Top: Karom: Defended UDD co-leader and (below) Thongchai: Key member of CCAA.
Published: 11/02/2012
Bangkok Post
Trat residents rise up to oppose plans to build a casino over the border in CambodiaRed shirt lawyer keen to stand for election to constitution drafting assembly denies links to Pheu ThaiAdvocate of lese majeste reform is scaling academic heights in the United States
Villagers resist wheel of fortune
Casino operations are well known to help boost relations between some Thai business people and politicians from Myanmar and Cambodia _ and the plot thickens.
News travelled swiftly among locals about a land plot in Trat's Khlong Yai district being earmarked for a car park for a casino to be built over the border in Cambodia, a stone's throw from villages in Khlong Yai.
A strip of land straddled by hills and the sea is being inspected to build the facility. A local source said the land could be turned into a car park for customers of the casino.
Residents were far from pleased to hear the news, however.
The so-called members of the Sajja Omsap (Savings Pledges) group and many villagers in Muang district of Trat have teamed up and they plan to mount a campaign urging people in Khlong Yai not to sell their land to investors in the casino-related project.
The source said some border areas were now marked by temporary border crossings where local residents could travel back and forth between the two countries to conduct trade and meet relatives with only a border clearance paper, not passports.
The campaign advocates said the group has emphasised self-reliance to stave off potential ramifications from large projects that could endanger community peace and livelihoods.
They said their campaign was a model being emulated by some communities in other provinces.
The group said it had received credible information that the casino project was being pursued by prominent businessmen with ties to Thailand's highly influential former prime minister. The project is a joint investment with senior officials of Cambodia.
There are many casinos that have flourished opposite Khlong Yai and the gambling operations are said to be expanding alongside large industrial estates in Cambodia's special economic zone.
The source said some Thai politicians and former military top brass are believed to be financial backers of several major casino projects in Cambodia. Large amounts of shares in the casinos were offered to top officials in Cambodia.
Thais make up the largest number of customers to Cambodian casinos near the common border.
The casinos generate enormous incomes for politicians and senior officials who are the ''co-owners''.
The source said an owner of a major border casino once said the most severe pressure that could be piled on top officials in Cambodia would be a threat to seal the border and cease all trade. That could virtually drive the casinos' operations into the ground.
Karom lines up in charter race
The ruling Pheu Thai Party and the red shirts are in agreement that there should be an assembly of mostly elected persons to take care of the charter rewrite.
They also share a stand that a clause in the constitution should be rectified to allow members of political parties to vie for seats in the assembly, something unheard of in the current charter.
Opening up the assembly to politicians will be tricky. It has stoked conflict with opponents of the charter amendment who feel meddling politicians could touch off new rows in society.
Opponents believe Pheu Thai, which holds a parliamentary majority, would be the dominant force in the constitution drafting assembly. Many charter rewriters are likely to be elected from within the factions of Pheu Thai's cronies and supporters, they claim. They will determine the fate of the supreme law of the land and how it might be amended to serve anyone or a particular group.
One person planning to enter the race for the charter assembly is Karom Polthaklang, a lawyer for the red shirt United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD).
Parliament will first have to alter Section 291 of the constitution to make it possible for the assembly to be established through election or appointment, depending on the decisions of lawmakers.
Mr Karom said he would stand in his native province of Roi Et if and when an election for the charter drafters is organised.
He is among 30 lawyers representing the red shirts in 53 cases in court since the colour-coded political violence erupted four years ago.
Mr Karom has supervised legal cases involving all levels of the red shirt hierarchy. He has defended UDD co-leader Jatuporn Prompan and the movement's grassroots members.
Often he has not been paid for providing legal services as many red shirt clients could not afford lawyers' fees. In fact, he has reached into his wallet to pay bus fares for the people he represented.
Mr Karom maintains he cannot be accused of being connected to Pheu Thai. He said he has never held a single position in the government or received any political windfall from the ruling party.
He has retained a close association with the Nitirat group of academics campaigning for the controversial change to Section 112 of the Criminal Code dealing with lese majeste.
It is also expected that leading Nitirat figures such as Thammasat University legal expert Worajet Pakheerat would have a good chance of being elected to the charter assembly.
Pheu Thai and the UDD have reiterated that they would have no control over the assembly, whose members, they insisted, would be freely selected by the mandate of the people. What the new constitution will look like is entirely up to the assembly.
Mr Karom and Mr Worajet may be on the same page over calls for judges to have less power in selecting people to sit on independent agencies.
Some observers have asserted that the establishment to which the judges belong may have had too much of a role to play in charting the country's destiny.
Thongchai more than an activist
Despite the controversy swirling around the lese majeste law, the Campaign Committee for the Amendment of Article 112 has remained adamant it will continue its campaign for 10,000 signatures to propose the law be changed.
After all, the committee represents various groups of people, not just the seven lawyers who are working on the issue, the CCAA has said.
With loads of work to get through in order to push forward the Herculean task of changing the law, the CCAA needs funding and wider support. Therefore, offshoot and solidarity groups such as Friends of the Constitution will stage a discussion programme today to solicit donations for the CCAA.
Speakers include reform advocates such as Thongchai Winichakul and a few members of the Nitirat group.
People usually remember Mr Thongchai, also a key member of the CCAA, as a student leader in the Oct 6, 1976 bloodshed and as a professor in history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Brought up in a Thai-Chinese family, the student activist graduated from Thammasat University in 1982 with first class honours. He obtained his master's degree and PhD at the University of Sydney, Australia.
After that, he came back to teach at Thammasat for three years before he took up teaching at Wisconsin-Madison in 1991.
But few know about Mr Thongchai's academic credentials. He is better known as an activist.
Yet, he possesses a strong scholastic background to back his thoughts, although not everything he writes or says strikes a chord with many conservative Thais.
Mr Thongchai was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003 and just last November he was chosen as vice-president of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) and will start work next month.
He will become president of the AAS in March 2013 and remain on the executive board of the organisation until 2016.
The AAS is the largest and leading academic association for scholars of Asian studies in the world, with about 8,000 members worldwide. It is the publisher of the first journal in Asian Studies, the Journal of Asian Studies, which many educational institutions recognise.
He will be only the first AAS president from a Southeast Asian country and the fourth from Asia.
Mr Thongchai is now a visiting research fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore.
Published: 11/02/2012
Bangkok Post
Trat residents rise up to oppose plans to build a casino over the border in CambodiaRed shirt lawyer keen to stand for election to constitution drafting assembly denies links to Pheu ThaiAdvocate of lese majeste reform is scaling academic heights in the United States
Villagers resist wheel of fortune
Casino operations are well known to help boost relations between some Thai business people and politicians from Myanmar and Cambodia _ and the plot thickens.
News travelled swiftly among locals about a land plot in Trat's Khlong Yai district being earmarked for a car park for a casino to be built over the border in Cambodia, a stone's throw from villages in Khlong Yai.
A strip of land straddled by hills and the sea is being inspected to build the facility. A local source said the land could be turned into a car park for customers of the casino.
Residents were far from pleased to hear the news, however.
The so-called members of the Sajja Omsap (Savings Pledges) group and many villagers in Muang district of Trat have teamed up and they plan to mount a campaign urging people in Khlong Yai not to sell their land to investors in the casino-related project.
The source said some border areas were now marked by temporary border crossings where local residents could travel back and forth between the two countries to conduct trade and meet relatives with only a border clearance paper, not passports.
The campaign advocates said the group has emphasised self-reliance to stave off potential ramifications from large projects that could endanger community peace and livelihoods.
They said their campaign was a model being emulated by some communities in other provinces.
The group said it had received credible information that the casino project was being pursued by prominent businessmen with ties to Thailand's highly influential former prime minister. The project is a joint investment with senior officials of Cambodia.
There are many casinos that have flourished opposite Khlong Yai and the gambling operations are said to be expanding alongside large industrial estates in Cambodia's special economic zone.
The source said some Thai politicians and former military top brass are believed to be financial backers of several major casino projects in Cambodia. Large amounts of shares in the casinos were offered to top officials in Cambodia.
Thais make up the largest number of customers to Cambodian casinos near the common border.
The casinos generate enormous incomes for politicians and senior officials who are the ''co-owners''.
The source said an owner of a major border casino once said the most severe pressure that could be piled on top officials in Cambodia would be a threat to seal the border and cease all trade. That could virtually drive the casinos' operations into the ground.
Karom lines up in charter race
The ruling Pheu Thai Party and the red shirts are in agreement that there should be an assembly of mostly elected persons to take care of the charter rewrite.
They also share a stand that a clause in the constitution should be rectified to allow members of political parties to vie for seats in the assembly, something unheard of in the current charter.
Opening up the assembly to politicians will be tricky. It has stoked conflict with opponents of the charter amendment who feel meddling politicians could touch off new rows in society.
Opponents believe Pheu Thai, which holds a parliamentary majority, would be the dominant force in the constitution drafting assembly. Many charter rewriters are likely to be elected from within the factions of Pheu Thai's cronies and supporters, they claim. They will determine the fate of the supreme law of the land and how it might be amended to serve anyone or a particular group.
One person planning to enter the race for the charter assembly is Karom Polthaklang, a lawyer for the red shirt United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD).
Parliament will first have to alter Section 291 of the constitution to make it possible for the assembly to be established through election or appointment, depending on the decisions of lawmakers.
Mr Karom said he would stand in his native province of Roi Et if and when an election for the charter drafters is organised.
He is among 30 lawyers representing the red shirts in 53 cases in court since the colour-coded political violence erupted four years ago.
Mr Karom has supervised legal cases involving all levels of the red shirt hierarchy. He has defended UDD co-leader Jatuporn Prompan and the movement's grassroots members.
Often he has not been paid for providing legal services as many red shirt clients could not afford lawyers' fees. In fact, he has reached into his wallet to pay bus fares for the people he represented.
Mr Karom maintains he cannot be accused of being connected to Pheu Thai. He said he has never held a single position in the government or received any political windfall from the ruling party.
He has retained a close association with the Nitirat group of academics campaigning for the controversial change to Section 112 of the Criminal Code dealing with lese majeste.
It is also expected that leading Nitirat figures such as Thammasat University legal expert Worajet Pakheerat would have a good chance of being elected to the charter assembly.
Pheu Thai and the UDD have reiterated that they would have no control over the assembly, whose members, they insisted, would be freely selected by the mandate of the people. What the new constitution will look like is entirely up to the assembly.
Mr Karom and Mr Worajet may be on the same page over calls for judges to have less power in selecting people to sit on independent agencies.
Some observers have asserted that the establishment to which the judges belong may have had too much of a role to play in charting the country's destiny.
Thongchai more than an activist
Despite the controversy swirling around the lese majeste law, the Campaign Committee for the Amendment of Article 112 has remained adamant it will continue its campaign for 10,000 signatures to propose the law be changed.
After all, the committee represents various groups of people, not just the seven lawyers who are working on the issue, the CCAA has said.
With loads of work to get through in order to push forward the Herculean task of changing the law, the CCAA needs funding and wider support. Therefore, offshoot and solidarity groups such as Friends of the Constitution will stage a discussion programme today to solicit donations for the CCAA.
Speakers include reform advocates such as Thongchai Winichakul and a few members of the Nitirat group.
People usually remember Mr Thongchai, also a key member of the CCAA, as a student leader in the Oct 6, 1976 bloodshed and as a professor in history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Brought up in a Thai-Chinese family, the student activist graduated from Thammasat University in 1982 with first class honours. He obtained his master's degree and PhD at the University of Sydney, Australia.
After that, he came back to teach at Thammasat for three years before he took up teaching at Wisconsin-Madison in 1991.
But few know about Mr Thongchai's academic credentials. He is better known as an activist.
Yet, he possesses a strong scholastic background to back his thoughts, although not everything he writes or says strikes a chord with many conservative Thais.
Mr Thongchai was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003 and just last November he was chosen as vice-president of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) and will start work next month.
He will become president of the AAS in March 2013 and remain on the executive board of the organisation until 2016.
The AAS is the largest and leading academic association for scholars of Asian studies in the world, with about 8,000 members worldwide. It is the publisher of the first journal in Asian Studies, the Journal of Asian Studies, which many educational institutions recognise.
He will be only the first AAS president from a Southeast Asian country and the fourth from Asia.
Mr Thongchai is now a visiting research fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore.
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