Grey flour and gangster’s law

Thai PBS World reports that Thammanat Prompao’s Kla Tham Party is “heading into the February 8 election under a cloud of ‘grey money’ allegations.” Thammanat is referred to as being a “controversial powerbroker” and the “party’s sole prime ministerial candidate…”.

Thammanat from Pavin’s FB page

We guess “controversial” means that he spent time in an Australian prison as a heroin trafficker.

The story then has some perverse reporting regarding the “allegations linking certain party members to businesses involved in money laundering.”  It says that the “flour man” Thammanat responded by alleging that other parties “are not free of ‘grey’ – some of them are even pitch black. I have plenty of information, but I don’t want to talk about it now. Please don’t rely on smear tactics…”.

We guess that the gangsters associated with Kla Tham reckon that crime is crime and that if everyone is involved, then voters should just choose the best crooks.

Interestingly, Thammanat seems to think that getting in the grey money spotlight doesn’t necessarily turn voters away. After all, “two netizens, Tharathorn from Saraburi and Ekarak from Chachoengsao, face defamation lawsuits for their online comments targeting the Deputy PM and Agriculture Minister Thammanat.” Their commentaries “stemmed from MP Rangsiman Rome’s speech in parliament in September 2025 about a scam network allegedly linked to Thai politicians, including Thammanat himself.”

Rangsiman is being sued for defamation by Thammanat’s associate Benjamin Mauerberger, also known as Ben Smith who wants 100 million baht in damages.

Thailand’s gangsters who go into politics have learned from dipstick royalists who have provided additional ways to punish the innocent: the defendants had to go hundreds of kilometers north to Phayao, because Thammanat filed his cases there so as to cause as much trouble as possible for the two minnows he’s harassing.

As we have recently pointed out, the judicial system is now rotten to the core. Reflecting this, the Sydney Morning Herald has an excellent article on another defamation case that involved the Malaysian government manipulating the “loopholes” in the decayed system.