This came in tonight from The Nation:

“Having fought a rearguard public-relations battle for more than a month, the leaders of the September coup and their interim government are planning a frontal attack this week in which they will announce that progress has been made.

“The highlight will be news of the much-anticipated probe into assets of key leaders of the overthrown administration.

“The Council for National Security (CNS) announced it would commence a campaign to tell the public what had been achieved.

“It would also reveal tough new legal measures against political conflicts of interest - the biggest alleged malaise of the Thaksin regime.”

I for one am troubled by the relentless focus on the previous administration. What Thailand needs is not to look further into the past but to look into the future at ways to make some sense of the current calamity. What we are to receive next week will be some sort of justification for the actions of September 19. It has been over a month now and we are all still in the dark.

There is a lot of talk about corruption allegations, primarily focused on Thaksin, but I feel the CNS will have to come up with more than talk of the former PM’s financial immorality to make some headway with the people of Thailand.

If the corruption of the state was, in fact, a central reason for the coup, then surely by now we should have seen some hard evidence of this corruption in the form of a string of legal cases, or at least some sort of information being relayed to the general public.

“In an interview with The Nation last week, Sonthi admitted that no solid evidence had been uncovered to link Thaksin Shinawatra to major corruption cases.”

The situation has really become quite farcical now. The CNS does not appear to be a sold group. I am not excessively compelled by the thought of the announcements that are to made in the coming week.

Techno’ tags: Politics, Government, Bangkok, Thailand, Coup, Constitution