[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [New post] Let them eat cake!!

Mon May 22 20:41:46 UTC 2017

A land where I resided for 22 years, there was a thriving middle class, though no one ever concerned themselves with the poor. Then the elites decided it was time to take action against those pesky protestors, and allowed one of the military factions to take over by way of a coup. The status of Thailand, land of smiles, is business as usual with tourists ever flocking to the beaches and temples etc. The poor continue to be poor and the middle class is generally content to have streets cleared of protestors, never mind the choking smog and poverty throughout the provinces. One wonders how long this will continue………see below:

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From: Uglytruth-Thailand <donotreply at wordpress.com<mailto:donotreply at wordpress.com>>
Subject: [New post] Let them eat cake!!
Date: May 20, 2017 at 22:25:34 PDT

New post on Uglytruth-Thailand
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Let them eat cake!!<https://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/2017/05/21/let-them-eat-cake/>
by uglytruththailand<https://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/author/uglytruththailand/>

Giles Ji Ungpakorn

Generalissimo Prayut has been frothing at the mouth about the poor. The junta’s idea about dealing with poverty was to make poor people go through the demeaning process of registering themselves as “poor” in order to receive small miserable payments. This year about 13 million people registered. At the same time, the junta has made attempts to cut the minimum wage and cut spending on health and education.

[https://uglytruththailand.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/patron_client.gif?w=560]<https://uglytruththailand.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/patron_client.gif>

Millionaire dictator Prayut (worth 129 million baht three years ago) helped himself to state funded salaries by seizing power in a military coup. Top Thai generals grab much more than their military salaries by giving themselves multiple paid positions and creaming off percentages from arms purchases and other under the table activities.

Yet Prayut had the gall to give a lecture to the poor. The poor, he said, need to change their life-styles and stop being “lazy”. He ranted that the country could not afford to look after the poor. This is at a time when the junta’s cronies have been helping themselves to salaries for doing nothing, while never attending meetings. No doubt they have been “hard at work” lining their own pockets with various corrupt business dealings and state paid foreign shopping trips.

In the same week megalomaniac Prayut ranted about nurses. Thousands of nurses have been protesting because they are sick and tired of their temporary contracts and low pay. Their main demand is to be appointed as permanent state employees. At the same time, two thousand temporary staff at the Ministry of Justice are facing uncertainty about their futures.

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Prayut harangued the nurses, asking them if they thought they were the only people who worked hard. He shouted that the country couldn’t afford to give everyone permanent jobs. The military then announced that they were in the process of buying some more tanks. This is after huge sums were spent on buying Chinese submarines. The junta are also spending millions on the late king’s funeral and the new king is enjoying himself flitting around in his own state funded airliner between his palace in Germany and royal palaces in Thailand.

Over the last three years since Prayut’s coup, military spending has sky-rocketed, increasing every year by huge amounts. Currently the military budget stands at 222 billion baht, more than the government spends on public health.

[https://uglytruththailand.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/e242e6f404b748809d2aca3f70a78cf8.jpg?w=300]<https://uglytruththailand.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/e242e6f404b748809d2aca3f70a78cf8.jpg>

After the nurses protested, the Ministry of Health promised to gradually appoint some of them to permanent posts over a period of 3 years. This falls short of the nurses’ demands, but it does show that mass protests are effective and still possible if people have the determination.

After threatening to shut down Facebook unless they censored articles and pictures which the junta do not like, Prayut gave a TV lecture on the need for Thai people to “think outside the box”. He claimed that the government was doing all that it could to develop the use of the internet! In reality anyone daring to think outside the junta’s box faces being dragged off for “attitude changing sessions” in secret military camps and also being imprisoned under the draconian lèse-majesté law. Merely asking in public about the missing 1932 revolution plaque, or attempting to commemorate Prayut’s massacre of Red Shirt pro-democracy demonstrators in 2010, has resulted in arrests.

[https://uglytruththailand.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/34371036740_eb3a97c9fa.jpg?w=300]<https://uglytruththailand.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/34371036740_eb3a97c9fa.jpg>

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This is indeed a lying, corrupt and hypocritical authoritarian regime.

uglytruththailand<https://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/author/uglytruththailand/> | May 21, 2017 at 5:25 am | Tags: General Prayut Chan-ocha<https://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/tag/general-prayut-chan-ocha/>, Giles Ji Ungpakorn<https://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/tag/giles-ji-ungpakorn/>, Military junta<https://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/tag/military-junta/>, nurses protest<https://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/tag/nurses-protest/>, poverty<https://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/tag/poverty/>, Thai politics<https://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/tag/thai-politics/>, Welfare State<https://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/tag/welfare-state/> | Categories: Thai politics<https://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/category/thai-politics/> | URL: http://wp.me/p4bxj7-sW

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