Nation Pride Discipline Bravery Tolerance

When I was an army reserve, during 3 years of training(60 hours a year), I've learnt to march with the following march chant:

Nation Pride Discipline Bravery Tolerance - We are Soldiers in Training

Reflecting back on that chat, I remember well the drill instructor who always preached alot about Discipline and the love for the Nation as the key point.

On a related topic, I remembered very distinctly about the military reshuffle a few years ago, in which the reshuffle has pushed alot of people who were close with the government up to position of power. One of the main mover was a relative of the PM who had the position of the commander of the army. When he was appointed, he claimed that he had the ability to serve the country, and he would serve it on the best interest, and it has nothing to do with the bloodline to the skeptical media and academia. To be exact, I did find that a big case of cronyism, though there wasn't much to write much yet at that moment. His phrase was, "Don't judge me before I work".

Forward a few years, and with all the fiasco with the reprogramming of Channel 5 that the army chief has done numerous shady dealings that benefited his henchmen, that I would summary in a list as the follows:

1) Using the Thai Military Bank to procure loans in an illegal channel
2) Reprogramming Channel 5(that is owned by the army) to benefit a newly established media company that is close with the army chief
3) Transfering of debt from the new media company identity into Channel 5
4) From point 3, we can see that the army chief is helping a private company dump bad debt to a government owned organization that ultimately has to be payed by the public taxes
5) Changing concession details for Channel 5 which is grossly undervalued - as we can see to support the private media companies that come to manage the programming.

With all of this scandal, the army chief, Chaisith Shinawatra, has the nerve to come out and say that what he is doing is good for the army and that the public should not interfere as they know nothing. That is a complete farce! The interest of the army is not to serve themeselves but to serve the people :-/

I would like to remind our army chief about one of the first vow we did in army camp - Nation Pride Discipline Bravery Tolerance, which sadly I don't see anything coming from our army chief at this moment. After waiting to see for a few years, I have no reason to believe our army chief is capable of serving our country, and is only a self - serving bigot only interested in serving himself and his henchman to the expense of this country.

Though the PM has mentioned he would go to the bottom of this deal, and suspending the action of his cousin until pending investigation. I've heard from a number of people that they are happy that the PM has stepped up to stop such irregularity to happen which is in line with his "Think New Do New" slogan of his Thai Rak Thai party, but I have to say I'm very skeptical. Our PM does not escape without blame. To make it simple I'll outline what has he done wrong and is a very important part why this fiasco has happened:

1) The PM has deliberately shuffled his government on the forming of the NBC that is an independent body to forsee all the affairs of the media.
2) An observation why that is not pushed is because of several media companies that are close to the government has alot to gain with government support and without an independent council to oversee - note the previous observation on his relative, and another one I won't want to mention.
3) The modification of the army reshuffle behind the scenes to get relatives, classmates, and supporters in position of power that reflects cronyism than visionary tactics. I do applaud that he has taken the military coup out of the frame by essentially having placed his supporters in all quarters of the military which is visionary in another sense. Notice the person we are talking about is in charge of the army.
4) Manipulation of the media which we see the ITV takeover, and its progressive dumbing down, and now we see more in Channel 5 and later in Channel 11. All media is in a semi noozle, and maybe someday, my random rambling would be closed - who knows?
5) The movement of the government under our PM on media issues seems to be moving progressively towards allowing a person with the intials of PTT (go figure) to play an increasing role in controlling all of Thai Media.
6) The sudden U-Turn by the PM on his cousin's decision has been a basis of the PM's political game. One recent example, an unknown source said the PM was going to use public funding to buy Liverpool FC. Now after an outcry, we can see the PM saying someone invented the news, and he was creating a special lottery fund. What the PM did was test the water with the media, then make an official note later when the water has been figured. Look back a few years, notice the pattern, and go figure, I'll leave that for our readers.

Sigh... I'll leave my rant today, before I get too depressing and jump off a bridge. Talking on related news, I'm going to Chula tommorrow to take pictures of the graduation ceremony there, hopefully I can get some good pictures :)