As days have passed, the desperate efforts to find the missing young footballers and their coach in the partially-flooded Tham Luang Nang Non cave in Chiang Rai province, hopes have remained high. Like everyone else, PPT has been watching and hoping.
A couple of reports deserve mentioning. The first we note is an AP report on the difficulties involved for those seeking to find the boys and the coach. That should be read with some of the footage provided by the BBC.
Most Thailand-based media have almost hourly updates.
Governor Narongsak
Social media has begun to be critical of the “authorities” who have taken charge of the mission. In English, a critical voice is provided in the Bangkok Post by Alan Dawson who makes some useful points about “phu yai” culture and what some have seen as political grandstanding.
He mentions Chiang Rai Governor Narongsak Osotthanakorn, who seems concerned with appearing appropriately “loyal.” We believe that’s a Snoopy cap, but we might be wrong, but perhaps he needed something blue to go with the yellow.
The comments by Dawson on The Dictator’s “visit” are worth reading.
We hope that those who are actually toiling and risking their lives to find those in the cave are successful.
Political Prisoners in Thailand 
[…] less familiar involves something we noted in our first comment on the efforts in Chiang Rai. In that post we observed the dress of Governor Narongsak […]
[…] less familiar involves something we noted in our first comment on the efforts in Chiang Rai. In that post we observed the dress of Governor Narongsak […]
[…] memory of the king’s involvement that event is of “phu yai” culture and political grandstanding, marked by royalist propaganda that even featured the king’s son and one of the first […]