• OPINION

  Indictment of the innocent

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 17/02/2019

  » It wasn't a good week for those who claim the March 24 general election will be free and fair. The "gateway to resumption of government accountability and democracy building" seemed firmly closed.

• OPINION

  Easy choices made difficult

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 23/12/2018

  » Lucius Edward William Plantagenet Cary, aka Lord Falkland, went to his death in the English Civil war, leaving little of note except a rule that could be the official motto of libertarians.

• OPINION

  Turning red into green

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 22/07/2018

  » Rarely in recent Thai political history has a government minister been so honest, so open and so utterly truthful as was PM's Office Minister Kobsak Pootrakool last Sunday.

• OPINION

  Art of the graft

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 03/06/2018

  » Coup leader Gen (Ret) Prayut Chan-o-cha first mentioned his programme concerning corruption in late May, 2014, not long after seizing power. It was so long ago that there wasn't even a National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO). It was still called the National Peace and Order Maintaining Council (NPOMC).

• THAILAND

  SMOP is a flop

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 08/10/2017

  » Last Sunday night, an anti-drug squad caught two men carrying 400kg of crystal methamphetamine from Myanmar, ya ice worth 400 million baht on the street. On Monday and on Tuesday, police in Udon Thani and Mukdahan busted two cross-Mekong shipments of compressed marijuana from Laos, now Japan's major weed supplier. Combined, they weighed a tonne.

• OPINION

  What he's thinking

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 24/09/2017

  » The election campaign began rolling in earnest last week. Now if only the government had kept its promise and actually had an election. Minor detail, perhaps, but memories are so short when they operate on political bias that it's good to do history.

• THAILAND

  Double tap confounded

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 14/05/2017

  » The images haunt. A mother, with a wounded face, clutches her daughter and hunkers down beside the detergent shelves. A blackened battery and two wheels, all that is left of the stolen pickup crammed with cooking gas cans. Social media simply taking over the corporate Facebook pages of Big C to post thousands of photos, videos and messages.

• THAILAND

  Revenge of the kamnan

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 22/01/2017

  » It had been 975 days since the military regime did anything to justify the coup d'etat that was needed specifically to bring happiness back to the people by national reconciliation. So the general prime minister named a 98-man, three tier committee of otherwise unemployed two-, three- and four-starred green shirts to draw daily allowances and proceed to bring about unity.

• THAILAND

  The Big Issue: How horrid

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 09/10/2016

  » Last month, taxpayers wrote a cheque for 3.3 billion baht when Russia delivered two VIP long-range Sukhoi Superjet 100s. The junta tried to claim they were "transport planes", because carrying important people and their aides is transport, right?

• OPINION

  The big issue: Holey security in action

  Alan Dawson, Published on 28/08/2016

  » Cyber-thieves joined the tourist crowds to Thailand early this month and quickly jackpotted 12 million baht from 21 of the distinctive red Government Savings Bank ATMs in Bangkok and five provinces. And walked away with the money.

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