By Thai Newsroom Reporters
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES will the Internal Security Operations Command be dissolved as the army-led agency will be obliged to play more government-assisting roles, according to Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin.
The prime minister confirmed today (Oct.31) the Pheu Thai-led government has had no intent to dissolve the ISOC but planned to assign more diverse roles for the agency though the Move Forward, the largest opposition party, might be currently seeking popular support for legislation to dissolve it.
Srettha said the army-led ISOC under care of the Prime Minister’s Office will take part in implementing government measures to provide more agricultural land for farmers and villagers in all regions of the country in addition to the agency’s regular missions to help restore public peace and order, especially in turbulent southernmost areas.
The prime minister expressed his admiration for the ISOC’s Nong Wua Sor Model project in Udon Thani to hand over some 9,300 rai of army-occupied land to local villagers to turn it into farmland.
According to the prime minister, the ISOC will not only deal with military missions but look to carry out non-military ones as well as provide human resources and equipment for use with government measures to alleviate flooding, drought and other natural disasters in the provinces nationwide.
The ISOC has been earlier alleged by political critics of mishandling and at times aggravating the chronic Deep South unrests since the last few decades.
Move Forward MPs had earlier taken the army-led agency to task for allegedly sowing seeds of social division among villagers in predominantly Muslim areas in the southernmost provinces with its notorious information operations and the recruitment of local adolescents to allegedly undergo its brainwashing missions.
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Top and Front Page: Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin briefing the press about not dissolving Internal Security Operations Command. Photos: Thai Rath
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