EU, Japan talk cooperation on raw materials
BRUSSELS: The EU and Japan are working on a cooperation agreement for raw materials to whittle down China’s dominance in the sector, leaders said in Brussels on Thursday (Jul 13). Coordination also extended to semiconductors, to help boost economic security in Japan and the EU, European Commission chief Ursula vonContinue Reading
Indranee to address Speaker Tan Chuan-Jin’s ‘unparliamentary language’ in next House sitting
SINGAPORE: Leader of the House Indranee Rajah will be addressing Speaker of Parliament Tan Chuan-Jin’s use of unparliamentary language in the next parliamentary sitting. In response to queries from TODAY, Ms Indranee said on Thursday (July 13) night: “As this matter concerns parliamentary conduct, the Leader of the House will addressContinue Reading
Thai opposition leader loses PM bid
Despite falling far short of the threshold to become Thailand’s next prime minister, opposition Move Forward Party leader Pita Limjaroenrat pledged Thursday to keep up the fight.
“With the results of what happened in the parliament today, I accept it but I’m not giving up,” Pita stated in a post-vote press conference. “I’m going to strategise once again … just to make sure that we reach 376 later on.”
Despite being the leader of the largest party in the country’s parliament, the 42-year-old landed 51 votes short of the majority 375 required to win the day’s prime minister selection vote. Even with Move Forward’s electoral popularity, the outcome was less a shock, more of a bitter disappointment to the progressive party’s supporters. The decision hinged on the solid rejection by members of the military-appointed Senate, a 250-member legacy of the 2014 military coup, where some lawmakers had made no secret of their disdain for the upstart opposition.
It’s not our job to listen to the people. … Even if you got 100 million votes, I still wouldn’t pick you if I don’t like you or find you suitable.
Senator Prapanth Koonmee
“It’s not our job to listen to the people,” said Senator Prapanth Koonmee in an earlier interview with Bloomberg. “Even if you got 100 million votes, I still wouldn’t pick you if I don’t like you or find you suitable.”
Still, most senators refrained from actually voting against Pita, who was the sole candidate for the prime minister’s office. He was able to secure only 13 Senate votes in favour of his premiership, while a further 159 senators abstained from the vote. More than 40 senators failed to show up altogether.
With the failure to select a new prime minister, Thailand now enters an uncertain period of ill-defined leadership. Political observers see a range of possible roads forward – including the threat of yet another military intervention in the event that representatives fail to form a new government in a timely fashion.
During five hours of parliamentary debate preceding Thursday’s vote, both senators and members of conservative-aligned parties within the House of Representatives criticised Move Forward’s proposed amendments to the country’s lèse-majesté law, which criminalises critique of the monarchy.
Lèse-majesté has emerged as a political flashpoint in recent years and especially during the mass mobilisations of pro-democracy protesters in 2020. A case taken up by Thailand’s Constitutional Court on Wednesday alleges the party’s promise to reform the law amounts to an attempt to overthrow the country’s system of government.
That same day, the national Election Commission also requested the court suspend Pita as a member of parliament over criminal accusations that he’d run for office while aware he might be ineligible due to owning a small stake in a defunct media company.
Lawmakers who spoke against Pita on Thursday pointed to these cases as disqualifying factors in his bid to become prime minister.
“The Constitutional Court’s decision to look into potential illegalities by Pita (which are trumped up) legitimised decisions by Senators to vote against him, thus dooming his chances of becoming prime minister,” said Paul Chambers, a specialist on Thai politics at Naresuan University in Thailand, in a message to Globe.
The next vote for prime minister is scheduled for 19 July, and Pita has already indicated his intention to make a second attempt at the premiership.
China’s Wang meets Blinken, Lavrov on ASEAN sidelines
MYANMAR ENGAGEMENT The summits follow a meeting of Southeast Asian foreign ministers who were expected on Thursday to agree on a communique that would include a reference to the ongoing crisis in Myanmar. But there was no sign of the statement as of late Thursday. Reasons for the delay wereContinue Reading
Six BTO projects comprising 5,000 flats to be built in Mount Pleasant; first launch in 2025
An OPA Workgroup, chaired by Minister of State for Home Affairs and National Development Dr Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim, also recommended heritage elements such as the trusses of the old drill shed (ODS) and starter blocks of a 50m by 30m Olympic sized-swimming pool to be preserved and incorporated into the estate.
The ODS, one of the earliest buildings to be constructed in the OPA, was designed as an outdoor training space, and used for events and activities such as foot drills, medal ceremonies and band performances.
“HDB will explore how it can weave these elements into the design of the new housing estate in a sensitive manner. For example, the swimming pool starter blocks could be re-purposed as street furniture, giving them a new lease of life,” it said.
“Specifically for Mount Pleasant, studies and engagements began in 2018, seven years before the launch of the first BTO project in 2025.”
HDB added that for buildings or spaces that cannot be retained due to development needs or technical constraints, it will still retain and keep their heritage significance.
This will be done by referencing their architectural elements in the new developments and incorporating certain physical elements as street furniture or markers.
Thailand: Pitaâs loss is Thaksinâs gain
BANGKOK – In a largely preordained vote against the popular will, Move Forward Party (MFP) leader Pita Limjaroenrat failed today to win enough parliamentary votes to become Thailand’s next and arguably first progressive prime minister.
The military-appointed, 249-member Senate and lower house parliamentarians aligned with the outgoing conservative coalition led by coup-maker General Prayut Chan-ocha either abstained or voted down Pita’s bid, which needed to secure at least 375 of 749 votes.
Today’s tally saw 324 votes in favor of Pita, 182 against and 199 abstentions. A second vote is scheduled for July 19, at which the second-ranked Peua Thai could, and some insiders say, will likely put forward its top candidate, property tycoon Srettha Thavisin. A third and final vote could take place the following day.
The political jockeying is expected to intensify in the days ahead as Pita will need to explain to coalition partners why he believes he can win a second vote after losing today. Many believe the Senate and other conservative MPs would be more willing to vote for the non-confrontational Srettha, who Peua Thai insiders have cast as their “compromise” candidate.
Today’s vote came a day after the Election Commission submitted a highly-anticipated case to the Constitutional Court against Pita over his alleged shareholding in a media company, which is banned under Thai election law. The EC requested that Pita be suspended as a lawmaker while the case is pending.
A separate case, also filed and accepted on Wednesday by the Constitutional Court, charges Pita and his MFP of trying to “overthrow” the monarchy through their call to reform the kingdom’s lese majeste law, which shields the king, queen, regent and heir apparent from criticism through maximum 15-year prison penalties.
The shareholding charge, if heard under Article 151 of the election law, could land Pita in prison and ban him from politics for a decade. The lese majeste case, filed by a private individual but nonetheless accepted by the high court, threatens to dissolve the entire MFP and strip its MPs of their seats.
The vote and charges have upended the kingdom’s politics just two months after MFP’s shock election win on May 14, where the upstart party won 151 out of 500 lower house seats. Peua Thai, the until now anti-military party shadow-led by coup-toppled, self-exiled ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, had predicted a “landslide” win of 300 plus seats but placed a close, if not disappointing, second with 141.
The military-aligned Palang Pracharat and United Thai Nation parties were both trounced, placing a distant fourth and fifth with 40 and 36 seats respectively. The result was a clear clarion call to end nearly a decade of Prayut’s military-dominated rule, both in coup-installed and elected incarnations. Tellingly, Bangkok, the heart of Thai political, economic and royal power, voted MFP in 35 of 36 seats.
Prayut announced his retirement from politics this week and is widely expected to assume the presidency of the Privy Council, a royalist body that provides advice to the king and which under its previous leader was a major center of autonomous royal power that has since been diminished during Maha Vajiralongkorn’s new reign.
He leaves with his monarchy-upholding legacy under threat. Move Forward’s hard drive to amend the lese majeste law, defined by Article 112 of the penal code, has put the palace front and center of the kingdom’s intensifying imbroglio pitting conservative and progressive forces – in what many see as an epic struggle for nothing less than the nation’s soul.
Many royalists believe MFP’s call to amend the law’s application and punishment is the thin end of a wider wedge aimed at diminishing other monarchal powers and prerogatives, including royal control over the ultra-rich Crown Property Bureau and top military units that were recently subsumed into the king’s private guard.
It was lost on few numerologically-inclined Thais that MFP and Peua Thai each won precisely 112 constituency seats at the May poll, i.e. the number associated with the lese majeste law, with the former outpacing the latter in the separate party list vote to arrive at a winning 151.
The cosmic and other similarities largely stop there, though. While the two parties are now loosely in coalition, that could break down quickly after today’s parliamentary vote against Pita and with the now very real possibility that MFP could be dissolved by court order on royal grounds in the weeks or months ahead.
The stage is already well-set for a political schism. MFP and Peua Thai were at daggers drawn for weeks over which should appoint the House Speaker, which ultimately went to a junior coalition partner to break the impasse.
Peau Thai had earlier refused to sign a MFP MOU requiring coalition partners to support its lese majeste and wider progressive reform agenda. Certain Peua Thai machine politicians, namely ex-cop and former deputy premier Chalerm Yubamrung, have taken pee-nong (elder-junior) potshots at MFP’s youthful inexperience.
Peua Thai is widely believed to have stumbled at the polls due to popular perceptions it may enter a coalition with the military-aligned PPRP to form a “unity” government that would seek to bury the hatchet on two previous Shinawatra-toppling coups in 2006 and 2014.
Indeed, MFP campaigned partly on a promise never to join hands with the “uncles”, reference to UTN’s Prayut, 69, and his famously somnolent deputy General Prawit Wongsuwan, 77, who now leads the PPRP and is still a potential prime minister candidate. That, and a late shift towards more ideologically-driven campaign messaging ingeniously disseminated over social media, cannibalized votes from traditional Peua Thai supporters.
Bangkok-based diplomats and local observers point to at least three pre-election meetings between Pojaman Na Pombejra, Thaksin’s ex-wife and behind-the-scenes Peua Thai powerbroker, and top palace officials at which the “unity” government deal was reportedly discussed, including and especially in regard to whom would control the military in such a configuration.
Those discussions, if not negotiations, would explain Thaksin’s repeated vow to return from exile in July, which would seemingly require a royal pardon to avoid extended jail time for his various criminal corruption convictions. Thaksin recently pushed back his homecoming timeline until the political situation is “stable.”
In another sign of a possible deal, a pending National Anti-Corruption Commission case against Thaksin over alleged Thai Airways procurement-related corruption dating back to 2003 was dropped today, just hours ahead of the parliamentary vote. Some also saw the anti-Thaksin Prayut’s retirement from politics as paving the way for a deal with the more Shinawatra-friendly Prawit.
Whether Thaksin and Pojaman would be willing to overtly sacrifice Peua Thai’s long-held anti-military stance and run the risk of alienating the party’s “red shirt” stalwarts and supporters to bring Thaksin home and return Peua Thai to power as a de facto guardian, rather than challenger and disruptor, of conservative interests is unclear.
What is clear is that the conservative establishment comprised of the palace, military and top business families all see MFP’s progressive reform agenda – from lese majeste reform to ending military conscription to upending big business monopolies – as a bigger existential threat than Thaksin’s now-fading and rather listless Peua Thai.
The problem for Pita and MFP is that a Peua Thai-led coalition government that excludes them, potentially in the name of stability with the hanging risk of Pita’s disqualification and MFP’s dissolution, would still be democratic in form, if not spirit and substance.
The conservative fix is clearly in against Pita, one in which Peua Thai may prove to be part and parcel, and one that may thus be hard for his growing legions of progressive supporters to legitimately protest as anti-democratic.
Pita: âIâm not giving upâ
PM candidate says he’ll revise strategy, but abandoning Section 112 amendment is off the table
“I accept it but I’m not giving up,” was Pita Limjaroenrat’s first reaction after he failed to win a majority vote from parliament for his premiership on Thursday evening.
The Move Forward Party leader received 324 votes in his favour, 182 votes against and 199 abstentions in the first prime ministerial vote. The result left him 51 votes short of his target.
After the vote result was announced, Mr Pita told reporters that there were a lot of pressures on senators because many of them were absent from the joint sitting of representatives and senators on Thursday.
“There were pressures and several incentives,” he said without elaborating. “They were not allowed to vote in line with the people.”
More than 30 senators were absent from the meeting. Some had gone abroad and others left the chamber, said the leader of the election-winning party.
“I thank the 13 senators who voted in favour. I will find the reasons why many of them were absent,” Mr Pita said.
He said he accepted the vote result but was not giving up. He said he would try to find strategies to gather enough support in the next round of the prime ministerial vote.
Parliament President Wan Muhamad Noor Matha has scheduled the second and third rounds of voting for July 19 and 20. It is not known yet if Mr Pita’s name will be put forward on one or both days.
Before the vote on Thursday, several parliamentarians attacked the Move Forward Party’s policy to amend the lese-majeste law.
Some commentators have suggested that if the party decided to compromise and drop plans to change the law from its policy pledges, Mr Pita might be able e able to win a majority in the next round of voting.
After Thursday’s vote, reporters asked Mr Pita if his party would change its stance on the law, Section 112 of the Criminal Code.
“It will remain the same,” he insisted. “Today we had a lot of chances to explain the matter to the parliament and that was a good development.”
Asked if he was prepared to be in the opposition if things don’t go his way, Mr Pita said he was focusing for now on preparing for the second round of the prime ministerial vote.
There would be time enough to figure out what happened on Thursday to get ready for the next round, he said.
Airstrikes drive 3,000 Karennis to Mae Hong Son
As clashes intensify, Thai army and local authorities map out ways to help refugees
More than 3,000 Karennis have reportedly fled across the border to Mae Hong Son province following clashes between Myanmar and the Karenni Army (KA) on Wednesday.
A border source said the clashes between Myanmar troops and ethnic rebel groups were continuing on Thursday.
The Myanmar army reportedly launched air strikes along the border, opposite tambon Pang Mu and Mok Cham Pae in Muang district of Mae Hong Son at around 7pm on Wednesday.
After at least six strikes found their targets including the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) centre in Loikaw in Kayah state, a total of 3,331 Karenni people were forced to cross the border to seek refuge in Mae Hong Son, according to the source.
Army chief Gen Narongphan Jitkaewtae on Thursday visited a military unit, Bang Sao Hin village in Mae Sariang district and the Na Pa Paek operation base in Muang district of Mae Hong Son to follow up on the security situation.
Muang district chief Sangkhom Kadchiangsaen met with related agencies to draw up guidelines on how to assist the fleeing Karennis.
Attending the meeting were representatives of the 713th infantry company, Muang district public health office, the provincial anti-malaria centre, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the chiefs of the Ban Nai Soi evacuation centre.
The shelter habouring the Karennis will be supervised by a volunteer unit and soldiers. After the situation improves, all the Karennis will be sent back.
A source in the Karenni National Progressive Party, a political organisation in Kayah State, estimated that more than 5,000 Karennis were trying to flee to Thailand after the air strikes. One was reportedly killed in the attack and 10 others injured.
As of Thursday, Thai border authorities had not received any update on the air strikes or the situation on the ground due to a jammed telecommunication signal.
The source also said Myanmar troops were preparing to launch a fresh air strike on the KA’s Yamu stronghold located near the military base on Thai territory. Soldiers at the base have been put on high alert.
The border tension flared up after more than 5,000 Myanmar refugees were driven to take shelter at Mae Sariang refugee camps, also in Mae Hong Son, to escape the fighting between the KA and the Myanmar junta forces on July 6.
The KA was also reportedly hit by junta airstrikes in a border town opposite Mae Hong Son.
Some casualties and deaths were reported. Many Myanmar locals had to carry injured people to receive medical treatment in Thailand while others had to flee the town for border forests.
A source from the KA said the Myanmar junta carried out 19 airstrikes, seriously injuring KA soldiers. At least 7 Karenni troops were reportedly sent to Mae Hong Son Hospital.
Iswaran to remain in Singapore during CPIB investigation: Prime Minister’s Office
SINGAPORE: Transport Minister S Iswaran will remain in Singapore during his leave of absence amid an ongoing Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) probe, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said on Thursday (Jul 13). In a statement issued in response to CNA’s queries, the PMO said Mr Iswaran will also have “no access to anyContinue Reading
Why China will draw investors despite economic warning signs
China’s exports have suffered their sharpest year-on-year decline since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, fueling concerns over the growth trajectory of the world’s second-largest economy.
The weaker international demand, which has triggered the drop in exports, comes at a time when the economy is under pressure from a weak property sector and a disappointingly slow Covid rebound after controls were dropped at the start of the year. In addition, youth unemployment is at its highest level on record.
But despite these challenges, China remains an appealing destination for investors.
One of the most compelling reasons investors are attracted to China is its massive market potential.
With a population of more than 1.4 billion and a growing middle class, China offers a vast consumer base for businesses to tap into. Rising incomes and increasing urbanization have fueled demand for various products and services, providing ample opportunities for investors across sectors such as technology, health care, and consumer goods.
The People’s Republic also has a proven ability to navigate and adapt to economic challenges. Despite recent headwinds, including trade tensions and the pandemic, China has shown remarkable resilience.
The government’s proactive policies, such as stimulus measures and targeted reforms, have effectively supported economic growth and stabilized market conditions. This track record of adaptability instills confidence in investors, as they believe that China can effectively address and overcome future obstacles.
Tech advances
The country’s emphasis on research and development, coupled with significant investments in such emerging technologies as artificial intelligence, fifth-generation (5G) telecom, and biotechnology, has propelled China to the forefront of technological advancements.
Investors recognize the immense potential in these sectors and are eager to capitalize on the nation’s technological prowess, which offers unique opportunities for high returns.
Another major plus for investors is China’s commitment to infrastructure development, which is unparalleled. For example, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) demonstrates its ambition to connect economies and boost global trade.
This initiative has the potential to open up new markets, enhance logistics networks, and facilitate economic integration, making it an attractive prospect for investors.
Investors are also fully aware of China’s economic model, which is gradually shifting from export-driven growth to one fueled by domestic consumption. This transition presents investors with a new set of opportunities as the Chinese population becomes increasingly affluent and consumption-oriented.
Companies that cater to the evolving tastes and preferences of Chinese consumers stand to benefit immensely from this paradigm shift, prompting investors to focus on sectors such as e-commerce, entertainment, and luxury goods.
While Chinese policymakers have so far stopped short of large-scale stimulus, instead easing key interest rates last month to support growth, the government has previously shown a strong commitment to economic reforms aimed at improving the business environment and attracting foreign investment.
I’m confident that should the situation not show signs of steady improvement, officials will announce a stimulus package.
The media in recent weeks have been full of stories about China’s economic challenges. However, investors are likely to see beyond the short term and look for the long-term potential.
Nigel Green is the founder and CEO of deVere. Follow him on Twitter @nigeljgreen.