Day Three – no confidence debate. Luxury watches, dodgy bomb detectors and the coup leader

Day three of the no-confidence motion and parliamentary debates revealed that then-General Prayut, the Commander in Chief of the Thai Army, was the brains and instigator behind the 2014 military coup that ousted the elected government of Yingluck Shinawatra.

It also had the Energy Minister defending the government’s current power development plan, fending off accusations of corruption.

It was also the day the Thai PM fired back at his accusers, claiming they were behind the 2020 and 2021 street protests against the government and the constitutional role of Thailand’s Head of State.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha was thrown under the political bus by his deputy PM, “right hand man” and stalwart Prawit Wongsuwwan. Whilst distancing himself from the May 2014 coup, the long-time army buddy of Pryaut pointed towards the PM, who was standing next to him. He told parliament that Prayut was solely responsible for the 2014 coup and the formation of the NCPO.

Prayut, with a wry smile, raised his hand proudly to claim the accusation. An audible snigger arose from the parliamentary floor.

“Only the prime minister staged it. I didn’t even know when it was planned.”

It was the first time that the prime minister had ever taken sole-responsibility for planning and executing the coup against the elected government in 2014.

The opposition was targeting Prawit, his role in the coup, and the luxury watch affair, where he was accused of amassing an enormous luxury watch collection. At the time Prawit claimed they were all gifts or on lend. He also told the NACC that all the watches had been returned to their owner (even though he was dead at the time). No action was ever taken over the scandal.

Move Forward party-list MP Thiratchai Panthumat also alleged the Prawit interfered with the National Anti-Corruption Commission and Customs Department investigations in the expensive wristwatch scandal.

Meanwhile, Energy Minister Supattanapong Punmeechaow has been forced to defend allegations that the government’s power development plan, saying the contracts don’t just benefit energy businesses.

Part of the plan is that the government is going to stage a variety of rate rises for electricity.

“Due to the Covid-19 and economic crises over the past two years, the electricity demand has declined so we had to plan the investment in production capacity in advance.”

Under the government’s new power development plan introduced this year, electricity production capacity has been reduced by more than 3,000 megawatts… “that demand for power is also expected to increase for electric vehicles in the future”.

Addressing the issue of the Energy Regulatory Commission considering increasing the fuel tariff used to calculate electricity bills, he admitted that it would cause bills to rise to five baht per unit, but that it reflected the rising costs of fuel in Thailand and around the world.

Then, for a bit of comic relief, a Move Forward Party MP slammed the government over the fraudulent GT200 bomb detectors. The GT2000 bomb detectors were nothing more than a few wires, a black plastic box, and two plastic antennas. The army was conned into buying these so-called detectors 13 years ago. The army then spent millions of baht on the testing of the ‘bomb detectors’ and concluded that they were bogus.

But the MP said the people who authorised the wasted money are still in power and “must still be held accountable.”

“Who must be held responsible for the procurement of the devices? The fraudulent devices not only caused the country to lose billions of baht, but they were to blame for blast injuries among soldiers and civilians.

“Even though the distributor of the device was ordered by the Central Administrative Court last year to pay 683 million baht in compensation to the army, we cannot leave it at that.”

Amarat also accused the PM, acting as defence minister, of turning a blind eye to the army’s numerous procurement and military-related construction projects “which are not transparent and are wasteful.”

The MP also accused the PM of being “a tyrant, bent on undermining the democratic system.”