Thai leaders are cunningly manipulating and heightening troubles with neighboring countries !
Thai leaders are cunningly manipulating and heightening troubles with neighboring countries !
Thailand, which has become the hub of the largest online scam networks in Southeast Asia, is now engulfed in scandal as these criminal syndicates are being exposed across the country, causing difficulties for authorities to maintain control. This scandal is shaking Thailand and putting the Bangkok government under intense pressure—so much so that they are losing clarity in both vision and judgment. They are now manipulating and intensifying the case involving Kok An, a Thai businessman, in an attempt to drag Cambodia into the mess.
In fact, everyone knows that Kok An also holds Thai citizenship and has more business operations in Thailand than in Cambodia. However, because Kok An is a Cambodian senator with Hun Sen as Senate President, Thai leaders are deliberately trying to link this case to Cambodia. To allege Kok An of being Moneymaker for Hun Sen is even more impractical. It should be Thailand — or its leaders — that has benefited more from Kok An’s businesses, not Cambodia or Hun Sen.
Moreover, if we talk about the closeness between Hun Sen and Kok An, it is far less than the very close relationship between Hun Sen and Thaksin. Therefore, if Thai authorities are judging closeness in order to find faults, then the Thai court should probably arrest Thaksin first, because the two (Hun Sen and Thaksin) are extremely close. In contrast, it’s rare to see Kok An and Hun Sen displaying any particular closeness, apart from occasionally taking photos together.
Looking at the Thai authorities’ measures, it has become clear that this government is highly incompetent when it comes to managing and resolving its own internal problems, yet it seems surprisingly cunning at misleading and shifting the blame onto others.
Despite being a civilized country, many of Thailand’s decisions have proven misguided. For instance, in the border disputes at Mom Bei area, Thai soldiers ended up closing all border crossings, which have severely been harming their own citizens. They keep escalating the border tensions up to the point of threatening to cut off electricity, internet, and fuel supplies to Cambodia. However, when Cambodia preemptively announced a cutoff, Thailand stood to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. When Thai citizens have begun protesting to demand that the Thai army to reopen the border gates due to the serious impact on their livelihoods, the online scam criminal scandals have erupted across the country. Seemingly clueless, Thai authorities quickly diverted attention by bringing up the case of Kok An to drag Cambodia into the matter.
In short, the actions of Thai authorities are nothing but ‘burning down their own house just to cook a single egg’ — meaning that in order to shift the blame onto Cambodia, Thailand is willing to inflict massive damage on its own national economy and people. This is a troublemaking style of leadership rather than a problem-solving one. That is why, the country finds itself in constant conflicts with its neighbors in every direction, leaving no neighboring country in a state of peace.
By Vong Makara, Professor and Political Analyst
