Writer spouts a lot of anti-Democrat rubbish
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Somsak Pola, in a letter yesterday, wrote that the Democrats were telling half-truths on food prices because the World Bank said the 8-per-cent rise in global food prices since the start of the year had been caused by rising fuel prices and adverse weathe
Well, the factors that have driven up food prices this year are the same ones that drove up food prices last year, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organisation, whose reports cited rising fuel prices and adverse weather in pushing up food prices in 2011.
It’s also a fact that candidate Yingluck Shinawatra campaigned heavily on the issue of rising food prices, telling the public the Democrats were to blame and that she would fix the problem. She never once mentioned that it was a global problem. Yet, I never saw a letter from Somsak complaining about Yingluck or Pheu Thai telling half-truths.
Furthermore, the World Bank, FAO and other UN organisations have all written that the Pheu Thai government’s rice mortgage policy has been a factor in rising food prices in Thailand – and is responsible for a roughly 40-per-cent fall in Thai rice exports so far this year – because the government has set the price it pays farmers for their rice at an unrealistically high level.
And who is paying for that? Consumers and taxpayers. How will you blame that on the Democrats, Somsak?
Not long ago, when the Democrats criticised the government for holding a party to celebrate the work Froc did during the flooding crisis, Somsak had a letter published in The Nation saying the Democrats had no right to complain because they callously held a fund-raising dinner during last year’s palm oil shortage.
I don’t recall 800 people dying in Thailand, tens of thousands of people losing their homes and possessions, and the entire economic gains for the year being wiped out because of a lack of cooking oil, Somsak.
James Gleason
Bangkok
