Democrats lay out govt's six key 'failings'
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Top Democrats yesterday delivered a poor scorecard for the government's first year in office, which will be marked this weekend, saying the administration had served vested interests instead of striving for the greater good.
Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva voiced disappointment that the Pheu Thai Party had won the people’s mandate to govern but opted to serve fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Abhisit raised six issues that he said the government had omitted to address, which are included in the party’s performance report.
The issues, phrased in six biting questions, are:
1. When will the government put the people’s interest before the energy industry?
In the face of soaring prices, state-controlled PTT has reported Bt37 billion in profit for this year’s first quarter, while the public is obliged to shoulder rising energy costs.
2. Will rice farmers ever receive more benefits from the rice-pledging scheme than rice-mill operators and middlemen?
The government appears to trumpet its intervention in the paddy price. But the fact is rice mills and brokers are the main beneficiaries of the corruption-plagued scheme and very little trickles down to the farmers.
3. When will the government put the country before the interests of one man – Thaksin?
The government has apparently pushed for reconciliation as a smokescreen to rescue Thaksin from his legal predicament.
4. When will Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra start to share the plight of local residents in the strife-torn South?
Yingluck has delegated officials to travel to the region on her behalf while she refuses to risk her safety.
5. When will the government show tangible results in flood-control projects?
Despite huge spending outlays, the government has become entangled in a non-transparent bidding process that in turn blocks the work’s progress.
6. How will the government deal with the staggering public debt incurred to finance populist policies?
The country’s fiscal position will remain at risk so long as the government opts to squander funds on stopgap measures instead of aiming for sustainable development.
Opposition chief whip Jurin Laksanavisit said the government had wasted its first year trying but failing to rescue Thaksin and return his seized ill-gotten wealth.
Jurin said he had four critical assessments of the government.
First, it tries to push for reconciliation as a pretext to engineer Thaksin’s homecoming and crush the system of checks and balances.
Second, the government has earmarked a compensation package with a maximum payment of Bt7.5 million per victim to those allies involved in protests, but denies the same compensation to victims of other violent incidents, such as those in the South.
Third, the government has an ulterior motive in pushing for the charter rewrite. If Article 309 of the Constitution is scrapped, this will pave way to bring Thaksin home.
And fourth, the government is risking a new round of political disturbances because it refuses to drop the reconciliation bill, seen as legislation to whitewash Thaksin’s wrongdoings.
Democrat MP Samart Ratchapolsit said the government had allocated Bt1.2 trillion for flood control in the current fiscal year but he detected no tangible progress on the work.
Several projects lacked transparency and were plagued by corruption, he said.
The construction of embankments for key waterways, such as Klong Phraya Banlue, Klong Rapheephat (southern section) and Klong Phra Ong Chao Chaiyanuchit, appeared to be substandard work, he said.
