Bangkok Crimes

The Nation

Red shirts burn Kasit in effigy

More than 200 red shirts gathered outside the Foreign Ministry yesterday demanding Kasit Piromya’s removal as minister after he was questioned by police on his involvement in last year’s airport closures.

The protesters also burned him in effigy.

Kasit reported to police on Monday after he and 35 other suspects, most of them key leaders of the People’s Alliance for Democracy, were asked to explain their role in seizing Bangkok’s Don Mueang and Suvarnabhumi airports.

He has refused to resign, calling the terrorism allegation against him “unacceptable”, but said he would resign if the case proceeded to court.

Jaran Ditapichai, a red-shirt leader, submitted an open letter to a senior ministry official before the rally dispersed.

Waranchai Chokchana, another protest leader, said they wanted the foreign minister sacked as he “damages the country”.

“If this government, which does not come from the people’s will, does not get him out, we’ll return to demand the resignation of this gangster minister,” he said.

Kasit was in New Zealand attending a meeting of a bilateral-relations committee.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva ignored the spokesman for the opposition Pheu Thai Party, who was waiting for him at Government House to hand him a request for Kasit’s removal.

Prompong Nopparit instead submitted the document to Sutham Limsuwankasem, a deputy PM’s secretary-general, before heading to Democrat Party headquarters to hand a similar request to Chuan Leekpai, the party’s chief adviser.

Prompong said he felt disappointed and slighted by Abhisit’s behaviour.

Abhisit declined to say whether it was appropriate to allow the foreign minister to remain in office despite the findings of a recent public-opinion survey that most respondents wanted Kasit to step down.

“I read the poll results, and they said most people wanted him to resign after the Asean meeting,” he said, referring to next week’s ministerial meeting in Phuket.

PAD leaders conferred yesterday and agreed to meet police for questioning next Thursday on the airport-occupation cases.

KC: When I first glanced over this piece I thought I had opened up Not the Nation instead of The Nation website. The burning of an effigy of Kasit is just the kind of story covered on that splendid satirical website. It seems the heat is really being turned up on Foreign Minister Kasit, and rightly so, as Fonzi states: “Thailand must be the only country in the history of the modern world to have a foreign minister who joyfully engaged in a terroristic breach of security at a major international airport in the name of overthrowing a legal government.” PM Abhisit continues to support his personally selected minister who has come to personify the criticism of double standards in Thailand that is at the heart of the Red Shirt’s argument. Kasit’s blatent links to the PAD continue to hound him and the government that came to power on the back of PAD protests, which Kasit himself decribed as “fun”. No doubt that the cauldron of Thai politics is feeling less like a party these days for Kasit.