🇹🇭 Who is really the boss in Thailand?

Hello friends!

Back to it this week and it’s going to be a bumper one in the coming days.

We are overdue for a nice long one on Myanmar. I’ve been following the conscription developments quite closely, but there are also enormous updates elsewhere, including the tragic deaths of Rohingya refugees off the waters of Indonesia. Thailand has also begun sending aid, but there’s a lot there to dig into so shall return. 

See you tomorrow for our Singapore and Malaysia update. Should be a chunker — Singapore’s up to a lot!

Erin Cook

🇹🇭 Fires in the South, Fires in the North?

At least 40 fires were set across Thailand’s restive Deep South early Friday morning, Reuters reported. I think it’s been a moment since we’ve heard reports like this so I’m a little shocked. The coordinated arson attacks killed at least one person after erupting around 1 am in Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and Songkhla provinces.

 “The perpetrators want to disrupt the peace during Ramadan,” Colonel Eakvarit Chobchoophol, a spokesman for the military's Internal Security Operation Command for the southern region told Reuters. I haven’t seen many updates to this but will be keeping an eye out.   

I love a juicy political drama and it doesn’t get much more intriguing than the Thaksin balance in the Pheu Thai Party. Very quick recap: the former prime minister returned from self-imposed exile last year, got ‘locked up’ (hung out in a hospital), was released last month on parole and then had a homecoming trip up north to his stomping ground. MEANWHILE, Pheu Thai Party teamed up with pro-military parties to shut out Move Forward and lead a governing coalition with Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin at the head — with little support from voters. Thaksin’s long shadow covers even the incredibly tall Srettha, and debate over who ‘really’ governs Pheu Thai and, therefore, Thailand erupted the second Thaksin’s plane touched down in August. 

It seems to me like we’re entering a new stage of this debate where it all becomes a bit self-perpetuating. Srettha is certainly on the nose as polling over the weekend showed us, and after a few post-parole weeks off Thaksin is on the move. He’s heading to the Pheu Thai party office today ‘to facilitate an opportunity to meet with party MPs, not to show his control over the coalition-core party’ party officials told the Bangkok Post. Well, when you put it like that! 

Phumtham Wechayachai, the party’s former sec-gen, made a reasonable point: easier for Thaksin to meet everyone at HQ in Bangkok than have MPs and officials making the slog out to his residence (and irritating the hell out of his neighbours). The party holds a weekly meeting on Tuesday afternoon local time and the paper is under the impression the visit will be part of that. So is this actually a non-story, Bangkok Post? No! I want to believe!

It all makes for important background before reading this excellent piece from Ken Mathis Lohatepanont over at the Thai Enquirer. Ken turned his big brain on to the compare/contrast of Srettha and Thaksin as leaders — Thaksin deemed himself the CEO of Thailand, but Srettha has hardly followed in these footsteps. “National salesman is a far cry from CEO,” Ken writes. 

He digs into the theories about what Thaksin’s actually doing. The ex-PM said he wanted to come home to hang out with the grandkids which, post Chiang Mai visit, “sounds implausible,” Ken notes. If he really just wants to spend time with the family, you’ll have to be more convincing than being flanked by Srettha and fellow-ex-PM Somchai Wongsawat — even if he is your brother-in-law — in the old Pheu Thai strongholds.

Call him a Chairman of the Board, of sorts, Ken writes. Not exactly governing, but not exactly not either. What does that make Srettha? A chief operating officer: ‘The COO might oversee the day-to-day functioning of government and supervise some of the government’s key priorities (in this case, Srettha seems to have decided he has a knack for attracting foreign investment). But he is not fully in control, and owing to the fact that he serves at the pleasure of a Chairman to whom he is hardly indispensable, not truly in power.’

The digital wallet scheme isn’t dead, just very, very quiet. Deputy Finance Minister Julapun Amornvivat announced Monday that around 50 million Thais are eligible for the scheme in which they’ll receive 10,000 baht stimulus payments. But — not until the fourth quarter. I’m very sceptical about this. The flagship policy of Pheu Thai’s election campaign has been pushed off the agenda multiple times and economists are nervous about how useful it really will be. Still, you’ll all be hearing more on April 10 the government promised, as reported by Thai PBS. 

Elsewhere, Srettha’s economic plans got a boost on Friday after the lower house passed the delayed budget bill for the 2024 fiscal year, ending in September. It will increase spending by 9.3% on last year, Reuters reports. 

🇰🇭 Just a beep, please! pleads Hun Manet

Holy smokes, does the foreign media love this story! Just about everywhere has covered the directive to ban musical horns after the long-running practice of kids having a dance on the side of the road went viral. But this one from Kevin Doyle at Al Jazeera is for sure the better of all these pieces. He reports that the concern is less about kids having fun and more about road safety, but it’s not echoed by Cambodians who just want to have a laugh. 

“The prime minister’s job is to be the prime minister. Why has he stepped into such a tiny thing as this?” one taxi driver demanded to know. It’s the shadow of papa Hun Sen, Doyle notes. The predecessor was well-known for banging the culture war drums to mould Cambodia to his tastes. 

🇱🇦 Anthrax breakout continues

Ooh, that little anthrax scare a few weeks back is not fully behind Laos yet. Radio Free Asia reports 54 cases in the southern Champassak province over the last week or so. No human deaths have been reported but local authorities are hard at work with a public health campaign: “Our team from the provincial health department has travelled to the two infected districts … campaigned against the disease and explained to the public not to have any contact with sick animals,” one official told RFA. 

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet is paying a visit to Vientiane. He met yesterday with Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone but will also swing by other leaders and business groups. It’s all demarcation, cross-border crime and business but neither Cambodian nor Lao press are giving us the juicy details. 

🇻🇳 The govt is doing Directive 24 because it can

Very intriguing op-ed here from ISEAS’ Dien Luong in Nikkei Asia on the fallout over Directive 24. The language is stark and the timing of the revelation proved a bit tricky with the Americans in town, but call it business as usual, he writes: ‘It is indeed the "business as usual" aspects of the directive that are most worrying and indicative of Hanoi's resistance to any moderation of its repressive approach. This in turn signals that Vietnamese officials have little concern about potential international repercussions from their harsh security measures.”

Fantastic piece worth reading in full for its clear-eyed analysis and what to expect next. Hint: not much. “Thus, to keep Vietnam from leaning closer toward Beijing and Moscow, the US and its Western allies have muted criticism of Vietnam's ill treatment of civil liberties. That has given the regime more latitude to deflect scrutiny of its repressive measures.” 

In a rare instance of Australia influencing the motherland, the UK has launched a series of ‘stop the boats’ ads in Vietnam aimed at stemming immigration from the country, BBC reports. The UK has seen a 17% increase in Vietnamese nationals entering the UK this year, compared to the same period last year. A similar campaign in Albania has reportedly seen a 90% drop in outgoing Albanians. 

Over at Radio Free Asia, Zachary Abuza is trying to unpick what, exactly, just happened with the now ex-Prez Vo Van Thuong. He was supposed to be the future of the Vietnamese Politburo but his scalping — unlikely to be the last, Abuza tips — over corruption concerns is putting the party in a bit of a flurry. Maybe not for Minister of Public Security To Lam, who reportedly has been eyeing off the presidency as his own way towards ‘whitewashing his own scandals, including being filmed in celebrity chef Salt Bae’s London restaurant eating $1000 gold encrusted steaks after placing a wreath at the grave of Karl Marx.’ You couldn’t write a scene like that.