PM moves to separate sub deal from health funds worry
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Prayut says the two are not linked and both decisions will be considered carefully
PRIME MINISTER Prayut Chan-o-cha is attempting to shield himself from increasing criticism over the government’s plan to spend billions on the purchase of three submarines from China while dealing with a universal healthcare scheme running out of funds, saying a clear decision is yet to be made on either one.
“Please do not link the healthcare scheme with the Navy’s plan to buy submarines. The government will consider the two matters with care,” he said.
The public has reacted to the submarine purchase plan with mixed feeling, after Prime Minister Prayut himself had earlier said the government would review the universal healthcare scheme – which provided healthcare services to the poor – as its budget is running out.
On Thursday, Navy Commander-in-Chief Admiral Kraisorn Chansuwanich said the Navy had decided to purchase the submarines through a government-to-government contract worth Bt36 billion and would propose for the purchase details to the Cabinet soon.
Academics and politicians have questioned the government over the move given the situation with the universal healthcare scheme.
“Do not make a mountain out of a mole hill or the ill-intentioned group may use it as a tool,” Prayut said. “We have to earn more money to take care of people. It does not mean the government will stop taking care of people.
“If we cannot make more money, we have to make do, no matter how much people call for. Do not link this plan [the healthcare review] with a submarine proposal that had been planned for 10 years.
“Do not worry because the Cabinet has to consider if we have money. It is not that we are going to buy them [the subs] the day after tomorrow. That is many years away,’’ he said.
The push to revamp the healthcare scheme has been happening for a while, with a group of doctors calling for the introduction of a co-payment system in the medical sector.
They insisted that if the country launched this system too late, it would succumb under the weight of a free healthcare system that had been devouring a growing amount of budget for many years.
Pheu Thai Party politician Watana Muangsook yesterday wrote an article entitled ‘The government has no money to care the poor but has budget to purchase expensive submarines’.
He said that Prayut’s government would never do for the poor what it claimed it would, but would only benefit its cronies.
The government said it has no budget to help the farmer, but at the same time it has allocated more than Bt100 billion for the military officers who helped stage the coup last year, he said.
The Prayut government has no money for universal healthcare, which was designed to help the poor access public health services, but where is the Bt36 billion [for the submarines] coming from? said Wattana, who was a commerce minister in Thaksin Shinawatra’s cabinet.
He said the government claimed that it took power from the elected government under Yingluck Shinawatra last year to implement national reform, but questioned whether the reform agenda was credible.
“The first agency badly needed to be reformed is the military,” he said. “How can we trust the reformers as they conducted the reform with discrimination.”
Watana said the economy was slowing due to sluggish exports and domestic consumption since the coup. There is no new foreign investment since the coup because the military government has no initiative to build confidence among foreign investors, he said.
Thailand is now under pressure due to international measures against the government such as the yellow card for the fisheries industry under the European Union’s illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and the red flag by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, he said.
“What the government has to do now is to concentrate on solving the economic problem, but unfortunately the government’s attempts will fail as no country wants to associate with an undemocratic government,” he said.
The Democrat Party’s Tavorn Senneam also disagrees with the government plan to purchase the submarines due to there being no maritime threat.
The government should allocate the budget for the submarines for measures to lift the economy and help poor farmers cope with the ongoing drought, he said.
