Coup leader’s lament tells of Thai troubles
The leader of Thailand’s military junta rarely misses a chance to speak his mind or have a go at journalists. But his latest rant to the media quickly segued into a lament on the kingdom’s troubles.
“I guess you are all rich,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “Well, keep writing. Soon this country will just collapse. And then, you won’t have salaries any more.”
Prayuth Chan-ocha listed problems gripping his country and its embattled rulers including a poor climate, unpaid farmers and calls for wage rises from workers in a still-stalling economy that long ago shed the mantle of southeast Asian tiger.
He pleaded for help from a media, which — like the population — he has alternately cajoled and scolded and threatened since seizing power in May last year after more than six months of anti-government street protests. “Let me ask you: can you write and help the country be peaceful?” he demanded.
observers of the general’s speeches noted how he wove his familiar polemical blasts with something more melancholy. “No one writes about what I have done,” he said, “or when they do, they write so little.”
“In the end, we cannot fix anything,” continued the man whose ultra-paternalistic style has led some opponents to call him “Uncle”.
“You have disrupted and brought down the whole system. It doesn’t matter how many reforms or coups there are. There’s no point. Things will be the same.”
While criticism of the junta’s management and its curbs on public debate has been growing, even among some people sympathetic to the coup, Gen Prayuth did not dwell on worries including Thailand’s role in the regional people smuggling crisis and its blacklisting by the International Civil Aviation Organization.
The general, who is also prime minister, has also been forced to dismiss persistent speculation about a possible counter-coup by other elements in the military.
Above it all looms the future of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world’s longest-ruling monarch, who was readmitted to hospital barely a week before this month’s 69-year anniversary of his accession to the throne.
The king is a figure from whom many dominant ideas about Thailand’s national identity and governance — including the authority of the army — flow. Reporting on the monarchy remains tightly controlled by draconian lese majesty laws.
The general did have one reason to be cheerful about the junta’s stuttering campaign to bring happiness back to Thailand. The country topped the medal table at the just-concluded South East Asian games in Singapore. “This makes me smile,” he told a reception for the victorious athletes — although, even at this moment of celebration, he made time to deplore the deepening political battles around him.
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