Sluicegate activist has ties to hardline red shirts
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Pol Major Sangiam Samranrat - the man who twice led angry residents of flooded Pathum Thani to force an important sluice gate on Bangkok's northern border to open wider - is a political activist with close connections to hardline red shirts.
Sangiam had cited a request from the government’s Flood Relief Operations Centre (FROC) for the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) to open the Phraya Suren sluice gate in Bangkok’s Sai Mai district permanently to 1.5 metres after the BMA left the gate open only 1 metre.
He also accused the BMA, led by Governor MR Sukhumbhand Paribatra from the opposition Democrat Party, of following a political agenda in keeping provinces north of Bangkok inundated for such a long time.
The ruling Pheu Thai Party won the July election in those neighbouring provinces of Pathum Thani, Nonthaburi, Nakhon Pathom and Ayutthaya.
The FROC and its director Pracha Promnok have insisted that Sangiam had nothing to do with the agency.
Sukhumbhand later instructed BMA officials to file a police complaint against Sangiam for allegedly trespassing on official premises.
Sangiam is now a political appointee at Government House. He hails from Phetchaburi, where he began his police career.
Later, he moved to the Southern province of Chumphon, where he became chairman of a local fishermen’s association.
He joined the redshirt movement and acted as its local campaigner. Eventually he forged close ties with the red shirts’ hawkish leaders, such as Arisman Pongruangrong, Suporn Atthawong and Ari Krainara, who is close to Pheu Thai leader Yongyuth Wichaidit.
Sangiam took part in the red shirts’ rallies in Bangkok in 2009 and 2010. The latter rally boiled over into deadly riots.
