After staging a military coup less than two months ago, the coup’s leaders have settled into their respective roles smoothly and given themselves pay rises for their troubles.
On top of their military salaries, the Council for National Security (the CNS, which is comprised of seven members) will receive additional pay.
“Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont is reported to have defended the move, saying the extra payments were worth it to rid the country of corruption,” as was reported by the BBC on Thursday.
This quote is slightly misleading and comes across as ill-thought out. Thailand is, of course, not rid of corruption. The issue is surely not about corruption anyway.
Corruption exists on many different levels in every country in the world; this fact cannot be denied. To say that a pay rise for those responsible for a military coup is justifiable because corruption is no longer a factor will not wash with people, or so I would like to think.
Not everything the government has done so far has been negative, but this sort of act will not do any favours in terms of easing the nation’s worries. What Surayud is effectively saying is that those responsible for the coup deserve to be richer than they already are.
Perhaps somewhere down the road this might be true. If Thailand were to restructure its political system and come back stronger than it was under Thaksin, then I do not think anyone could deny that those who were responsible deserved a pay rise if they so desired it, but until such time the move looks a little out of place.
The salary raises have not been limited to the CNS, as members of the National Legislative Assembly, amongst others, have also been rewarded.
At a time when the general public is rather uncertain about the coup and its aftermath, such a move seems foolish and unnecessary. It is also provocative when the mood of the nation is already volatile. The coup leaders have criticized Thaksin for his high levels of corruption for political gain, but now they have placed themselves in a situation where they appear to have been highly hypocritical.
Have they really been more concerned over their salaries than with trying to make their own country a better place?
Techno’ tags: Government, Coup, Pay Rises, Politics , Surayud, Thailand