The Executive Committee of Post Publishing Plc has promoted Umesh Pandey to be the new Editor of the <i>Bangkok Post</i>.
This is to prepare for the retirement of Pichai Chuensuksawadi, the current Editor, at the end of this year.
Umesh first joined the newspaper in 1996 but left for Reuters and the Wall Street Journal in 1999. He returned to the Bangkok Post in 2006 as editor of Asia Focus, a position he has held until this new appointment.
Pichai has worked for Post Publishing Plc for 34 years, during which he served twice as Editor of the Bangkok Post, from 1994-2002 and from 2014 to the present.
Pichai will continue as Editor-in-Chief of Post Publishing until his mandatory retirement at the end of this year.
The Executive Committee has also promoted Nha-Kran Loahavilai, the Deputy Editor-in-Chief, to be the Deputy Chief Operating Officer of Newspaper Business for the company.
The new appointments take effect on Aug 1, the day Post Publishing marks its 70th anniversary.
Umesh has written his last column as Editor of Asian Focus, which we reprint below.
Standing up for Thailand
By Umesh Pandey
It was about a decade ago that Kowit Sanandang, then the editor of the Bangkok Post, asked me to think of something that would be transformational in the years to come and how the newspaper should cover it. My first thought was of Asia and how it was becoming the engine of growth for the world.
That was the origin of Asia Focus, which began life as part of the Business section before becoming a stand-alone weekly in 2012. In it we set out to cover issues of importance — economic, political, social and cultural — in Southeast Asia plus the rest of the region, with a special focus on four major powers: Japan, China, South Korea and India. That coverage has touched on many aspects from hot business topics such as the startup environment of today, to the rise of the democratic movement in Myanmar to the sometimes taboo issues of gender in Asian societies.
Our aim has always been to be relevant and forthright, and often we’ve been regarded as particularly hard-hitting. We are flattered that so many people now routinely refer to Thailand’s current prime minister as Dear Leader; they read it in Asia Focus first.
Over the years new colleagues have joined as others left for greener pastures but our core mission has not changed, and that is to provide readers with hard-hitting news and commentaries, which we will continue to do. I myself am now moving on to take up a new position as Editor of the Bangkok Post on Aug 1. In that role I will continue to speak out.
As I prepared to write my last commentary as the Editor of this section, many ideas crossed my mind. Among them were the revival of communal hatreds in Jammu & Kashmir in India, and the fallout from the recent international arbitration ruling against China on the divisive South China Sea issue.
But what better issue to talk about, I concluded, than our own country and its diminishing role in Asia and Asean? We have hammered away at this issue for years in this section, because it pains me as a Thai national to see our country slide downward in stature while we squabble among ourselves. The result of our political paralysis is that today the words of our leaders have little value among our neighbours or the global community.
One has to wonder where we went wrong. It is easy to point fingers at others, but if we are honest we have to admit that we all are responsible for paving the way for the military to take control of our country. We are the people who are unwilling to accept the outcome of elections even though all parties are equally corrupt in their electoral practices. And we are the ones who rush onto the streets to protest if and when a government that is not of our choice comes to power.
When it comes to exercising our rights as citizens to cast ballots in elections, about 40% of us don’t bother to show up. But when it comes to protesting we all end up on one side or the other without thinking whether we have done our civic duty or not.
Now we face another crucial date on Aug 7, in a referendum that could determine how our country will proceed in the near future. It may be one of those rare moments where we can try to recover some of our lost esteem, and it is essential that we all go and cast our votes either for or against the draft constitution.
Our ballots are the only weapon we have if we want to put the country back on the democratic path, because a large turnout will be a testament to high public interest in the process. It will also mean that whichever side wins, it will be able to claim it has the weight of public opinion on its side.
The Election Commission earlier said it wanted to see an 80% voter turnout, which would be a miracle given the 57% turnout for the 2007 charter vote. Our only hope is that the process is clean, as there have been reports suggesting that monitoring agencies are being discouraged from doing their vital work.
All in all, as we head toward our D-day, bear in mind that it is not just a domestic issue that is at stake but our very identity as Thais and the standing of our country in the world in the years to come.