Pichit denies 10-year-old rice eating campaign politically motivated

By Thai Newsroom Reporters

PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE MINISTER Pichit Chuenban today (May 8) dismissed criticism that the Pheu Thai-led government’s promotion of public consumption of the 10-year-old rice from government stock under a previous rice subsidy programme was merely part of a hidden ploy for deposed prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra to return home some day without being subsequently thrown in jail in relation to it.

The newly-named, Pheu Thai-attached minister denied that a recent campaign launched by Deputy Prime Minister-cum-Commerce Minister Phumtham Wechayachai to encourage the people to eat the 10-year-old rice from government stock under the scandalous rice subsidy programme previously carried out by the Yingluck government over a decade earlier was more or less related to the alleged Pheu Thai attempt to bring the deposed woman prime minister home sooner or later.

The Pheu Thai under de facto party boss-cum-convict on parole Thaksin Shinawatra allegedly plans to convince the people to the extent that his sister Yingluck had been served an injustice over a rice subsidy-related lawsuit which may have been by no means prone to corruption at policy level as earlier alleged and that it may have been mismanaged by dishonest government officials at working level in connivance with rogue rice traders.

Pichai categorically denied that Phumtham’s 10-year-old rice eating campaign had been politically motivated as earlier alleged by government critics and that the deputy prime minister-cum-commerce minister was merely looking to release 15,000 tonnes of the rice owned by the Public Warehouse Organisation and stored at private warehouses in Surin with its quality being claimed by the Pheu Thai-attached commerce minister to remain unchanged since the last decade.

Pichai had earlier acted as lawyer on behalf of Yingluck involving the previous Pheu Thai government’s rice subsidy campaign and been evidently found to have offered two million baht in kickback cash literally contained in food bags to officials attached to the Supreme Court. He had also earlier acted as lawyer on behalf of deposed prime minister/now de facto Pheu Thai boss-cum-convict on parole Thaksin Shinawatra in a legal battle over power abuse charges pertaining to a Ratchada land grab.

Phumtham, also known as a right-hand man of Thaksin’s, had strongly recommended the consumption of the 10-year-old rice and taken part in a demonstrative luncheon in the northeastern province with the 10-year-old rice which, he said, could hold unchanged its nutritional quality though it may not be as fragrant as when harvested over a decade earlier.

CAPTION:

A big stockpile of 10-year-old rice at a warehouse in Surin, above, and Deputy Prime Minister-cum-Commerce Minister Phumtham Wechayachai eating a plateful of this decade-old rice there, Front Page. Both photos: Sanook.com

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