By Thai Newsroom Reporters
PEOPLE’S LEADER Nattapong Ruengpanyawut today (July 15) straightforwardly took Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul to task, saying he has not seemed to have courage to combat wrongdoings allegedly perpetrated by high-ranking government officials at the Ministry of Interior where he himself is taking charge in concurrent fashion.
The People’s leader charged that the Bhumjaithai-attached prime minister who has assumed the politically significant portfolio of interior since previous governments might either probably have no courage to fight misconduct and corruption infesting the bureaucratic circle there or see himself somehow involved in an alleged wrongdoing and desperately look to cover it up for his own sake.
“Anutin might probably know about the alleged wrongdoings but he has utterly failed to eliminate them since he has not seemed to have the courage to do anything about that in the first place,” Nattapong said.
In particular, he was referring to some scandalous misconduct and irregularities surrounding high-level officials of the Department of Provincial Administration and Department of Local Administration who are under direct command of the prime minister-cum-interior minister.
For instance, Department of Provincial Administration Director-General Narucha Kosacivilize had allegedly texted on Line one of his subordinates in Phuket with an unbecoming message saying “Do Help the Blue” during a run-up to the general election earlier this year. Viewed as a protege of de facto Bhumjaithai boss Newin Chidchob, the provincial administration chief is more or less speculated to be promoted as interior undersecretary, among others in annual transfers of government officials due in the upcoming October.
Meanwhile, a number of senior officials of the Department of Local Administration had been suspected, among others, of involvement in a premeditated fraud over recruitment exam papers for local working-level officials. As many as one-third of a total of about 150,000 people who had sat for the exams had been initially suspected of involvement in the fraud for which as much as 700,000 baht in kickback cash had been allegedly handed out by each of those cheating applicants.
Suspected to have been involved in the exam scam were not only regular government officials at the Ministry of Interior but those personally connected with unnamed politicians and formally hired as their close aides or advisers.
The ministry under concurrent command of the prime minister has been invariably viewed as the most pivotal state apparatus for one to steer and sway votes among constituents in times of an election at any levels, given its constant, practical control of all provincial and local administrative officials ranging from provincial governors and district chiefs to kamnan (subdistrict heads) and puyaibaan (village heads) throughout the country.
CAPTIONS:
Top and Front Page: Prime Minister/Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, left, and People’s leader Nattapong Ruengpanyawut, right. File photos – PPTVHD36
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