The Puea Thai Party should be embarrassed by the antics surrounding Deputy Prime Minister and former policeman Chalerm Yubamrung and his efforts to promote his sons. The nepotism involved in the continued rehabilitation of Chalerm’s disgraced son reflects poorly on the party and government.
The latest report at The Nation is bizarre and might even be a joke if it didn’t involve murder. The Nation reports that Chalerm’s youngest son, now Police Lieutenant Duang Yubamrung, has “reported to his new job yesterday as a shooting instructor at the Metropolitan Police Bureau’s training centre.”
The report reminds readers that:
Duang was accused of shooting dead on-duty Pol Senior Sgt-Major Suwichai at a Bangkok nightclub in 2001 and then fleeing, which resulted in him being discharged from the Army the following year…. After Duang surrendered in 2003, he was acquitted on grounds of insufficient evidence and conflicting witness accounts. Later, in 2008, then-prime minister Samak Sundaravej approved Duang’s application to return to the military.
Duang’s transfer to the police was described by Police Colonel Supat Peungpoung, who oversees the training centre, as:
a good move because he was very skilled in using pistols and hence could put such knowledge to good use by teaching it to other officers. Since the centre usually invited experts to lead training sessions, Duang would be the centre’s first in-house shooting expert and instructor, he added.
The stupidity of calling the former Duangchalerm “skilled” with pistols even when his case of a 2001 murder using a handgun was acquitted after being in exile several years ago seems lost on the Chalerm supporters in the police (see here and here for earlier stories). The nepotism of having the son of the minister in charge of the police reinstated also seems lost.
Political Prisoners in Thailand 
[…] She was right then, but she seems to have decided that Prawase was somehow right because “[m]ost, if not all, of the key partners in the political conflict took a break and let other people take over from them.” She is mistaken because she focuses only on leaders of the moment. The economic elite remains, the military remains and the monarchy remains. They continue to work their political “magic.”And don’t forget that the rich also manage to manage their own impunity for their crimes committed in the name of quick profits, a bit of power, alcohol or drug-induced fun or because of “connections.” […]
[…] She was right then, but she seems to have decided that Prawase was somehow right because “[m]ost, if not all, of the key partners in the political conflict took a break and let other people take over from them.” She is mistaken because she focuses only on leaders of the moment. The economic elite remains, the military remains and the monarchy remains. They continue to work their political “magic.”And don’t forget that the rich also manage to manage their own impunity for their crimes committed in the name of quick profits, a bit of power, alcohol or drug-induced fun or because of “connections.” […]