Pre-empting lesé majesté?-PPT
26-03-09
[FACT comments: This would be a highly sensible way for Thai government to extricate itself from the current lese majeste imbroglio, and please both ultra-Royalists and the international community, all without really changing anything.]
Pre-empting lesé majesté?
Political Prisoners in Thailand: March 26, 2009
http://thaipoliticalprisoners.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/new-pre-empting-lese-majeste/
PPT earlier reported on Democrat government-Army co-operation on a plan to spend 1 billion baht toweaken the pro-Thaksin red shirt movement and to promote loyalty to the monarchy.
In a report in the Nation (26 March 2009: “Red shirts plan long siege”), Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said “the special Bt1-billion budget for Internal Security Operations Command projects would be used to dilute anti-government protests. Suthep, who is in charge of security affairs, said that since the country was facing a serious political divide, the funds would be spent to boost loyalty to the monarch among the people and pre-empt lese majeste cases that could destabilise the country.”
26-03-09 at 23:10
” …to boost loyalty to the monarch among the people and pre-empt lese majeste cases that could destabilise the country…”
I understood him to mean pre-empt as in pre-emptive war.
29-03-09 at 11:33
Now that Thaksin has come out of the political closet and named names that the rest of us were already murmuring about but afraid to say specifically, one wonders at the lack of arithmetic in claims that since a privy councilor was yanked out of the council and then made prime minister, and after engineered elections was then placed back on the council, and that the senior-most levels of others knew nothing about the coup, that Prem knew nothing, that if he did know something or was indeed a major player then was it his own idea or at the behest of his superior, that Thaksin is just citing silly things to make a weak case, gee, I am growing a bit confused here. Is there anything in Thailand that stands on its own in terms of ethics and morality? With a corrupt political and religious infrastructure, is anything really sacrosanct? Or has it ever been here?
The similarities between various world leaders in what they get involved in and how they attempt to escape blame for what they do is frightening in the extreme. They have to be taking notes from one another.