• OPINION

  PM's advisers aplenty

  Oped, Editorial, Published on 19/01/2023

  » As the end of the government's term approaches, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha appears not to be busy winding things up. Instead, he keeps adding new aides to his team at the Thai Koo Fah building.

• OPINION

  Defamation a familiar cry

  News, Editorial, Published on 26/12/2018

  » In his effort to have former Department of Special Investigation (DSI) chief Tarit Pengdith locked up for "defaming" him when he was a deputy prime minister, political firebrand Suthep Thaugsuban has set another bad example of how politicians have exploited the criminal defamation law to silence and punish their critics.

• OPINION

  Weaponised defamation

  News, Editorial, Published on 01/12/2018

  » The price of telling the truth to the powerful can be high and devastating for ordinary people in Thailand, where the criminal defamation law is more popular than the civil libel law.

• OPINION

  Jatupat bail veto a puzzle

  News, Editorial, Published on 13/01/2017

  » Last Sunday, student activist Jatupat "Pai Dao Din" Boonpattararaksa had another bail request denied. Among more than 2,000 social media posters of a BBC Thai article on the monarchy, Mr Jatupat is the only person who was charged with lese majeste and computer crime. First, he got bail. Then, his bail was revoked and his subsequent bail requests denied -- on the grounds that he posted a new brief Facebook message seen as "ridiculing state power without fear of the law" and that he failed to delete the shared BBC story from his wall. He has been locked up since Dec 22.

• OPINION

  Censure saga is not a game

  News, Editorial, Published on 25/02/2020

  » Finally, the entire country can witness a political duel between the government and opposition after the House convened for the long-awaited no-confidence motion on Monday.

• OPINION

  Heal the rift, don't widen it

  News, Editorial, Published on 10/05/2016

  » A panel of the military-appointed National Reform Steering Assembly (NRSA) has made yet another attempt to restore national unity through forgiveness. Once again, the proposal is bound to fail. Worse, the reform panel's proposal will make the political divide both deeper and wider. Before the committee could even make its official proto-amnesty proposal to the nation, red-shirt leaders were complaining to the media that it was one-sided, in favour of the old yellow-shirt movement, the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD).

• OPINION

  Cops bend to royalist mob

  Oped, Editorial, Published on 13/11/2020

  » If the scene of a yellow-clad royalist crowd trying to surround and viciously attack a car they believed was carrying Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the ex-leader of the now-defunct Future Forward Party (FFP), at a hotel in a southern province on Wednesday, made the public concerned about the state of disorderliness in the country, the lack of police action in the case demonstrates something much worse. Indeed, the question now is if Thailand is on the verge of becoming a failed state.

• OPINION

  Dialogue vital to find peace

  Oped, Editorial, Published on 16/10/2020

  » With the declaration of the state of emergency, the confrontation between Prayut Chan-o-cha and the anti-dictatorship activists has overwhelmingly intensified, and once again the country has plunged into division.

• OPINION

  New law must rake in all corrupt figures

  News, Editorial, Published on 16/07/2017

  » The recent National Legislative Assembly (NLA) decision to approve a law on criminal procedures for holders of political positions has drawn mixed public reaction.

• OPINION

  Witch-hunts must end

  News, Editorial, Published on 12/06/2019

  » More than forty years ago, anti-monarchy accusations were among the propaganda tools used by far-right elements against student activists in the lead-up to the crackdown and massacre of at least 41 of them in October 1976.

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