Is the UDD serious in opposing double standards?

Bangkok Post 12/01/2010

By selectively picking on Gen Surayud Chulanont, a privy councillor and former premier, in its campaign against what it sees as the government's use of double standards, the UDD appears set on discrediting the Privy Council, not just attacking the government.

The Khao Yai Thiang land controversy represents just a tip of the iceberg of the extensive forest land encroachment problem in this country, which involves as many as 400,000 families nationwide.

Without the high social standing of Gen Surayud it would have received scant attention.

But the dramatic targeting of Gen Surayud by the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) in its weekend protest over his alleged illegal land ownership on the Khao Yai Thiang mountain in Sikhieu district of Nakhon Ratchasima puts it in a different context and appears to be intended to discredit the Privy Council.

Gen Surayud is considered to be close to Gen Prem Tinsulanond, the privy council president the UDD has repeatedly accused of being instrumental in the overthrow of the Thaksin government by the military coup in 2006.

The protest was also an attack on the Abhisit government, which the UDD claims has applied a double standard in refusing to take legal action against Gen Surayud because of his high standing.

The UDD has demanded that the embattled privy councillor return the 16-rai of land on which he built a vacation home to the state and that he should resign from the Privy Council.

Gen Surayud, according to one of his aides, is willing to return the controversial land in order to end the problem, but he will not quit the Privy Council “because he has done nothing wrong”.

Gen Surayud did not acquire the land through forest encroachment. Instead he bought it from the third owner, who produced tax receipts as evidence of legal land ownership but was apparently unaware that the land in question could not be sold to outsiders, only passed on to statutory heirs.

There are many other people, including politicians in both the government and opposition camps and within the Bangkok elite, who acquired land in forest reserves in the same fashion - to build resorts or their vacation homes.

So if the UDD is genuinely serious about targetting cases where a double standard has been applied, it should go after these illegal landowners, too, regardless of their political affiliation. Take for instance the Alpine golf course and resort - land which was donated to a temple but somehow ended up in the hands of a Puea Thai MP.

But the UDD appears to be aware that any attempt to reclaim for the state all the land encroached from forest reserves, whetherby landless farmers or already sold to outsiders, would stir up a hornets' nest. Hundreds of thousands of forest reserve squatters who are mostly grassroot people would likely rise up in protest. And that would not benefit the UDD and the opposition Puea Thai Party which claims to champion the cause of the grassroots people.

The likelihood is that the UDD will not push for the application of a standard practice on all land encroachment cases for fear of this backlash. Only for the Khao Yai Thiang controversy and a few other cases involving the Democrats or their big financial sponsors. Cases where it can expect to make political gains.

Likewise, the Royal Forest Department should not react in knee-jerk fashion to appease the UDD by waging all-out war against all forest squatters. It would be suicidal for the government.