Who is doing this to our Dear Leader?  General Prayut trots off to the US in search of more ‘oh look I’m in the same room as other world leaders so they must accept me’ photo ops and it is all promptly ruined by another burst of rampant paranoia. He told VOA he ‘met representatives of many countries’ (see, they do talk to him so Thailand is not the international pariah that some critics claim). 

Working on the well-known principle that it is far more important to conceal a scandal than deal with it, Gen Prayut last week threatened to summon a Channel 3 reporter.  This brave young woman had travelled to Indonesia to report on the plight of Thais who had escaped slavery on fishing boats.  Some were languishing in prison on a remote island (that the Thai media call ‘Benjina’ although that is the name of a town on Kobroor Island).  Others sadly had died and been buried there.

This government is beginning to get up my nose. Why can’t they stick to what they do best?  Like barging into TV stations and telling them what they can and cannot show.  And then saying they don’t do censorship.  Or resurrecting a xenophobic rewrite of the Foreign Business Act that will stop these filthy foreigners from controlling their own investments.  And then buggering off to international meetings and telling foreigners that we just love your filthy money so please keep investing here. 

Prime Minister General Prayuth Chan-ocha will pay an official visit to Cambodia today for a two-day trip to strengthen bilateral ties. He is scheduled to meet with his counterpart, Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia, and to have an audience with King Sihamoni, who, on 14 October, celebrated his 10th anniversary of enthronement. Prayuth’s visit is highly significant in many ways, both for his own domestic purposes and for Thailand’s fragile relations with Cambodia.

The captain of Thai industry was interested to see the results of Thailand’s education reform.  Hearing that a fast-tracked ‘model student’ had applied for employment at his firm, he decided to conduct the interview himself.  Thai businesses have long complained that the products of the Thai education system are virtually unemployable, lacking the skills necessary for the modern economy.  The CEO was eager to see the results of the NCPO-inspired reform of the schooling system in developing the kind of graduates that the corporate sector required.