Managing director of Army-owned Channel 5 removed
Army Commander-in-Chief General Narongphan Jitkaewthae on Tuesday signed an urgent order to remove the managing director of Army-run Channel 5.
The order removed General Rangsi Kittiyarnsup as Channel 5 managing director from April 7 and appointed Lt-General Wisanti Srasida, former director of the Army Training Command Department, as acting managing director of the TV station. It didn’t state any reason.
After the media was informed of the removal order, Rangsi told reporters that he was not sacked but that he had himself asked the Army chief to remove him from the post because of personal reasons.
“I won’t talk about my personal reasons because it will be useless. It’s not sacking but I asked him to free me from the duty,” Rangsi said.
“Don’t say I’m sacked as it won’t be fair to the Army chief. I just got the order this morning before the Army chief visits Laos.”
The removal of Rangsi came shortly after he visited the Russian ambassador to Thailand on March 21. After the visit, Rangsi revealed that he had sought cooperation from the embassy for publicity of Russian TV news via Channel 5 to provide fair and balanced publicity of news from Russian side.
On March 23, Channel 5 had informed reporters that Rangsi would hold a press conference the following day to announce the cooperation between Channel 5 and Russia, China and Iran. But on the same day, the press conference was cancelled. It is speculated that the press conference was cancelled because Prime Minister and Defence Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha felt uneasy about the cooperation, fearing it could have political repercussions both in Thailand and abroad.
A well-informed source said the Army chief felt uneasy about the situation. He had talked to Rangsi and told him not to report on the situation in Ukraine.
The source said that on Monday, a programme made in a joint venture with a private firm was abruptly halted because it reported on the war situation.
Also on Monday, Rangsi gave an interview to a website, www.llpch.news, that he did not plan to resign because of the halting of the broadcast of war reports.
“Who will replace me?” Rangsi asked the reporter who runs the website when she asked him to comment on speculation that he would resign.
Rangsi admitted during the interview that there was an order that the Army channel not broadcast Russia-Ukraine war news but he declined to reveal who had issued the order.
“Let’s put it this way. There is concern that the issue is sensitive so we’ll refrain from airing the reports for now,” Rangsi said.
The publication of the interview, the ban on broadcast of war news and his meeting with the Russian ambassador were widely speculated by Thai media as reasons for Rangsi’s removal from his post.
Rangsi was earlier regarded as a close friend of the Army chief. They had studied together in Class 22 of the Armed Forces Academies Preparatory School.