Thailand's Thaksin Government is a Failure, Seminar Told by Phairath Khampha 17 April 2002 Ministers busy using their position with own business gains Civic advocates and academics in Thailand gave the country's government an "F" for its performance between its election in January 2001 and the end of March 2002. No one had a kind word to say about it at a seminar held by the Students Federation of Thailand on March 2, 2002. Ministers were seen by the majority of Thais as self-serving individuals preoccupied with exploiting their office to further their business interests and enriching themslves while impoverishing the populace at large. Banthorn Ondam, a labour academic and democracy activist, said the coalition's overwhelming majority was no guarantee that problems would be solved efficiently. Ministers were self-serving individuals preoccupied with exploiting their office to further their business interests. The government was hamstrung by conventional politics where interest groups dictate policies. A promised new approach was nowhere in sight. "Problems continue unabated. The government has simply failed in the past year," Mr Banthorn said. Elevating governors to chief executive officers with wide powers allowed power to be captured by one person and subsequently abused as was becoming increasingly evident. Suriyasai Katasila, the Campaign for Democracy secretary-general, said the CEO-governor system undermined democracy. Centralised authority did not guarantee that problems would be solved. He said the government met protesters merely to mollify discontent and given them some poor lip service without making any serious effort to alleviate their plight. He found amazing Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's claim that the coalition's huge parliamentary majority would bring stability to politics, particularly as the opposite was happening. The opposition did not have enough votes to stage a censure debate and keep the government in check, he said. Gagging the media was another "politics-stabilising" tactic, he said. Media control and interference was so rampant and blatant that it suppressed public comment. People could resort to violence to make their voice heard because in effect there no longer was true freedom of speech in Thailand. People, he said, were left wondering whether the proposed conversion of telecommunication concessions was really meant to benefit Mr Thaksin's Advanced Info Service, the nation's largest mobile phone network provider. Pitthaya Wongkul, chairman of the Thai Development Support Committee, said the government was taking the country back to an era when people were forced to "trust" the leadership to avert a national crisis. The premier, he said, was intolerant of criticism and driven by ego to the point of forcing complacency on the country's population. Mr Thaksin was following in the footsteps of neighbouring countries which kept out the opposition in order to dominate the legislative branch. The village fund and 30-baht health scheme catered to the masses and invited more problems than they solved, sucking up huge amounts of money while mollifying the ignorant masses. Trade liberalisation policies invited foreign investment into the retail and wholesale sector, assisting the international elite to become wealthier while at the same time putting at risk local proprietors with little cash or know-how to compete.