.” Adam, a 48-year-old traveller from the United Kingdom, also agreed that larger enclosures would be better for the animals. “With limited space, they will show some signs of stress and it would be quite upsetting to see,” said the first-time visitor.

To entrepreneurs at the zoo, however, moving to new place will mean adjustments to the way they make a living. To Pimpan Khewnoi, a 55-year-old who has been serving noodles at the zoo for three years, the relocation may be more convenient.

“There is no conclusion yet from the zoo but Pathum Thani is not far away from my house,” she said while frying noodles. “Cooking noodles is still my favourite job and I enjoy developing new menus for customers.”

But for 56-year-old Kanya Kaewmanee, who runs a photo souvenir shop, relocation will mean a new job or retirement.

“My shop has been here since my parents opened it in the 1970s. We have occasionally moved out if we failed to win the tender for the site, but I could say that my shop is the oldest in the zoo,” Kanya said.

“The shop is wholly our own. We are not a franchise, so we are not backed by a big company. Relocation would mean a whole new investment. The old-fashioned photo booth is dying anyway. Maybe it will be our time to reconsider changing jobs or I’ll just quit.”

Fans cheered Maria on her arrival at Suvarnabhumi International Airport on Sunday night.

The beauty queen’s success in the Miss Universe pageant was somewhat tainted by controversy over her answer to a “skill-testing question” posed during the telecast. Her confusing response was widely blamed for her failure to win the crown.

Maria was asked: “What do you think has been the most important social movement of your generation, and why?”

Her reply: “I think the most important social movement so far is our ageing population, though the most important movement of our time is our youth. Our youth are our future. We must invest in our young people because they are the ones that will look after the Earth and the elderly.”

Back in Thailand, Maria admitted the question had taken her by surprise.

“Our country still lacks adequate social movements,” she said, but now she wants to try and change that. “I intend to do more to bring public attention to social movements.”

For now, Maria plans to encourage young people to avoid premature pregnancy.

On Tuesday, Maria is to meet Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha.