Weekly highlights | Bangkok Post: news

The Four Seasons Hotel saga will probably shift from the social network gossip arena to the courtroom now that defamation complaints have been lodged with the police by the prime minister's legal team. Parliamentary debates on the charter rewrite have started and it is expected that the government will win again, after its two executive financial decrees were also endorsed by the Constitution Court.

The uproar surrounding Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's "secret" meeting with a group of businessmen on the 7th floor of the Four Seasons Hotel on February 8 took a new turn with the filing of three complaints at Lumpini police station against four Democrat MPs accusing them of defaming Ms Yingluck. The four Democrats are Thepthai Sepong, Sirichok Sopha, Chavanond Intarakomalyasut and Malika Boonmeetrakul.Mr Thepthai, Mr Sirichok and Mr Chavanond are accused of speaking maliciously against the prime minister on their talk show on the Democrat Party’s satellite TV channel, Blue Sky, on February 15; Ms Malika is accused of smearing the prime minister by saying that she was unsuitable as a mother and a prime minister.If Lumpini police feel that the accusations have grounds, then criminal defamation charges will be filed against the four Democrats. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Yingluck has again used her Facebook page to defend herself. In her latest posting in the social network, she explained why she did not attend the House meeting on February in order to attend a meeting with the businessmen at the Four Seasons. She said there were no matters on the House meeting agenda which required her attention, so she skipped the meeting. She added that she discussed economic issues with the businessmen and that the meeting was not held at Government House because the businessmen didn’t want to spot by the media.However, the prime minister will still have to explain away the meeting to the Ombudsman, which accepted a request to investigate it filed by the Political Green group, within 30 days.The government surely exhaled a huge sigh of relief after the Constitution Court ruled on Wednesday that the two executive financial decrees are not unconstitutional.One decree empowers the government to seek 350 billion baht in loans to implement a range of still undetermined flood prevention projects as part of the government’s water resources management plan. The other shifts the full burden of 1.4 trillion baht in public debt incurred from the bailout of failing banks and financial institutions in 1997/98 from the Finance Ministry to the Bank of Thailand’s Financial Institutions Development Fund. It’s a financial sleight of hand the government hopes will make it easier to raise funds.This means that the government can now focus on implementing flood prevention projects. Also the Finance Ministry can seek more loans for the development of the country as envisaged by the Pheu Thai Party.In the deep South, the government’s new compensation package for victims of violence at the hands of the state has caused widespread confusion and resentment.Of late, the...