Petulant reaction to criticism by WSJ

The defence by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and PM Yingluck’s spokesman against criticism by the Wall Street Journal was rather lame. It was a golden moment to sell Thailand and they blew it.

It was right that PM Yingluck spoke in Thai (in her seven-minute speech) because her counterpart spoke in Japanese. Officials from Japan or China never speak publicly in English even though some of them are graduates from Ivy Leagues like Oxford or Harvard but English translation is always given simultaneously or immediately thereafter. The fault was not with our premier but with people around her in not giving a handout of her speech in English that hour. Her contents were hardly heralded internationally.

If we were a third-world country, one would not have been criticised. But, because we previously caused the disruption in the world’s supply chain of hard discs and reduction in some corporate earnings in the last quarter of 2011, WSJ frustration is understandable and should have been a lesson to all of us instead of behaving petulantly. 

Songdej Praditsmanont

Bangkok