Little hope talks will bear fruit Forum denounced as govt
whitewash
Post reporters, Bangkok Post Dec 19, 2002
Pak Moon protesters have little hope of any solution being reached at
tomorrow's meeting with Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his advisers _
the gulf between the two sides is too great.
Mr Thaksin is insisting the villagers' NGO advisers cannot attend the
meeting at Government House.
He has accused the protesters of receiving financial help from abroad to
stage their rally, and claimed activists burned the villagers' shacks at the
dam site in Ubon Ratchathani province on Sunday and then blamed it on the
electricity authority.
The government was not duty-bound to attend to the needs of NGOs, he
said.
The advisers would stay on the ringside and watch on Channel 11, which would
broadcast the forum live. ``I don't want anyone putting words in the
villagers' mouths,'' Mr Thaksin said.
The media's presence at the forum would prevent misleading news reports
about the issue in the future, he said.
The Assembly of the Poor, to which most of the Pak Moon protesters are
affiliated, issued a statement yesterday denouncing the forum as a
government whitewash.
Somkiat Pongpaiboon, an assembly adviser, condemned the government for
trying to exclude the villagers' advisers.
It was a move orchestrated to ``herd the poor into a pen so as to make them
docile''. Breaking the Pak Moon impasse required the right attitude, he
said. The poor must not be regarded as wayward law-breakers. It would not
help the situation to try to divide and rule in order to emasculate the
movement.
He said the government's allegations the protesters were each paid 1,000
baht to stage the rally, and that the NGOs were pulling the strings with
foreign backing only ``splashed fuel over flames''.
``From now on, there will only be confrontation,'' Mr Somkiat said.
The forum would yield a ``lop-sided'' result if the villagers were denied
advice and consultation from NGOs while the government had countless
advisers on its side.
The assembly would forward the list of representatives to the Friday meeting
to the government today. It also wanted the government to provide a written
agenda and format for the meeting. Energy Minister Pongthep Thepkanchana
said representatives of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand
would have first chance to explain their side of the story at tomorrow's
meeting.
Egat would then leave the forum and dam researchers and villagers would come
in later to air their views.
Egat has been embroiled in bitter conflict with villagers living near the
Pak Moon dam. It insists the dam gates cannot be opened year-round as the
villagers demand. There would then not be enough hydro-electric power to
meet the needs of the lower Northeast.
The villagers maintain that opening the gates for only four months a year
would not allow the ecology to recover, the fish would not return and they
could not make a living.
Wanida Tantiwittayapitak, an assembly adviser, said tomorrow's meeting was
likely to fail. ``We have almost no hopes in the coming talks because of the
way the government accused us.'' Fisherman Somkiat Phonphai said he did not
believe the talks would be over in one day. The prime minister needed time
to understand the villagers' economy, way of life and culture. ``We don't
even know what volts and megawatts are. We just know our living.''
He urged the prime minister to allow academics or experts in the electricity
issue to join the talks in order to compare their information with that of
Egat; ``otherwise we will always lose to the government''. |
