During a party meeting on December 3, Sudarat Keyurapan who was chosen as the Pheu Thai Party’s election strategy gave a speech in front of party leaders and members on the political direction of the Pheu Thai Party.

In a part of the speech, she was caught saying:

“We (The Pheu Thai Party) never left the Thai citizens behind. We have built a strong base of income for the people in all social classes. The agriculture sector for instance has been elevated in all small, medium and large enterprises. We have converted people’s debts into opportunities for making a living and protected small businesses from becoming a slave at the bottom of the ladder”

Has the Pheu Thai Party never left anyone behind for real?

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This is false, the Pheu Thai Party has left farmers behind while they were in power when Yingluck Shinawatra was the Prime Minister of Thailand. Not only did she leave them with immense debt due to insufficient funds to subsidize for the rice they bought from farmers, but the Prime Minister also left the country while the people struggled.

“Leaving no one behind” is one of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha’s core vision as shown on his website https://www.prayutchan-o-cha.com/th which states that:

 managing the country and taking care of the citizens, regardless of who becomes the leader must uphold the values of good governance, takes the citizens’ interests and well-being as central pillars in all considerations. Cooperation with neighboring countries, allies and all international relations must also go in parallel under the context of “Stronger together, leaving no one behind”

Given this vision which has been expressed for some time by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, Khun Ying Sudarat’s message is clearly not original.

The Pheu Thai Party has certainly left people behind, we must rewind back to the Rice Subsidy Scheme which promised farmers 15,000 baht per ton of rice. This was regarded by both domestic and international news agencies as a populist policy which eventually led to the collapse of the Pheu Thai Party.

Ms. Yingluck Shinawatra who led the Pheu Thai Party at the time was found guilty for malfeasance and given a 5-year sentence in absentia, allowing various fraudulent acts to occur behind the rice scheme and costing the Thai economy 500 billion baht ($15 billion).

As for the farmers that the Pheu Thai government vae hope to, a majority of them struggled to make ends meet. When they submitted their subsidy receipts to pay back for farming equipment and fertilizers, they received no financial compensation from the government.

Over time when their accounts were depleted, farmers had to rely on informal debtors to pay back for their loans with insufficient funds for a new harvest. As seen with the informal debtor crackdown, farmers were forced to pay a whopping 10-20% interest rate per month.

Some farmers even resorted to suicide due to their inability to pay their debts.