Transcript of the above video:

Frequent viewers of this channel may notice I am a little bit redder than normal and unfortunately I got a little bit more sun here recently than I would otherwise intend to and unfortunately I have two colours. I have extremely pale white or beet red, there is really nothing in between and there is certainly no tan in the repertoire that is my skin colour so if I am a little off putting in some of these videos, I do apologize. 

In any event, basically I want to go over something I think that has been kind of a disturbing trend the last 18 24 months here in Thailand that is much 24 definitely 18 months and really in earnest about 9 months here in Thailand going back into April of 2021. We first saw this when the issue involving masks came up. I am going to get to that in a minute but just to kind of preface this I have really noticed that there has been a very cavalier attitude amongst Government Spokespeople and it has been exacerbated by the media where they make certain statements stating sometimes that “this is a law”; “this is the law”; “we are requiring you to do this under the law” and as we have discussed at length and I will go ahead and put a link up in the video back to our initial analysis of the so-called mask mandate going back into April of 2021 when that came out, I couldn't find any basis for the analysis that that was in any way legally enforceable as a law and I had a lot of questions about that. At the time, I was more confused than anything. As time has gone on, I have become more perturbed and I am actually kind of a little bit more ticked off if you will at the media for just sort of coming out and again just blaring like a bullhorn that “well this is now the law!", "this is a requirement, you got to do this!" Well, says who? More importantly says "what due process?" Did Parliament pass a law? What happened here? Nobody has been able to point to any place where that has been the case, getting to the masks, I will get there in a minute, because to one degree or another we have kind of been vindicated at least or at least vindicate is the wrong word. Our analysis from April of 2021 has been reinforced by some recent events. Just as an example of this kind of flippant statements that something is the rule, it is the law.

I am going to go to an article from the Pattaya Mail, that is, pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Pattaya "restaurants" ignoring health tests on entry. Quoting directly: "Thai Law is explicit. When you enter an eatery whether one serving hearty meals or booze bar offering stale nuts, you should prove you have had an antigen test within the last 72 hours or submit to one at the entrance administered by staff." Well where is that Law? I haven't seen that Law promulgated and hey let me be clear, this is not me grandstanding for no reason or anything. I am genuinely asking the question. I am happy to stand corrected and make a follow-up video where we go into further analysis on this, but I haven't seen this anywhere and we have been looking. I have had a Thai lawyer here in the office who has done some research on this. We can't find any, we have seen statements where people have said "this is what you should do", but we haven't seen any promulgated jurisprudence to this effect so when someone says “Thai Law is explicit”, well where is it or was it just somebody said something?

Going to another article here, this one is from the National News Bureau of Thailand specifically thainews.prd.go.th, and the title of this article is: MOPH Confirms No Legal Obligations for People to Wear Face Masks. Now we were talking about this second of 2021. I could not find where there was any statutory authority for this. Quoting directly: “Thailand's Public Health Minister confirmed that there are no laws forcing people to wear face masks, but he also sought cooperation from all parties including Thai citizens and overseas tourists in order to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak." Now I am not going to get into efficacy issues, there are plenty other places out there where you can go look up source material on that. We have been talking about this purely from a legal standpoint going back into April 2021. At that time and you can see the analysis in the link that I will put in the description below, it is a long video it is like a half hour video; it took us that long to really comb through this stuff and suss out where exactly or where there seem to lack any statutory authority. The enabling Act, the Communicable Diseases Act which I sometimes colloquially off hand will refer to as the Public Health Act but it is actually Communicable Diseases Act as amended going back I believe in the 2015, which the legislative history in and of itself on that is interesting to say the least, I will leave it at that. Long story short, even in the Act it doesn't say anything can be compelled. There are certain things that might be able to be prohibited but not compelled. Again, that to me is the basis I think it is why the Public Health Minister notwithstanding the media blaring out for months on end that it was the "Law" to wear masks; notwithstanding that, it was never actually there in black and white, that I could see. I am always happy to stand corrected. Again like with this, I haven't seen any promulgated legislation that says anybody has to be tested for anything to enter any place. I have seen announcements that that is what they want; that is what authorities would like to see but I haven't seen anything to the equivalent of "that is the law!" And, in light of the fact that we have sat around now for going on what, nine months now with folks that said, in the media primarily, I will say if you read official government communiqués and things, far more nuanced. Then the media sometimes will pick up on some and I am not pointing anybody out the Pattaya Mail. I have seen this said in a ton of other publications it is not just the Pattaya Mail that is just sort of the one I picked out. I probably should have picked out another one or something just to show that this isn't just one place where this type of thing is being said. The point I am trying to make is we have seen this kind of blanket non-nuanced statement made before and later on down the road we just find out that just wasn't the actual case. So with respect to it now, and again I am happy to stand corrected if I am missing something, I will happily make a follow-up video and will deep dive into this further but I have not seen any promulgated law regarding these tests so the notion that Thai Law is explicit doesn't make any sense to me.