Of fools and other officials I

PPT has been reading several rather bemusing accounts of the actions of Election Commissioner Somchai Srisuthiyakorn. In royalist Thailand, Somchai is one of those apparently unselfconscious dolts who is given a position simply because he is both stupid and because of this, steadfastly loyal to his masters and patrons.

That there are a lot of such fools in government explains why so many quite ridiculous statements on all kinds of things emanate from officials. Few of them are willing or able to utter much that is sensible outside the hierarchical and sycophantic enclaves of the bureaucracy and most especially from “independent agencies.”

Yet in this cretinous cesspool Somchai takes the cake. In earlier posts, we referred to him as the (anti-)Election Commissioner.

Khaosod reports that Somchai, who as an Election Commissioner opposed the 2 February 2014 election, is now seeking court action against those who disrupted the poll. He says the EC is going to seek 3 billion baht in damage from the unidentified individuals. He reportedly stated: “those responsible for the events that caused the invalidation of the 2 February poll will need to pay for the more than 3 billion baht Thai authorities spent on organising the doomed election. The lawsuit will be filed in January…”.

Readers will recall that the politicized “Constitutional Court that nullified the election…”. Somchai says the EC will study the verdict to see “who was responsible” for the election being nullified. Somchai would be challenged to study anything, unless it involves taxpayer funded trips and sight-seeing, and he’s making this up for he has already pointed the finger at then Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her government.

At the Bangkok Post, Somchai made it clear that he didn’t blame the protesters, but the government itself:

Somchai said prior to the Feb 2 election, the EC had tried to warn the then government that if it was held, it would risk being nullified because there were no candidates running in 28 constituencies in eight southern provinces.

The government did not heed the EC’s warning and instead said the EC was only predicting in advance what would happen.

Since the Feb 2 election had been invalidated, there must be people held responsible for the damage.

As Khaosod points out, Somchai “repeatedly sided with anti-government protesters who called on the then-government to postpone the election indefinitely until peace and order was restored.”

Indeed, at the time, PPT posted that when Yingluck called for meetings with all sides regarding an EC proposal for the election to postpone elections, protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban immediately rejected this and went on to harass voters and election officials, close polling booths and prevented an election in several constituencies.

At that time, Somchai expressed dissatisfaction with the government seeking such a meeting. He predicted the politicized EC would not be involved in an event that can be viewed as a compromise and which seeks to discuss EC recommendations to the government. We observed at the time that it seemed that the EC worked in tandem with the protesters, and when progress is made on EC suggestions, themselves with little legal basis, the EC simply adjusts its sights and, like its anti-democracy allies, rejects compromise.

In more recent times, Somchai has been licking the junta’s grubby boots, and “has supported the junta’s decision to suspend elections in Thailand while wide-reaching reforms are pursued” and only favors elections that “produce moral people who are capable of running the country and contributing to society.”

He probably means spineless ninnies like himself who serve royalist regimes and repeatedly demonstrate an incapacity for logical thought. Well, perhaps just an incapacity for thought.