Transcript of the above video:

This video is for lack of a better term sort of a special report. I have been covering this whole "Big Joke" situation for, well we have been covering "Big Joke" on this channel going back years, ever since he was heading up the Thai Immigration Division and let's just say his career has definitely been colourful and something rather interesting to watch and something that provides some data points to foreign nationals here in Thailand regarding how the law enforcement system works here and also data points on things like criminal procedure, things of this nature. Now I have gotten some, I'll just call it negative feedbacks in the comments on a number of these videos most notably there was one that said "oh this channel has just become a News site, this is so disappointing!" Well my response to that is I am very sorry my free content offends your elevated sensibilities or whatever but this is about as in the sweet spot of the bailiwick of this channel as it can get. This is a matter of news pertaining to Thai Law enforcement; it could have tremendous ramifications on the foreign community here in Thailand over the course of the next few months, even the oncoming years, so I do think it is rather relevant and again one of the biggest pieces of news probably in law enforcement circles probably since the last time we saw "Big Joke" hit the peaks and troughs of his career some years back. So again if people don't like watching these videos, whatever, I understand. It's one of the reasons why moving forward we will probably do a lot of these as these special reports and I will just put them up as and when I make them but in a more-timely manner. It won't be the usual cycle of the videos on this channel most likely moving forward. I suspect things will probably manifest themselves on something of an uneven cadence if you will. So again yeah if you are used to our usual content, the last couple of days have been a little bit hijacked if you will by this overriding story pertaining to National Police here in Thailand. So yeah I'll try to do these as more as kind of ALERTS or something like this as and when necessary. That stated, let's get going here because there is a lot going on here, there is a ton going on here. So we have been trying to keep up with this but it has been moving quite quickly. So we are going to cite a number of different publications here, a number of different articles hopefully to try to get people up to speed.  

So the first one being Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Police chief hands all 'Big Joke' cases over to NACC. NACC stands for National Anti-Corruption Commission. Quoting directly: "National Police Chief Torsak Sukvimol said on Wednesday he is handing all legal cases involving his deputy Surachate Hakparn over to the National Anti-Corruption Commission, hoping to end the impression of conflict within the Royal Thai Police Office. Pol Gen Torsak announced his decision to reporters at Police Headquarters. His Deputy Pol Gen Surachate, alias Big Joke, was also present. "All cases (against Pol Gen Surachate) will be sent to the NACC, which is a neutral organization, so that justice can be guaranteed...This is to prevent any image of conflict. We have no conflict," Pol Gen Torsak said." So that is sort of number one that we are dealing with here. The case has gotten moved over to the National Anti-Corruption Commission. Then the real shake up came down with this story. Quoting directly, Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Pol chief Torsak, deputy Surachate transferred to inactive posts. Quoting directly: "Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin on Wednesday abruptly transferred National Police Chief Torsak Sukvimol and his deputy Surachate Hakparn to the Prime Minister's office, in a move to end the mounting rift within the Royal Thai Police. The Prime Minister then appointed Deputy National Police Chief Kitrat Panphet the acting Police Chief." So let's stop there for a minute and understand just how big a deal this is. Both the head of the National Police as well as "Big Joke" his deputy, present deputy, have now been transferred to inactive positions and we now have an acting National Police Chief here in Thailand. So that is pretty big news in and of itself. Quoting further: "Earlier in the day, Pol Gen Torsak and Pol Gen Surachate had shared a vehicle when going to a meeting with Mr. Srettha." Okay, we are going into even more detail here. So those are the things to understand up to that point, that there has been a major shake up here. The National Police Chief and his Deputy have both been moved to the Prime Minister's Office in inactive roles. Now let's get into the higher weeds of that and for that we go over to Thai Examiner, that is thaiexaminer.com. As per usual and the Bangkok Post has done a heck of a job keeping track of all the detail on this. As per usual, Thai Examiner really drills down, a lot of good insight and information in there, we are going to quote some excerpts here. Again Thai examiner.com, the article is titled: Big Joke survives and alleged effort to discredit him. PM appoints temporary police chief and enquiry panel. Let's get into the panel a little bit in this article and then we will get into some of the sort of the aftermath or what we are dealing with in the dénouement if you will of this major series of events. Quoting directly: “PM APPOINTS TEMPORARY POLICE CHIEF Prime Minister intervenes after revelations of massive police corruption. General Surachate Hakparn and Police Chief General Torsak Sukvimol were temporarily assigned and investigations are underway. National Anti-Corruption Commission takes over Big Joke's cases. Scandal rocks Thai Police.” Quoting further: "Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin was forced to make a dramatic intervention in the affairs of the Royal Thai Police on Wednesday. It came after a devastating press conference on Tuesday. In short, this revealed allegations of industrialized corruption within the force. The press conference given by lawyers and representatives of General Surachate Hakparn or Big Joke raised serious concerns about ongoing efforts to prosecute the Deputy Police Chief. As a result, lawyers for "Big Joke" petitioned the PM on Wednesday, in a dramatic move, both the National Police Chief General tourists were assigned to the Prime Minister's Office for 60 days." We'll get into that here in a minute.

That said, again I cannot stress how big a deal this is. To those who are sort of belittling this in my comment section as “hey you are just a News Channel or something now”, well that has never been our purpose in making this channel. Yes we do cover current events but I like to highlight how it interacts with law enforcement, legal procedure, criminal procedure, and just the state of the rule of law here in Thailand. So again when you see both the Deputy National Police Chief as well as the National Police Chief placed presumably, at least temporarily in inactive posts, this is not an insignificant thing. So again, quoting further from that Thai Examiner article and as usual we are quoting a bit more than we usually do from these type of articles. That article is really long and it gets into some really detailed analysis, so I urge those who are watching this video again probably worth it to go check that out. Quoting further: "The upshot was that both officers were temporarily relieved of their duties for 60 days. The pair are to be assigned to the Prime Minister's Office. In the meantime, a Committee of Senior Civil Servants is to conduct its own enquiries. In effect, it will investigate the claims against General Surachate and the controversy. Similarly, the case linked with the BNK Master website is to be handed over to the National Anti-Corruption Commission." Yeah, again that initial article we were quoting Pol Gen Torsak said yeah, I am pushing that over to the Anti-Corruption Commission to do a neutral adjudication. My commentary here would be this. It looks to me like what is going on here is for lack of a better term and not to say this with negative sort of connotations, basically what is going on is both of them are being put in a kind of time out or penalty box while this whole issue is further investigated and presumably adjudicated so as to figure out exactly what's going on here. I think that that's the key thing folks who are watching this need to take away is an investigation is underway and both of these folks are sort of placed in limbo for lack of a better term while that investigation is underway. Quoting further: "The Prime Minister emphasized that the transfers were temporary and certainly not a punishment.” I think that's worth pointing out. It doesn't look to me like that's what is going on here. It looks to me like what is going on here is the folks who are even above the police here in Thailand, the sort of civilian control if you will just wants to know what is going on here and for that reason they are undertaking these steps. Quoting further: "The move was intended to facilitate impartial investigations into ongoing controversies." Quoting further: "He also announced the formation of a three-member fact-finding committee to examine the allegations against certain police officers. He revealed that it would including police officer and a former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Interior. He insisted on the need for neutrality and impartiality in the committee's proceedings.” So again I don't think it is particularly warranted to take away from this that this is just sort of politics as usual or whatever people think, how people think the Thai system works. Oftentimes I think foreign nationals are quite out of sorts when they get into a ‘how they think it works here’. Long story short what it looks like to me is happening here again is these two are being placed in a kind of a neutral holding pattern while an investigation can be undertaken to impartially figure out what the heck was going on.

Finally to sort of wrap this up, a final article again, from the Bangkok Post bangkokpost.com. Now this is more an editorial but it does provide some further data points for those who are interested in getting into this without at the end of the day, like myself having to comb through all of this stuff to figure out what exactly is going on here. Quoting directly again, Bangkok Post bangkokpost.com the article is titled: Handling a police feud. Quoting further: “Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin deserves praise for promptly transferring two high ranking police officers – National Police Chief Pol Gen Torsak Sukvimol and his deputy Pol en Surachate Hakparn – to inactive posts at Government House. A war of words between the two had turned ugly and was corroding public trust; that is, if there was any left in the Royal Thai Police force to lose.” Again, reminder, this is an editorial. Quoting further: “Amidst it all, Mr Srettha displayed his crisis management skills by appointing Pol Gen Kitrat Panphet, deputy police chief, as acting National Police Chief.” Quoting further: “Now the onus falls on Mr Srettha and the acting National Police Chief, Pol Gen Kitrat, to clear up and resolve this issue which involves a police feud and allegations of corruption.” Quoting further: "Pol Gen Kitrat must communicate with the public and media about the probe and make it transparent." Quoting further: "The last thing the public needs is another probe behind closed doors." Quoting further: “Mr Srettha and the new acting Police Chief must treat Pol Gen Surachate fairly, just like everyone else, despite Pol Gen Surachate’s constant boasts that he is a strong candidate to be the next National Police Chief as he shredded his and the RTP’s image to pieces.” Again, reminder, this is an editorial that I am quoting from. Quoting further: "Police General Surachate has also undermined the police judicial investigation process by refusing to accept a police summons on the money laundering accusations. He must enter the Justice process like everyone else.” Now that pertains to a data point we brought up in a prior video wherein we were quoting the Thai Examiner who was noting a comment made by an officer at the time that the summons was put at "Big Joke's" house where they basically said this had not been served and we got into the analysis of that as to what that meant. So again I think we are sort of seeing the culmination of all of this, I hesitate to call it chicanery but all of these moves being made which is now both of them have been placed in an inactive post and they are going to undertake this investigation. Finally quoting further: "Perhaps the Prime Minister now finds himself in the position where he can begin cleaning up the RTP." Now again I only put in that last article because it's pretty up-to-date data points regarding what's going on here. Again that is an editorial; I would not say I agree with everything that is being espoused within that editorial. That stated this is a major development, this is big news for lack of a better term. I don't know what this would be akin to in sort of in an American context. It would be kind of like the head of the FBI and the deputy head of the FBI simultaneously being put on leave to be investigated; that would be I mean kind of the apples to apples analogy if you were looking at it from the American perspective.  

So as you can see, this is not an insignificant turn of events. How does it pertain to foreign nationals? Well I have got to tell you, and again this is just my intuition talking here and my time, 16 years over here, it has been my observation that these kind of things, well let me put it this way, this happening at the same time we are seeing all of these spates of problems with foreigners here in Thailand, especially the most recent situation involving two foreign nationals who apparently attacked a Police Officer in the course of fulfilling his duties and they even disarmed him and had his gun or something, again we don't know the full details of that, we are still waiting for that adjudication but on top of that, the so-called 'beach bully' scandal that popped up where we saw some real problems cropping up involving a foreigner accused of assault. We have seen other cases involving foreigners recently. All of this coupled with what I can only describe is probably an atmosphere of internal tension within the police force at least during the 60-day period while this probe is ongoing, I think could lead to a situation where the upshot is ‘look there's going to be a lot more scrutiny on foreign nationals.’ I made a number of videos on this recently contemporaneously with this one; we're going to be putting those out in the days ahead. Long story short what I'm trying to say here is you put these two things together and it's kind of like fire and gasoline a little bit. I could see a situation where you're going to see Thai Police wanting to perhaps endeavour with a little bit more assiduousness in their police endeavours as it pertains to foreigners because otherwise you have to kind of deal with the tension internally having to do with this case. Believe me when I say it, it's often times easier to deal with something sort of outside your own immediate surrounding that you can deal with within your comfort zone if you will rather than deal with things that make one uncomfortable. And I have got to say just as a Thai national standing here, yeah it makes me a little bit uncomfortable all this tension arising within the police force so I could certainly see where rank and file police officers would find their own tension as well. 

Long story short, the thing to take away from this video not only the data points we have already provided, but I could see where this could have an impact on that heightened scrutiny we've been talking about, about foreigners doing business and living and working here in the Kingdom of Thailand.