A file photo of Future Forward Party leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit.
BANGKOK — A Future Forward Party leader said Thursday he already had a backup plan in place if the court decides to dissolve his party over a 191-million baht loan case later this month.
Party deputy leader Chamnan Chanruang said he could be banned from politics along with other executives for up to 20 years if the Constitutional Court found the party guilty in its verdict, which is scheduled for Feb 21. The party, who commands 76 seats in the lower house, is accused of breaching a voting law by receiving a loan from his billionaire founder, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit.
“If the party is dissolved, the executive board will go down. We could be banned from politics for up to 20 years and the situation will be like a beehive being crushed,” Chamnan said. “Mass migration will take place to another party [as agreed], though some may not toe the line.”
Chamnan said while he has plans for life after politics for the worst-case scenario, he believes there’s still a chance that the court could dismiss the case.
“We requested for 17 witnesses to be heard but the court said they already had sufficient materials for adjudication,” Chamnan said.
He said this lack of witness testimony could be interpreted to mean the court was preparing to decide in favor of the party, because if they want to dissolve the party, Chamnan said, the judges would at least exhaust all counter arguments and evidence first.
Chamnan also said a leaked document shows that 32 other political parties have been taking loans from their party leaders.
If Future Forward is dissolved, others will likely have to face the same fate, leading to a malfunctional parliament, he said.
Less optimistic is senior party official Chaithawat Tulathon, who is widely expected to lead the party in case all the executives are banned from politics.
Writing on Facebook, Chaithawat said that the legal charges against the party have “no legitimacy”.
“They want to really dissolve the party in order to destroy our struggle for democracy, and to pin down Thai society under the power of the privileged groups forever,” he wrote.
Article 66 of Political Parties Act bars individuals from donating money or assets worth more than 10 million baht to parties within a period of one year.
Article 72 of the law also prohibits political parties and party executives from taking donations, cash or assets from an illegitimate source. The Future Forward insists it was a legitimate loan, and not a donation.
The verdict is scheduled just three days before the House of Representatives is due to start its No-Confidence censure debate against the government.
This means if the party is dissolved by the court, MPs who serve as executive members of the party will also be banned from politics, and prohibited from participating in the crucial debate.
Future Forward sec-gen Piyabutr Saengkanokkul said at a news conference that he found the verdict’s timing “suspicious.”
Tourists walk past a gun range on Koh Samui on Jan. 30, 2020.
BANGKOK (Xinhua) — The Bank of Thailand (BoT) on Wednesday slashed its policy rate by 25 basis points to a fresh record low of 1 percent in the year 2020’s first meeting.
In the BoT’s statement issued on Wednesday, the central bank said it had to lower its policy rate to 1 percent to shore up the Thai economy battered by a massive drop in tourism and the months-long delay in the fiscal 2020 budget bill.
The economic growth risk is now slanting to the downside and the growth is likely below its potential, while financial stability becomes more fragile due to the economic slowdown, said the BoT statement.
The massive drop in tourism and the postponement of the budget bill have dealt further blows to an already sagging economy, both factors would have a significant impact on the economy, particularly in the first three months of 2020, the BoT statement said.
Medical personnel pose for a photo at Huoshenshan (Fire God Mountain) Hospital in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Feb. 4, 2020. (Photo by Fan Xianhai/Xinhua)
BEIJING (Xinhua) — The registration for clinical trials on the antiviral drug Remdesivir has been approved, and the first batch of pneumonia patients infected by the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) are expected to start taking the drug on Thursday, according to an official conference Wednesday.
The approval is jointly supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), the National Health Commission and the National Medical Products Administration.
Remdesivir is a drug developed by Gilead Sciences, an American pharmaceutical company, said Cao Bin, head of the drug’s clinical trial program, at the conference held by the MOST at the Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, central China’s Hubei Province.
The drug has shown good antiviral activity against SARS and MERS coronavirus in previous cell and animal experiments. Its clinical trials against Ebola infections have been conducted abroad. In related domestic research, it has also shown fairly good antiviral activity against the 2019-nCoV at the cellular level, said Cao.
A total of 761 patients have been enrolled in the trials, which will adopt a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study method.
The trials, led by the China-Japan Friendship Hospital and the Institute of Materia Medica under the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS), will be conducted in several hospitals in Wuhan, including the Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital.
Hopes have been pinned on the drug, but we have to wait for results of its actual effectiveness in the clinical trials, said Wang Chen, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and president of the CAMS.
TOKYO (Kyodo) — Another 10 people on a cruise ship quarantined near Yokohama have tested positive for a new coronavirus originating in China’s Wuhan, the health ministry said Thursday, bringing the total number of people on the ship suffering the pneumonia-causing virus to 20.
The Diamond Princess, with around 3,700 passengers and crew from 56 countries and regions on board, has been kept in quarantine at anchor off a pier in the Kanagawa Prefecture capital after a disembarked 80-year-old passenger from Hong Kong was found to be infected with the virus.
An internet meme made by supporters of US President Donald Trump.
WASHINGTON (AP) — With the final gavel banging down Wednesday on impeachment, President Donald Trump barreled ahead in his reelection fight with a united Republican Party behind him, and emboldened by reassuring poll numbers and chaos in the Democratic race to replace him.
Republican senators voted largely in lockstep to acquit Trump, relying on a multitude of rationales for keeping him in office: He’s guilty, but his conduct wasn’t impeachable; his July telephone conversation with Ukraine’s president was a “perfect call”; there’s an election in 10 months and it’s up to voters to determine his fate.
For Trump, there was one overriding message to draw from his acquittal: Even at a time of maximum political peril, it’s his Republican Party.
One day after Trump avoided talk of impeachment in his State of the Union address and argued that he had delivered on his 2016 campaign promises, the president already was moving to use impeachment as a 2020 rallying cry.
Trump tweeted after the vote that he would mark his acquittal with a statement at noon Thursday to “discuss our Country’s VICTORY on the Impeachment Hoax!”
The president and his allies sent giddy tweets needling his accusers and Democrats. In his first message once the trial closed, Trump posted an animated video using a Time magazine cover to suggest he would remain in office “4EVA.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., released a video of him tearing up the impeachment articles. And White House social media director Dan Scavino tweeted an animated GIF of Trump dancing.
Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and a senior White House aide, said in a post: “This factional fever and incoherent, ill-conceived process has finally ended and the President has rightfully been acquitted. It is time for our Country to move forward. Together.”
The nation’s first presidential nominating contest, the Iowa caucuses, handed more good news to Trump. A tabulating mishap threw the Democrats into chaos, depriving any candidate of a clear victory and allowing Trump to paint the Democrats as incompetent and corrupt.
Trump’s tenuous relationship with the GOP establishment has been a consistent theme of his political life in recent years, and he has repeatedly put the party’s values to the test.
Still, most Republicans have grudgingly stuck with him, through the revelations of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he was heard boasting about sexually assaulting women, and Charlottesville, where he defended white supremacists during a racial clash in the Virginia college town, as well as Helsinki, where he sided with Russia’s Vladimir Putin over U.S. intelligence agencies about Moscow’s 2016 election interference.
Now, they are giving him the victory he’s been waiting for and lashing their fates to his like never before.
Throughout the impeachment process, Trump drew satisfaction as Republican senators, many of whom opposed his long-shot candidacy and still dismiss him in private, overwhelmingly defended him and defied convention, tradition and public opinion polling in the process.
Scott Jennings, a longtime Republican political adviser, said the Senate impeachment trial strengthened Trump’s hand within the party, especially with his core conservative base.
“It actually endears him to his most committed supporters. If Trump is a disrupter, it makes all the sense in the world for the insiders to try to get rid of him. It hands Trump a real messaging point,” Jennings said. “I see no weaknesses in Trump now.”
President Donald Trump arrives to deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2020. (Leah Millis/Pool via AP)
While Trump is among the least popular presidents in modern history, he has nonetheless maintained wide support among Republicans, with 83% approving of his job performance in a January poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center.
Taking their cues from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, with whom Trump has a respectful, if not particularly close, relationship, GOP senators fell in line to block new witnesses and documents in the trial. The final vote Wednesday was no different: Only one Republican, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, a longtime Trump critic, voted for removal.
Romney seemed to anticipate retribution, telling Fox News, “I have broad enough shoulders to bear the consequences.”
With the impeachment trial behind him, Trump loses a reliable foil. But he will soon gain a replacement with a general election foe.
“Donald Trump is in the best political position of his presidency, in part due to his opponents’ miscalculations,” said GOP consultant Terry Sullivan. “He’s at his best when he has a clear opponent, because he’s terrible at playing defense but his political offensive game is second to none. I predict the next nine months will only get better for him as it becomes a two-person race that allows him to define it as a choice between he and his opponent.”
The president told confidants during the trial that he was impressed not just by the robust defense offered by his lawyers, but by the TV interviews offered by GOP senators outside the chamber, according to three White House aides and Republicans close to the West Wing were not authorized to discuss private conversations and spoke on condition of anonymity.
He crowed to advisers about the loyalty being shown to him and predicted the show of force bodes well for party enthusiasm in November’s election, the people said.
“I have never seen the Republican Party as Strong and as Unified as it is right now. Thank you!” Trump tweeted during the trial.
Trump has benefited from a new class of Republicans in Congress who have proved to be more partisan than their predecessors. Party members also know that Trump rains retribution on those who cross him. For all of Trump’s talk about how Democrats stick together, he’s got the Republicans in his fist.
“We’ve never had a president, as I said, who’s as vindictive and nasty as this one and he strikes fear in the hearts of a lot of people,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said last week.
Trump’s sky-high approval ratings within his own party acted as a deterrent that kept nearly all Republicans from breaking ranks. The fear was palpable among GOP senators worried not just about being the target of an angry tweet but about a Trump-backed primary challenger or a revolt among strong Republican supporters.
Still personally stung by impeachment, Trump is betting that he can sell his acquittal to the American people as a vindication, that he can activate his supporters and mollify even his skeptics in the center. Democrats are left with the more challenging task of explaining the details of the Ukraine case to the American people, and the White House believes Trump’s less complicated message will prevail.
TOKYO (Kyodo) — The Tokyo Olympic organizing committee has assured athletes and fans there will be “absolutely no cancelation” of the 2020 Summer Games due to the coronavirus outbreak, but has yet to fully explain how it will use “every possible measure” to mitigate the threat.
With less than six months until the games kick off in Japan, the international community continues to struggle with the deadly virus, which originated in Wuhan, China, in December and causes pneumonia-like symptoms.
Associated Press file photo of US President Donald Trump
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump won impeachment acquittal Wednesday in the U.S. Senate, bringing to a close only the third presidential trial in American history with votes that split the country, tested civic norms and fed the tumultuous 2020 race for the White House.
With Chief Justice John Roberts presiding, senators sworn to do “impartial justice” stood and stated their votes for the roll call — “guilty” or “not guilty” — in a swift tally almost exclusively along party lines. Trump, the chief justice then declared, shall “be, and is hereby, acquitted of the charges.”
The outcome followed months of remarkable impeachment proceedings, from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House to Mitch McConnell’s Senate, reflecting the nation’s unrelenting partisan divide three years into the Trump presidency.
What started as Trump’s request for Ukraine to “do us a favor” spun into a far-reaching, 28,000-page report compiled by House investigators accusing an American president of engaging in shadow diplomacy that threatened U.S. foreign relations for personal, political gain as he pressured the ally to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden ahead of the next election.
No president has ever been removed by the Senate.
A politically emboldened Trump had eagerly predicted vindication, deploying the verdict as a political anthem in his reelection bid. The president claims he did nothing wrong, decrying the “witch hunt” as an extension of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian 2016 campaign interference by those out to get him from the start of his presidency.
Trump’s political campaign tweeted videos, statements and a cartoon dance celebration, while the president himself tweeted that he would speak Thursday from the White House about “our Country’s VICTORY on the Impeachment Hoax.”
However, the Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said there will always be “a giant asterisk next to the president’s acquittal” because of the Senate’s quick trial and Republicans’ unprecedented rejection of witnesses.
A majority of senators expressed unease with Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine that resulted in the two articles of impeachment. But two-thirds of them would have had to vote “guilty” to reach the Constitution’s bar of high crimes and misdemeanors to convict and remove Trump from office. The final tallies in the GOP-held Senate fell far short.
On the first article of impeachment, abuse of power, the vote was 52-48 favoring acquittal. The second, obstruction of Congress, also produced a not guilty verdict, 53-47.
Only one Republican, Mitt Romney of Utah, the party’s defeated 2012 presidential nominee, broke with the GOP.
Romney choked up as he said he drew on his faith and “oath before God” to vote guilty on the first charge, abuse of power. He voted to acquit on the second.
All Democrats found the president guilty on the two charges.
Both Bill Clinton in 1999 and Andrew Johnson in 1868 drew cross-party support when they were left in office after impeachment trials. Richard Nixon resigned rather than face sure impeachment, expecting members of his own party to vote to remove him.
In this image from video, the vote total, 52-48 for not guilty, on the first article of impeachment, abuse of power, is displayed on screen during the impeachment trial against President Donald Trump in the Senate at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2020. (Senate Television via AP)
Ahead of Wednesday’s voting, some of the most closely watched senators took to the Senate floor to tell their constituents, and the nation, what they had decided.
Influential GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee worried a guilty verdict would “pour gasoline on the fire” of the nation’s culture wars over Trump and “rip the country apart.″ He said the House proved its case but it just didn’t rise to the level of impeachment.
Other Republicans siding with Trump said it was time to end what McConnell called the “circus” and move on.
Most Democrats, though, echoed the House managers’ warnings that Trump, if left unchecked, would continue to abuse the power of his office for personal political gain and try to cheat again ahead of the the 2020 election.
Even key Democrats from states where Trump is popular — Doug Jones in Alabama and Joe Manchin in West Virginia — risked backlash and voted to convict.
“Senators are elected to make tough choices,” Jones said.
Several senators trying to win the Democratic Party’s nomination to face Trump — Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar — dashed back from early primary state New Hampshire to vote.
During the nearly three-week trial, House Democrats prosecuting the case argued that Trump abused power like no other president in history when he pressured Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, ahead of the 2020 election.
They detailed an extraordinary effort by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani that set off alarms at the highest levels of government. After Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine, the White House temporarily halted U.S. aid to the struggling ally battling hostile Russia at its border. The money was eventually released in September as Congress intervened.
When the House probed Trump’s actions, the president instructed White House aides to defy congressional subpoenas, leading to the obstruction charge.
Questions from the Ukraine matter continue to swirl. House Democrats may yet summon former national security adviser John Bolton to testifyabout revelations from his forthcoming book that offer a fresh account of Trump’s actions. Other eyewitnesses and documents are almost sure to surface.
In closing arguments for the trial, the lead prosecutor, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., appealed to senators’ sense of decency, insisting “right matters” and “truth matters” and Trump “is not who you are.″
Schiff told The Associated Press he hoped the votes to convict “will serve as a constraint on the president’s wrongdoing.”
“But we’re going to have to be vigilant,” he said.
Pelosi was initially reluctant to launch impeachment proceedings against Trump when she took control of the House after the 2018 election, warning against a partisan vote.
But a whistleblower complaint of his conversation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy set off alarms. The president’s call was placed the day after Mueller announced the findings of his Russia probe.
When Trump told Pelosi in September that the call was perfect, she was stunned. Days later, the speaker announced the formal impeachment inquiry.
The result was the quickest, most partisan impeachment in U.S. history, with no Republicans joining the House Democrats to vote for the charges. The Republican Senate kept up the pace with the fastest trial ever, and the first with no witnesses. Seventeen ambassadors, national security officials and others had testified in the House.
Trump’s star attorney Alan Dershowitz made the sweeping, if stunning, assertion that even if the president engaged in the quid pro quo as described, it is not impeachable, because politicians often equate their own political interest with the national interest.
McConnell braced for dissent, but with a 53-47 Republican majority he refuted efforts to prolong the trial with more witnesses, arguing the House should have done a better job.
Roberts, as the rare court of impeachment came to a close, wished senators well in “our common commitment to the Constitution,” and hoped to meet again “under happier circumstances.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who had been drawn into the Ukraine affair, signed off on the Senate judgment later Wednesday. “Tonight, it was my pleasure to sign President @realDonaldTrump’s full acquittal,” he tweeted.
___
Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman, Matthew Daly, Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor, Zeke Miller and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.
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A sign which says the shop is not accepting Chinese customers because of the corona virus is seen on the front door of a nail bar in the island of Phu Quoc, Vietnam, January 27, 2020. Image: Associated Press.
Mistreatment of Chinese people is being openly advocated under the guise of the coronavirus. We should all learn from history that exploiting public panic for racial discrimination is a dangerous path.
In recent days, our news agency has been running satirical polls asking whether race-based segregation policies from the history’s darkest times should be used against the Chinese – and people kept voting yes.
In three separate polls, we asked our readers whether Thailand should shut down our borders to Chinese nationals, regardless of their origins or health conditions; whether the Chinese should be shunned from facilities like restaurants and shops, and whether Chinese should be made to wear visual identifications while in public places.
The first question drew an overwhelming 83 percent for a Yes. The Yes option was also a majority – 53 percent – for the second question. Although the last question, which should have been instantly recognized by everyone as a racial measure from 1930s Germany, only attracted a Yes response of 36 percent, we were nevertheless appalled that the number wasn’t closer to zero.
“Make them wear bat badges,” user Calvin Collins commented.
“IDENTIFY THEM,” says Jamie Saunders.
To be sure, these are informal online surveys with a very small sample of respondents (we also hope some of the Yes were made in jest). And although many readers rightly opposed the blatantly racist proposals in the questionnaires, the reality might be more grim than what our unscientific polls suggested.
An increasingly radical rhetoric on social media is calling for Chinese to be banned from Thailand, urging businesses to deny services to Chinese, and even blaming the Chinese themselves for this apparent act of karma – fueled by mainstream media’s disinformation that placed unfounded blame on Chinese eating habits.
And it’s not just talk on social media either. Some restaurants and hotels in tourist areas have already rolled out bans on Chinese travelers in order to placate other concerned guests in the same facilities. Police have said they have no legal power to stop this practice.
One can only imagine with horror what the response will be if we continued our social experiment by posing questions like whether Chinese nationals overseas should be immediately rounded up and sent to quarantine.
Thailand is certainly not alone in this climate of rising xenophobia driven by the coronavirus outbreak. Similar racist sentiments against the Chinese are reported even in countries usually associated with the notion of “civilized societies.”
In Canada, a white man was filmed telling a Chinese-Canadian woman “You dropped your coronavirus” at a mall.
Chinese tourists were reportedly spat at in Italy’s Venice. A family in Turin was accused of carrying the virus. Residents in Milan used social media to call for children to be kept away from Chinese classmates.
Restaurants in South Korea and Japan have refused to accept Chinese customers, while an Australian newspaper ran a headline that read, “China kids stay home.”
University of California, Berkeley’s health services said “fears about interacting with those who might be from Asia and guilt about these feelings” is a “normal” reaction to the epidemic.
Such examples can go on for paragraphs after paragraphs.
Ironically, this surge of xenophobia also coincides with a series of activities planned worldwide – including here in Bangkok – to commemorate the UN Holocaust Remembrance Day, which seeks to warn us each year the dangers of treating a whole group of people as scapegoats for our plights.
The painful history of the Holocaust is more important than ever in a world where fanning panic and racial hatred is a Facebook post away, thanks to the advent of social media and its resulting echo chamber.
Suspicions of Chinese authorities and criticism of their botched responses to the coronavirus crisis are entirely understandable and up for debate, but to treat an entire race as a virus-ridden enemy is certainly not humanity’s good way forward.
The unnamed taxi driver at a news conference on Feb. 5, 2020.
BANGKOK — One of the Thais infected with coronavirus was declared safe by the health ministry at a news conference on Wednesday, where he also spoke to the media about his ordeal.
The former patient, who works as a taxi driver, said he stopped working immediately once he noticed he had a flu-like condition and sought treatment from a hospital, upon which he was diagnosed with the novel strain of coronavirus. Officials asked the media not to identify the driver by name out of respect for his privacy.
“I’d like to tell taxi drivers to take care of themselves, instead of just working for money,” he said. “Taxis are the first group of people who meet tourists. How do we know the tourists are in safe condition? Please wear a mask, and give one to the tourists, too.”
He said he tested positive for coronavirus on Jan. 28, and his condition was so severe at one time that he had to rely on oxygen device to breathe. The man was later declared to be free of the virus.
The unnamed taxi driver at a news conference on Feb. 5, 2020. Image: ThaiPBS / Facebook
The driver also said he did not have a negative feeling toward Chinese travelers, despite speculation that he might have contracted the virus from his Chinese passengers.
“I was infected with corona[virus], but I don’t have any ill feelings about Chinese tourists,” he said. “We are all one family in the world.”
He continued, “I will continue to pick up tourists, and I don’t feel bad about them. I watched the news when I was in the quarantine. I send my moral support to the people in Wuhan everyday, I want them to keep fighting.”
Health officials said the driver is one of 9 former patients who had since recovered from coronavirus, while 16 infected individuals are still in hospitals.
Those who fully recovered also included a 73-year-old Thai woman who was sent to hospital shortly after returning from Wuhan in early January.
A 73-year-old Thai woman gestures to the media after recovering from coronavirus at a news conference on Feb. 4, 2020.
Health minister Anutin Charnvirakul praised the unnamed taxi driver for isolating himself and seeking medical treatment upon feeling ill.
“The patient is a good role model,” Anutin said. “If anyone feels [sick] or comes into contact with a risky group, get treatment without delay. I believe everyone will recover. I believe in the skills of Thai doctors.”
