Thailand's newly elected Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej unveiled an ambitious spending plan yesterday that he said would shore up the kingdom's economy despite worries over a global slowdown.
In his first speech to parliament, Samak also vowed to mend divisions exposed by a 2006 military coup against former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose support helped propel the prime minister to victory in December elections.
Samak warned that Thailand's export-driven economy would face strains resulting from economic problems in the US, the kingdom's biggest trading partner.
"Thailand will face severe problems in the world economy, tied to the sub-prime mortgage crisis in economically powerful countries, which has affected financial markets and damaged other countries," he said in the hour-long televised speech.
"Rising oil prices will also affect inflation around the world and in Thailand," he said.
Samak said the government will dedicate itself to "creating a balanced economy immune to these troubles, by ensuring sustainable growth while improving the confidence of Thai and foreign investors."
Samak was sworn in as prime minister last month after leading the People Power Party to victory in elections by openly campaigning as Thaksin's proxy.
Thaksin has indicated he will return to Thailand from self-imposed exile in mainly London and Hong Kong to face corruption charges laid after he was ousted in the bloodless coup.
The linchpin of Samak's plan is an ambitious spending program, originally proposed by Thaksin's government, including hefty investments in Thailand's infrastructure.
Samak called for adding nine new rail lines to Bangkok's mass transit while overhauling the national rail system.
He also proposed new irrigation projects and improvements to sea ports and airports.
His policy plan included restoring many Thaksin-era rural aid schemes which had been scrapped by the military and which are often derided by Bangkok's elite as populist handouts designed to win votes.
The plan also features loan schemes for villages, debt assistance to farmers, guaranteed commodity prices and increased protection against natural disasters.
Samak did not say how much the programs would cost. The government has yet to begin working on a new budget.
Although Samak moved to revive and expand on Thaksin's policies, he also called for healing the gaping political rifts exposed by the coup, which was supported by the middle classes in Bangkok who believed Thaksin was corrupt.
"This government promises to administer the country with honesty and the intention of developing the country for the Thai people," Samak said. "Our most urgent policies include national reconciliation and restoring democracy in the country, while resolving the unrest in the south."
Thailand's Muslim-majority south has suffered four years of separatist unrest that has left more than 2,900 dead.
Interior Minister Chalerm Yubamrung last week announced that the government was ready to consider some form of self-rule for the region, but he was forced to backtrack after Samak branded the scheme "dangerous."
The leader of the opposition Democrat Party, Abhisit Vejjajiva, accused Samak of returning to the Thaksin-era policies that had sparked divisions.
"The core party in this government has shown us that they are the heirs of Thaksin's government," Abhisit told parliament.
"From now on, the government will be put to the test to prove that its policies are being implemented as promised for the public good, or for the good of themselves and their friends and families," he said.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
RSS