Police seize speedboat of Pattaya murder suspect
Investigators say owner might have planned to use it to dump German businessman’s body at sea
PATTAYA: Police have seized a speedboat belonging to a prime suspect in the murder of a German property broker, as they believe he might have intended to use it to dump the victim’s dismembered body at sea.
Investigators from the Nong Prue police station took the 18-foot speedboat from a house on Phra Tamnak Soi 5 in Pattaya on Wednesday night.
The boat was owned by Olaf Thorsten Brinkmann, 52, one of four suspects arrested for alleged involvement in the murder of Hans Peter Mack, 62. The boat was kept at the house of a German friend who alerted police after learning about the arrest of his compatriot, said a police source.
His friend told investigators that Mr Brinkmann had sought help on July 8 to tow his speedboat from Nong Krabok Soi 4 to the Chokchai Garden Home housing estate in Nong Prue.
On July 9, the friend told Mr Brinkmann that he would tow the boat to the Ocean Marina pier in Pattaya. But because it had no registration documents, the boat could not be moored there. He then brought the boat to Phra Tamnak Soi 5.
Surveillance video at a fishing supplies shop showed Mr Brinkmann and another suspect, Shahrukh Karim Uddin, buying some gear at the shop. Mr Uddin, 27, a Pakistani with Thai nationality, was arrested in Kanchanaburi on Wednesday afternoon after trying to flee across the border to Myanmar.
Police believe the two men were planning to go to sea and dump Mack’s body overboard to destroy evidence. However, the dismembered body of the victim was found hidden in a freezer at a rented house in tambon Nong Prue on Monday night — six days after the German man went missing.
Olaf Thorsten Brinkmann, 52, one of three German nationals held in the murder of a 62-year-old compatriot, is arrested at a pub in Bangkok on Tuesday night. (Photo supplied/Chaiyot Pupattanapong)
Officers who searched the house found the freezer containing the body, along with an electric saw, ropes, food seals and bottles of drinking water, soda and beer. The victim’s body had been dismembered, with the head, torso and limbs separated and put into bags inside the 1.50-metre-long freezer.
Mr Brinkmann and Mr Udin were among the four suspects arrested for the murder. Also in custody are two other German women: Petra Christl Grundgreif, 54, and Nicole Frevel, 52. Ms Frevel, who is disabled, rented the house where the body of the German businessman was found.
Mr Uddin was taken to Nong Prue police station on Wednesday night after his arrest in Kanchanaburi, and placed in a cell next to Mr Brinkmann.
His parents and his elder brother arrived at the police station to see Mr Uddin. The tearful parents were seen hugging their son.
Mr Uddin’s parents, who run a frozen seafood business in Phuket, told reporters that they knew Ms Grundgreif, a land broker, as she had approached them two years ago about jointly investing in the seafood business.
The German woman wanted the couple to supply products to her in Pattaya. However, they were reluctant to comply with her request that they send products to her first before receiving any payment.
They said they had had no contact with the woman since the negotiations failed. However, they later learned that their son had contacted the woman about investing in a property business.
The parents said they tried to persuade him not to do business with the woman, but to no avail. Mr Uddin later told them that he had received money from a land sale in Phuket from the woman. After that, the parents said they had not paid further attention to their son’s business.
They said they were shocked after learning that their son had been arrested.
Shahrukh Karim Uddin, 27, a Pakistani with Thai nationality, is taken to Nong Prue police station in Chon Buri on Wednesday night after he was arrested in Kanchanaburi. (Photo supplied/Chaiyot Pupattanapong)
Childcare centres not required to operate on Saturdays from 2025
Speaking at the Professional Development Programme appointment ceremony organised by the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA), Minister for Social and Family Development Masagos Zulkifli said a survey found that 98 per cent of families using preschool services do not need them on Saturdays.
There was general consensus among more than 8,000 parents surveyed that closing childcare centres on Saturdays would enable educators to have better work-life balance and improve their well-being, he added.
“The expectation to work on Saturdays weighs down on educators, who want to spend more time with their families on weekends and recharge,” he said.
MINORITY REQUIRE SATURDAY SERVICES
There were a small number of families who require care arrangements on Saturdays as both parents may be working, Mr Masagos noted.
With the changes taking place in phases, preschools, parents, and employers have sufficient time to work out the arrangements, he said.
“This timeline allows the small number of families affected by this change to work out arrangements with their employers or to make alternative caregiving arrangements,” he said.
He urged employers to support affected employees and suggested that families can consider tapping on paid or community-based options, such as engaging informal babysitting services.
“We will continue to explore ways to improve the caregiving options available to families who really need it,” he said.
TRANSFORMING THE SECTOR
The proposed change is part of the government’s plan to transform the sector through digitalisation, to better address evolving preschool needs, and make early childhood education a more attractive career choice.
Shanghai legislation chief Dong Yunhu purged in China corruption investigation
BEIJING: Shanghai’s top legislator is under investigation for corruption, making him the most senior official to be disgraced since the Communist Party wrapped up a major reshuffle last October. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said on Wednesday (Jul 12) that Dong Yunhu, head of the city’s lawmaking body, isContinue Reading
The danger of US-China hedging in SE Asia
The study of hedging emerged because the traditional security concepts of balancing and bandwagoning are insufficient for understanding how smaller states are responding to US-China rivalry.
While there is no scholarly consensus on a definition, hedging offers an alternative approach to categorizing the foreign and security policy choices exhibited by Southeast Asian countries.
In this context, hedging means sending signals that generate ambiguity over the extent of a state’s shared security interests with rival major powers, representing its interest in maintaining positive relations with both.
While security interests are normally reflected in policy choices like purchasing weapons, joint training exercises and security treaties, Washington and Beijing increasingly see economic policies as signals of friendship or animosity.
Australia learned this lesson in 2018 when it excluded Chinese company Huawei from its 5G network. Canberra claimed that this decision only concerned internal network security, but Beijing understood it not only as a signal of lack of trust but of hostility. Conversely, it was praised by then-US president Donald Trump.
Those governments that have followed Australia typically share fewer security interests with China compared with those utilizing Huawei’s 5G technology. Economic policy can now be a meaningful indicator of security alignment.
Economic and technological connectivity is increasingly being “weaponized” and is becoming a source of geopolitical power and vulnerability. The United States can affect Beijing’s battlefield capabilities by restricting semiconductor technology, while China has disrupted multiple bilateral trading relationships, including with key US allies, in pursuit of strategic aims.
Weaponized interdependence means governments are wary of the national security and geopolitical implications of existing and potential economic relationships. How governments manage these economic relationships offers insight into their underlying security interests.
Washington and Beijing are expanding the scope of what policy domains and behaviors affect national security. The Trump administration claimed that “economic security is national security,” while US President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor explained that maintaining “as large a lead as possible” in certain technologies was a national security imperative.
The Chinese Communist Party is even more expansive in its “securitization of everything.” China’s interests as a rising power are naturally expanding, but its political system means that the Party does not separate its interests from the nation’s.
Hence any behavior — including economic policy — at home or abroad that potentially affects the Party’s political legitimacy is considered a threat to China’s national security.
Southeast Asian states want a stable geopolitical environment to focus on their economic development. They do not want to be forced to “take sides” in any hegemonic rivalry whereby Washington or Beijing could conclude that the smaller state’s security interests oppose theirs.
But if weaponized interdependence means more economic and technological policies are perceived as zero-sum by great powers, the policy space for hedging shrinks regardless of the smaller state’s motivation.
A government might choose Chinese telecommunications providers purely based on cost, speed of rollout and quality, and be relatively unconcerned about national security risks.
Yet Washington might assess this as compromising defense or economic cooperation and step back. Alternatively, Beijing may judge as hostile decisions to exclude Chinese providers based on network security risks.
Over the short-to-medium term, Washington and Beijing will continue their partial decoupling and vigorous competition across a range of emerging and critical technologies. These may include digital technologies, advanced manufacturing and materials, energy and biotechnology.
Given the perceived vulnerability of technological interdependence by both sides — a technology security dilemma — partial decoupling between the superpowers is probably needed for longer-term strategic equilibrium.
Maintaining a hedging strategy will require Southeast Asian states to locate themselves economically within a partially decoupled system in a way that avoids taking sides. This will be challenging, especially as the great powers build walls to separate themselves economically and technologically.
Southeast Asian governments will have to make choices regarding who provides technology products and the standards embedded within them. These choices may have a strong zero-sum element.
Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong argues that regional states should be confident in exercising their agency to shape their external environment. Hedging, especially to avoid taking sides, risks sidelining Southeast Asian states at arguably the most consequential geopolitical moment since their independence.
Even if hedging is preferred, policymakers must be creative to shape the regional order actively and positively.
One area where economic hedging may have a real impact is critical technology standards. Standards are historically developed and propagated by the most powerful countries. Their experts dominate international standards-making bodies and their companies embed these standards in their products, which purchasers then adopt by default.
Fundamental to technological standards is interoperability — meaning that systems are compatible with one another. Technology standards must support interoperability by enabling the development of new products and technologies that can connect with existing systems.
But in an age of technological decoupling, interoperability may be yielding to closed and fragmented systems.
Individually or working collectively through ASEAN, hedging by Southeast Asian states may require the promulgation of technology standards that do not force countries to choose one technology ecosystem over another.
Darren J Lim is Senior Lecturer at the School of Politics and International Relations, The Australian National University.
This article was originally published by East Asia Forum and is republished under a Creative Commons license.
GST: New tax threatens India’s booming online gaming industry
Getty ImagesThe Indian government’s decision to impose a 28% tax on online gaming poses an “existential threat” to the booming industry and could spell its death knell, say experts.
Shares of Indian online gaming platforms and casinos have crashed following the GST (Goods and Services Tax) Council’s decision.
The country’s 900+ gaming start-ups had been paying a small tax on the fee they charged for offering games. But the imposition of a 28% GST on the full face value of a gaming transaction will mean the entire amount collected from players will now come under the ambit of taxation.
According to industry estimates, total tax collection on player winnings will go beyond 50%, including GST, platform commissions and income taxeswhen the new law is implemented.
In effect, for every $100 (£76.8) spent by a player, there will be a “sunk cost” of $28 towards GST, in addition to a $5-15 charge by the gaming platform and a 30% tax deducted at source (TDS) on any winnings drawn.
This will “disincentivise players and is totally inconsistent with global standards” where VAT or GST is levied at a median rate, and that too only on platform fees or commissions, said Sudipta Bhattacharjee, partner at corporate law firm Khaitan & Co.
“The move has completely blindsided the industry. It will shake investor confidence and lead to a funding winter,” Mr Bhattacharjee added.
India’s gaming boom
The online gaming industry has seen a massive boom in India over the last five years, with an annual compounded growth rate of 28-30%. Driven by easy access to affordable smart phones and cheap mobile data, the sector attracted $2.5bn in foreign direct investment, including from the likes of Tiger Global.
But these growth rates will now be called into question as the GST council’s decision will impact startups at “multiple levels”, including their user base, revenues as well as investor sentiment, according to Soham Thacker, Founder & of CEO of GamerJi – an eSports tournament company.
“Many gaming companies, in order to limit the impact on the investors side, may choose to relocate their business outside India,” Mr Thacker added.
“They have killed the multibillion-dollar industry with a single stroke. And at the same time the decision could give a massive boost to illegal and illegitimate operators in the country,” Gaurav Gaggar, Promoter of Poker High, a poker site, said.
Terming the decision “unconstitutional, irrational, and egregious”, the All India Gaming Federation said the government had ignored over 60 years of “settled legal jurisprudence” by lumping online skill gaming with gambling activities.
Gambling, which is seen as a chance-based game, is illegal in many India states and is frowned upon. But most states have allowed online games which are seen as skill-based.
The industry body expects hundreds of thousands of job losses in the online gaming sector because of the latest move.
Gaming startups in India currently employ 50,000 people and were expecting to create another 3,50,000 direct and 10,00,000 indirect jobs by 2028.
A ‘catastrophic’ move
Many gaming companies the BBC spoke to said there was a lack of consistency behind the ruling.
“It is very unfortunate that when the government has been supporting the industry… such a legally untenable decision has been taken,” Roland Landers, CEO of the All India Gaming Federation said in a statement. “It will be catastrophic for the $1tn digital economy dream of the prime minister.”
Indian PM Narendra Modi has on more than one occasion praised the gaming industry as a sunrise sector that had the potential to create jobs and cater to the global market.
“This kind of extortionist tax regime flies in the face of these steps and advocacy needs to happen at multiple levels to retract this proposal,” said Mr Bhattacharjee.
He expects the gaming industry to unite and mount a strong legal challenge if the federal and state governments go ahead and enact the amendments into their tax laws.
But India’s revenue secretary called the move a “unanimous” decision that would not be reviewed or rolled back.
The moral question
Announcing the decision late on Tuesday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the GST council, which comprises of federal and state finance ministers, said “no one wanted to kill an industry”.
“But they can’t be encouraged to such an extent over essential goods and services,” she said.
The 28% tax is a “step in the right direction”, Siddhartha Iyer, a Supreme Court lawyer who has been fighting to ban online gaming told the BBC.
Mr Iyer called gaming a “speculative activity”.
“Every week there is a story of someone killing themselves because of this [debts incurred due to online gaming],” he said.
“Here, under the GST regime, the government has taken the view that [these games] are gambling and that is correct in my opinion because you are putting a wager on the performance of something not in your control,” Mr Iyer added. “We tax alcohol and cigarettes because we want to discourage people from these activities, it should be the same for this [online gaming] as well.”
Others like Faisal Maqbool, a former gaming addict who lost close to 400,000 rupees ($5,000, £3,750) while playing an online card game in 2022, say even stricter measures are needed.
“This is an addiction. And it has afflicted children and teenagers. Along with higher taxes, the government needed to put in restrictions on the basis of age, income etc. I vouch for a total ban on these activities,” Mr Maqbool told the BBC.
Read more India stories from the BBC:
Long, slow death of Indonesiaâs national plane dream
JAKARTA – Scattered along the runway at state-owned Industri Pesawat Terbang Nusantara’s (IPTN) aircraft manufacturing plant, workers punched the air and shouted “teknologi! teknologi!” as the twin-engine turboprop lifted off into blue skies over the hill city of Bandung.
It was August 10, 1995, and the enthusiastic crowd was witnessing the maiden flight of IPTN’s fly-by-wire N-250 commuter plane, the centerpiece of then-research and technology minister B J Habibie’s vision of using technology to drive national development.
The flight of the homegrown 50-seater went without a hitch, but a year later IPTN test pilot Erwin Danoewinata, 39, and five crewmen were killed when their CN-235 cargo plane crashed during an experimental low-altitude parachute extraction test in West Java.
Two years after that, the N-250 also crashed and burned – a victim of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis which brought down then-president Suharto and put an abrupt halt to the work of Habibie, the brilliant German-trained engineer who briefly became his successor.
Last week delivered what may be the final nail in the coffin with the winding up of Regio Aviasi Industri (RAI), the private company Habibie founded in 2012 to keep alive the ambitious project – but with a larger, 80-seat turbo-prop known as the R-80.
It has been a sad time for RAI president-director Agung Nugroho, 65, IPTN’S former technical director and Habibie’s assistant during what he describes as the “golden era” in Indonesian aviation that may well have come ahead of its time.
But he is also now embarking on a new enterprise, developing modestly priced, cargo-carrying helicopter drones he hopes will lay the regulatory and operational groundwork for Indonesia to eventually become an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) hub.
Backed by private investors, newly formed PT Aviasi Indonesia Maju (AIM) plans to convert German-made EDM CoAX 600 drones for Indonesian conditions, especially for flying across remote stretches of mountainous and largely roadless Papua.
When Suharto was forced to sign the tough US$42 billion IMF bailout package in early 1998, the hardly-transparent IPTN was one of the casualties, losing its subsidies and forced to pare down its workforce from 16,000 to 3,600 almost overnight.
Deposed from the presidency after only 14 months, Habibie refused to let the national plane die. Between 2005 and 2009, his team of aeronautical experts vainly tried to convince the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono government to revive the project.
But those efforts were stymied by residual IMF austerity measures. The search for private offshore funding also ran into a roadblock when it was determined that the Saudi Arabia-based Islamic Development Bank didn’t have sufficient capital.
“I never wanted to be president,” the ever-excitable Habibie insisted in an interview over tea in the vaulted library of his Jakarta home in 2012. “The only thing I ever wanted to do was build aeroplanes.”
The former Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm engineer remained embittered over how the N-250 had become a victim of the bailout. But while realizing the economy came first, he never let go of something he was reluctant to call a dream.
In fact, Habibie said his “vision” was in line with founding president Sukarno, who had sent many of Indonesia’s brightest young students to Holland and Germany for technical education. Suharto carried it on, making Habibe his vice-president in the dying months of his 32-year rule.
Habibie’s most controversial move came in 1993 when, at his urging, Indonesia bought nearly a third of the former East German Navy, namely 16 Parchim-class anti-submarine corvettes, 14 dual-use tank landing ships and 12 minesweepers.
It is part of folklore that on the delivery voyage out to Indonesia, one of the 1,700-tonne landing craft nearly foundered during a storm in the Bay of Biscay, reportedly because it was overloaded with Mercedes cars.
Already considered overpriced, the $482 million deal went ahead despite the necessary injection of more money to refurbish the warships, which were designed to operate in the confines of the Baltic Sea and not in tropical waters.
Habibie saw the mastery of technology and the growth of infrastructure as the best way to develop Indonesia and ensure the equitable distribution of wealth. In that, he may have a kindred spirit in current President Joko Widodo.
In 2011, Habibie’s team dropped the N-250 and over the next three years began work on the R-80 in cooperation with Turkish Aerospace, designing the aerodynamic surfaces, the structural concept and the systems architecture.
RAI also started coordinating with the government and PT Dirgantara Indonesia (DI), the new name for the downsized IPTN and its manufacturing facilities in Bandung, south of Jakarta.
“Our role was to create something that was viable and feasible for the government to continue,“ Nugroho told Asia Times. “It was not meant to be our property. We wanted to offer it to the government and make use of DI.”
State funding wasn’t possible but the project was placed on Widodo’s list of National Strategic Projects (NSP) – a move that was more political than anything whenonly private investors would be involved until the commercial phase.
The R-80 was meant to fly in 2018 – 23 years after the N-250’s first flight. Then, Suharto embraced his protege and whispered “I am very proud” before unveiling a $2 billion plan to put an even more ambitious regional jet, the N-2130, in the air by 2003.
By the time Habibie passed away in 2019 at the age of 83, the R-80 had failed to make it off the drawing board. But it did receive a surprise offer from Russia’s Ilyushin, the maker of Indonesia’s first presidential jet, to invest $700 million in exchange for the firm’s entry into the Indonesian market.
Although Russian technology was to be incorporated into the R-80 prototype, most of the key components would have been Western imports because, as Nugroho put it, “they were more saleable.”
The arrangement had barely gotten off the ground, however, when Covid-19 struck – followed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, bringing with it sanctions against Russian firms.
In 2021, the government removed the plane’s NSP status and with it finally went any chance of RAI raising the $3 billion needed to build a prototype at DI’s plant.
Habibie’s son, Ilham, told a recent interviewer there was never enough money to revive the project and the mere nine billion rupiah ($600,000) RAI received in public donations revealed a lack of community interest.
Although Ilham is reluctant to carry on his father’s legacy, other investors are persisting with the $10.3 million plan to introduce drones to Papua and other remote regions currently serviced by only 240 registered general aviation aircraft.
Capable of carrying 275 kilograms of cargo over distances of up to 200 kilometers, the $500,000 German-made EDM could be expected to find a ready market among Papua’s 12 small cargo airlines, looking to cut costs and open new routes.
Market research shows that 97% of Papua’s airstrips, which can realistically be used for drone operations, are within range of a hub airport.
According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Indonesia is the world’s second-fastest-growing aviation market after China, with turboprops like the ATR-72 and Bombardier Q400 filling out the fleets of 14 domestic airlines.
That was the sort of spurt the far-sighted Habibie anticipated in the aviation industry back in the mid-1990s before the banking system imploded, set progress back by nearly a decade and doomed the national aerospace project.
For Habibie and Nugroho, it was particularly painful to watch Brazil’s Embraer going on to become a market leader with its E190 regional jet – similar to the still-born N-2130 – which was launched at the Paris Air Show in 2002.
Other firms that also sought to launch a regional jet included Mitsubishi, China’s Comac, Bombardier and Sukhoi, one of whose Superjet 100s crashed on a demonstration flight near Jakarta in 2012, killing all 45 people aboard.
DI was declared bankrupt in 2007, but the Supreme Court quashed the decision on appeal and in the years since the company has continued to produce the CN-235, the NC-212 and, more recently, the smaller N-219 Nurtanio.
A 19-seat variant of the Spanish-designed CASA-212 – and still the subject of certification issues – the N-219 is emerging as a domestic replacement for Canada’s venerable de Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter, a familiar sight in Indonesian skies.
DI is currently seeking a production license for long-time partner CASA’s CN-295, a medium tactical transport aircraft which is now being built by Airbus Industries and is already in service with the Indonesian Air Force.
According to its website, IPTN/DI has produced 466 aircraft and helicopters over its lifespan, including more than 200 CN-235s, used for transport and maritime reconnaissance, and 120 NC-212/N-219s.
Its 4,000 employees also continue to make components for Airbus and Eurocopter, while several hundred of the highly-skilled workers laid off in 1999 subsequently found employment with Airbus, Boeing and even Embraer.
Some also went to work for Turkish Aerospace Industries, which currently counts Ukraine among its customers and has been trying to interest the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) in its $25 million Bayraktar TB-2 armed drone.
As for the solitary N-250, it never flew again after its 56-minute maiden flight and now sits in an aerospace museum in Jogjakarta, a curiosity for a new generation witnessing the rebirth of Indonesia as an industrialized state.
“We hope it can remain a symbol of the capacity of Indonesia to produce its own (aircraft),” Ilham says. But asked if the project can be revived, he responds: I’m an optimist, but I’m also a realist.” He left the rest unsaid.
Nugroho still holds out hope after recently having his comprehensive roadmap, covering the entire aerospace eco-system from training to manufacturing and research, included in a National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) White Paper.
“This is our greatest achievement,” he says while acknowledging progress will be slow because of the need for a timetable and the fact that the White Paper must become part of a long-term national development plan. “The idea is still there.”
The hard road to government for Thailandâs Move Forward Party
After the progressive Move Forward Party’s dominant performance in Thailand’s 15 May parliamentary election, it seemed logical that party leader Pita Limjaroenrat would become the country’s next prime minister.
The 42-year-old Harvard graduate and former Grab executive is, after all, the head of the largest party in parliament, supported by a coalition including the majority of the legislature’s elected representatives. However, expert opinion paints a more fraught picture.
Given the obstacle course of legal challenges, defiant senators and political parties rendered unviable partners due to past associations with the military, some question whether the military-appointed Senate will prevent Move Forward from participating in government altogether. Parliament is expected to vote for a new prime minister today and, if Pita is unable to secure the premiership, Thailand could witness the start of an uncertain period of political deadlock that could fly in the face of the opposition’s electoral victory.
“I think that [the Move Forward Party] will be denied the speakership, they will be denied the premiership, and I think Move Forward will be denied a role in the coalition government,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a professor of political science at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
Pita’s potential route to the prime minister’s office is an arduous one. Just the day before the vote, the Election Commission requested the Constitutional Court suspend Pita 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.
The court had already agreed to hear a case claiming that Move Forward’s intent to change Thailand’s strict lèse-majesté law, which criminalises critique of the monarchy, amounts to an attempt to overthrow the country’s system of governance.
The road through parliament may also be rocky. The eight-party coalition supporting him in his premiership bid has only 312 members, leaving it 64 votes short of the majority 376 it needs to succeed in selecting Pita as prime minister.
These remaining votes will have to come either from members of parliament in parties outside Move Forward’s coalition or from the Senate formed in the wake of the military’s 2014 coup. While Move Forward deputy leader Sirikanya Tansakun has stated the party should have the necessary backing to elect Pita in the first round of voting, they have yet to provide any concrete information on the extent of their support in the Senate, leaving the outcome of the 13 July vote unclear.
I don’t think that the senators, already so conservative, will be intimidated. … In fact, [protests] might push them farther away from Pita.
Paul Chambers, Thai politics specialist at Naresuan University
After this, a variety of scenarios will become possible, ranging from a government led by another one of Move Forward’s coalition members to the declaration of martial law. There is no limit to the number of rounds of voting, meaning the selection process could either end quickly or drag on for weeks or months until a candidate receives enough votes to become prime minister.
It is currently unclear how many times Move Forward will attempt to put forward Pita as a candidate for prime minister. While mass protests are likely to occur if the Senate votes down Pita’s premiership bid, said Paul Chambers, a specialist on Thai politics at Naresuan University, they are unlikely to significantly impact the overall outcome of the selection process.
“I don’t think that the senators, already so conservative, will be intimidated,” said Chambers. “In fact, [protests] might push them farther away from Pita.”
With no way to force Pita through, and no alternative candidates for prime minister to put forward, Move Forward could be pressed to allow a candidate from one of its coalition partners to make a bid for the premiership.
Any alternative candidate put forward by the coalition would probably come from Pheu Thai, the second-largest party in the grouping. However, a Pheu Thai-led coalition is likely to face many of the same challenges in securing enough votes in the Senate so long as it affiliates with Move Forward.
Thitinan explained many senators are concerned about Move Forward’s reform agenda, especially the party’s position on amending the country’s lèse-majesté laws that criminalise critique of the monarchy.
The lèse-majesté amendment is really the dam gate of wider reforms of the monarchy and the military,
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a professor of political science at Chulalongkorn University
“The lèse-majesté amendment is really the dam gate of wider reforms of the monarchy and the military,” Thitinan said. “With Move Forward within the coalition with Pheu Thai, the Senate might not vote for [Pheu Thai’s candidate].”
If the eight-party coalition currently attempting to form a government is unable to get enough votes to select a prime minister, there are two alternative options: Pheu Thai could form a coalition government including a number of parties that participated in the previous government, or the parties of the incumbent government could attempt to remain in power by forming a minority government.
Forming a coalition including military-linked parties from the previous government such as the Democrat Party or Palang Pacharat would lead Pheu Thai to incur both short-term and long-term political costs, according to Chambers.
In the short-term, if the Senate refuses to support a Pheu Thai candidate, the party may have to support a candidate from one of its coalition partners to be prime minister, despite being the largest party in the group. In the long-term, “many voters would determine that PT betrayed progressive policies for mere self-interest”, Chambers said. “This could reduce the amount of seats PT gets in the next election.”
While not ideal, such an arrangement would probably still be more stable than a minority government, which would lack a majority in the lower house of parliament and likely struggle to pass legislation. The heads of both the Bhumjaithai and the United Thai Nation parties, two of the three parties required to make forming such a minority government feasible, have already publicly stated their opposition to that route.
A minority government would also be vulnerable to removal by the opposition, Chambers noted. After the Senate’s legal right to vote on a prime minister expires in May 2024, he explained, a coalition composed solely of the incumbent parties would be unable to prevent their removal by the opposition.
While the process of forming a new government drags on, former general Prayuth Chan-ocha will remain prime minister and continue to preside over a caretaker government. If the process were to drag on for months, policy decisions that would ordinarily be made by the new government would instead end up being made by Prayuth’s caretaker government.
“Prayuth would probably be allowed to pass an emergency budget for the next year [and] he would also affect the next military reshuffle,” said Chambers.
That reshuffle, expected this year, marks the first time in more than two decades that the heads of all branches of the armed forces and police will be rotated concurrently. The move is seen as an important opportunity for any new, reformist government to assert more civilian control over Thailand’s security apparatus.
With so much at stake, Chambers said the spectre of military intervention always lurks in the wings if the process of government formation proves too time-consuming or chaotic.
“Months of parliamentary stalemate without a prime minister and growing demonstrations would lead to caretaker Prime Minister Prayuth Chanocha declaring martial law (a quiet coup spearheaded by the military),” he wrote in a message.
Microsoft: China accused of hacking US government emails
ReutersChina-based hackers have gained access to the email accounts of around 25 organisations, including government agencies, Microsoft says.
The software giant has not provided details of where the government agencies are based.
However, the US Department of Commerce has confirmed to the BBC that Microsoft notified it about the attack.
Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo was among the individuals impacted by the breach, according to reports.
“Microsoft notified the Department of a compromise to Microsoft’s Office 365 system, and the Department took immediate action to respond,” a US Department of Commerce spokesperson told the BBC.
“We are monitoring our systems and will respond promptly should any further activity be detected,” they added.
US media reported that the State Department had also been targeted by the hackers.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a BBC request for comment.
China’s embassy in London told the Reuters news agency that the accusation was “disinformation” and called the US government “the world’s biggest hacking empire and global cyber thief.”
Microsoft said the China-based hacking group – which it refers to as Storm-0558 – had accessed email accounts by forging digital authentication tokens required by the system. The tokens are typically used to verify a person’s identity.
“Storm-0558 primarily targets government agencies in Western Europe and focuses on espionage, data theft, and credential access,” the firm said.
The company said its investigations found that the breaches began in the middle of May and that it has now “mitigated the attack and have contacted impacted customers.”
“We added substantial automated detections for known indicators of compromise associated with this attack… and we have found no evidence of further access,” it added.
In May, Microsoft and Western spy agencies said Chinese hackers had used “stealthy” malware to attack critical infrastructure on American military bases in Guam.
Experts said it was one of the largest known cyber espionage campaigns against the US.
A key US military outpost, Guam’s ports and air bases would be crucial to any Western response to a conflict in Asia.
Beijing called the Microsoft report “highly unprofessional” and “disinformation”.
China routinely denies involvement in hacking operations regardless of the available evidence or context.
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Pita is sole PM candidate in parliament
A joint sitting of the House of Representatives and the Senate convened on Thursday morning for a prime ministerial debate and vote, as Move Forward Party (MFP) leader Pita Limjaroenrat was the sole candidate.
In the session Pheu Thai Party leader Cholnan Srikaew nominated Mr Pita as prime minister, with support from 302 House representatives.
Under the constitution, a candidate must receive at least 376 votes from among 500 House representatives and 250 senators to become prime minister. Eight coalition allies currently have 312 votes in the House.
Before the session, Mr Pita declined to answer reporters’ questions about his confidence in being voted as prime minister. The MFP leader said he hoped the joint sitting would have nothing to do with his iTV shareholding case and his party’s policy to amend Section 112, or the lese majeste law.
Meanwhile, Sutin Klangsaeng, a veteran politician from Pheu Thai, said he heard of a plan to postpone the prime ministerial vote and another plan to conclude the vote on Thursday. He said a postponement would have adverse effects on government formation.
If Mr Pita is not elected as prime minister, the next round of voting scheduled for July 19 might see another prime ministerial candidate, according to Mr Sutin.
Some political parties outside the eight coalition allies stood firm in their decision to abstain from voting for Mr Pita because his party planned to amend the lese majeste law. The parties included the Democrat and Chartthaipattana parties.
Senator Kittirat Ratanawaraha said most senators would abstain from voting, and less than 10 senators would vote for Mr Pita on Thursday.
House representatives and senators were debating on Mr Pita’s prime ministerial nomination, and the joint sitting was expected to cast votes at 5pm on Thursday.
The case against Fukushimaâs radioactive water release
A South Korean delegation visiting Japan in an attempt to stop the release of radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station into the Pacific Ocean has called on Tokyo to suspend and “completely reevaluate” its plan considering the threat to marine food chains and the existence of safer alternatives such as solidification.
Speaking at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Tokyo on July 12, Wi Seong-gon, a member of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea, called the Japanese government’s decision, which was recently approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a violation of international law, a violation of the London Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution, and “a serious threat to our shared oceans.”
Yoon Jae-kab, also a South Korean national assembly member, lamented that “At one time, Japan was a country that was more sensitive to nuclear and radiation safety than any other country in the world.”
“Japan led the London Convention’s 1993 ban on the disposal of radioactive waste in the world’s oceans,” he added. “However,” in a stunning about-face, “Japan is now planning to discharge 1.33 million tons of irradiated wastewater into the ocean, even though the water is not normal treated cooling water from a typical nuclear power plant but water contaminated with meltdown-induced radiation.”
Both Wi and Yoon are members of South Korea’s opposition Democratic Party. They were joined on the podium by Park Yeon-hwan, representative of the Korea Federation of Advanced Fisheries Leader in Jeollanamdo, a seafood-producing region on the Korean Peninsula’s southwest corner, and Tomoko Abe, a Japanese congressman with the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party.
As the situation stands, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), which owns and manages the Fukushima nuclear power station, will begin discharging wastewater into the ocean in August. This will be done after the water is treated using an Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) that removes radioactive materials.
On July 4, the IAEA issued a report which concluded that “the approach and activities to the discharge of ALPS-treated water taken by Japan are consistent with relevant international safety standards” and would have “a negligible radiological impact on people and the environment.”
Concerning the IAEA’s assessment, Park the fisherman asked if it’s that safe, why doesn’t Japan use the water in its own agriculture or industry?
On July 11, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reported that Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura had told the Fukushima prefectural fisheries cooperative association in a closed meeting that “Safety has been thoroughly confirmed, so I will explain (the plan) to you.”
His explanation was evidently not convincing, as the leader of the association replied, “We maintain our opposition to the release of the treated water. Our ultimate goal is the continuation of a safe and stable fishing industry.”
Back in 2015, Japanese authorities said they wouldn’t dump Fukushima wastewater into the sea without the “understanding” of local fishermen. They don’t have that understanding today, but they plan to do it anyway.
In an interview with South Korea’s Hankyoreh posted on June 21, Japanese National Diet member Tomoko Abe said, “This issue is not one that can be resolved by the Japanese government and the IAEA stating that the situation is fine.
“The sea is our shared asset. We need the understanding of the people who are concerned about the discharge and neighboring countries.”
Turning to water treatment, Abe noted that: “There isn’t enough data to verify the effectiveness of ALPS.” Samples were taken from only three of more than 1,000 tanks full of contaminated water and they were reportedly taken from the top of the tanks, where radioactivity is less concentrated.
“That means we can’t trust the data used to verify the effectiveness of ALPS,” she said. “This is an act of deception.” It is also an act of political convenience, as dumping the wastewater into the ocean is the cheapest and easiest solution to the problem.
The Korean delegation called both the performance verification of ALPS and IAEA’s safety assessment into question. Politician Yoon said, “Truth be told, the IAEA is an organization founded with the goal of promoting the atomic energy industry.”
But Abe is neither a total pessimist nor an inflexible critic of Japanese government policy. Asked how she thought the radioactive water should be disposed of, Abe said:
“It’s not too late. It is necessary to remove as much radioactive material as possible by running the water multiple times through ALPS, as TEPCO is doing now. Once the radioactive content has been lowered to below the threshold, it should be mixed with cement, sand, and other materials so it can be stored in solid form.”
However, groundwater is constantly flowing into the reactor site in Fukushima, coming into contact with the melted nuclear fuel and reactor components – a substance called corium – and the water used to cool the corium.
The groundwater is contaminated with numerous radionuclides, unstable elements that emit radiation as they break down including tritium, carbon-14 and isotopes of strontium, plutonium and iodine.
As Greenpeace points out in “The reality of the Fukushima radioactive water crisis,” a study published in October 2020:
“Tritium and strontium-90 have half-lives (the time it takes radiation to decay by 50%) of 12.3 and 28.8 years respectively. This means that, for these radionuclides alone, the radiation risk will remain for 125 to 290 years (the risk period is generally considered to be ten half-lives). However, there are many other radionuclides with even longer half-lives present in the contaminated water. For example, iodine-129 has a half-life of 13 million years.”
According to Tepco, the release of radioactive water into the ocean will continue for 30 years but that could prove a low-end estimate if decommissioning of the nuclear power station is delayed. In any case, the cumulative amount of radioactive water to be released over the next 30 years is likely to be huge.
According to a joint statement from 11 Korean national assembly and eight Japanese National Diet members, no estimate of this amount is publicly available. Greenpeace estimates that the 1.33 million tons of irradiated water mentioned by Yoon “could become 2 million tons within the next 10 years.”
As Yoon pointed out at the press conference, “radioactive materials dumped into the ocean are bound to be amplified and concentrated in toxicity as they move up the food chain.”
Radioactive fish, he said, will end up on our dinner tables. Wi noted that “The discovery of cesium-laden Rockfish [on the Fukushima coast] serves as a warning of the ecological accumulation of radioactive substances.”
In the more analytical language of Greenpeace, “Carbon-14 is integrated in the carbon cycle, which is very complex due to the presence of inorganic and organic carbon, in solid, liquid or gaseous forms. Put simply, carbon-14 is incorporated into all living matter to varying factors of concentration.
“With a half-life of 5,730 years, carbon-14 is a major contributor to global human collective dose; once introduced into the environment it will be delivered to local, regional and global populations for many generations.”
In a position paper issued in December 2022, the US National Association of Marine Laboratories stated that it opposes the release of radioactive water from the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power station into the Pacific Ocean.
Its assessment was “based on the fact that there is a lack of adequate and accurate scientific data supporting Japan’s assertion of safety. Furthermore, there is an abundance of data demonstrating serious concerns about releasing radioactively contaminated water.”
On the other hand, The Society for Radiological Protection in the UK states that “The IAEA verdict is entirely justifiable.” It said, “there should be no concerns that these operations [the release of ALPS-treated waste water] could in any way affect human health or the environment.”
But the UK is far away and both Chinese and Korean public opinion are inflamed on the issue.
On July 11, Hong Kong chief executive John Lee Ka-chiu told the press that if Japan releases radioactive water into the ocean, his government will greatly expand restrictions on the import of Japanese seafood products. China’s central government already did that last week. Demand for Japanese seafood has already dropped substantially in China and South Korea.
On July 12, it was reported that the Japanese government would provide fishermen with 80 billion yen ($600 million) in financial support to offset their losses and win their understanding.
Meanwhile, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in Vilnius on the sidelines of the NATO summit that the release of Fukushima wastewater would be suspended if the radioactivity exceeded safety standards.
President Yoon’s government has accepted the IAEA report, despite the opposition of an estimated 85% of the South Korean population. That is seen by critics as part of his efforts to improve relations with Japan. If that is indeed the case, Wi avers it’s the wrong way to go about it.
The process of releasing radioactive wastewater into the ocean might be cheap and easy, but the total cost, political as well as economic, could be very high. Another protest against the dumping plan it is scheduled to be held in Fukushima on July 17.
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