“Angkana” laments that the 2015 budget has no budget for the National Human Rights Plan, only a budget for security, and is concerned about the drug suppression policy, fearing a repeat of the drug war and the killings that followed in the past.
Senator Angkana Neelapaijit said about the consideration of the 2025 budget bill that senators do not have the power to request budget increases or decreases. However, there are some observations. Personally, I would like to note that Thailand has a national human rights plan, including Article 71, paragraph 4 of the constitution, which states the budget allocation to be appropriate for gender or age. When looking at the 2015 budget, I wonder where the national human rights plan is in the budget and whether every ministry has included it in the budget plan. Including the issue of gender or age, has every ministry included it? And there will probably be a discussion on this matter because it is considered a cabinet resolution that has been approved according to the n
ational human rights plan, but there is no budget for this matter. Meanwhile, the budget for the 3 southern border provinces is mostly about security, but not about human rights protection. It is only about integrating training management.
‘If we have a national human plan like this, but the national human plan from every ministry, department, or agency must have an operation to have a budget to drive human rights, such as in the matter of the constitution, the allocation of budgets related to gender, it appears that in every ministry there are still no bathrooms for all genders or the possibility of providing a room for women who have to breastfeed, both in terms of pumping milk, it is a matter of human rights that is still lacking,’ said Ms. Angkana.
In terms of preparing the policy statement of the government of Ms. Paethongtarn Shinawatra, Prime Minister, on September 12-13, is there any preparation for the debate? Ms. Angkana said that she quickly read all the policies and found that one interesting is
sue is the suppression of drugs. She admitted that she is worried that it will return to the way it was in 2003, when there were more than 3,000 deaths but no one was ever punished, causing people to die in vain. Therefore, she is worried that the drug war will happen again and how to suppress it. Currently, there is a law that drug users are patients, so the question is how we will take care of them. Do we have the capacity? Can the community take care of each other? This is the first challenge because we think we will suppress it, but how? Because in the past, during the government of Mr. Thaksin Shinawatra, former Prime Minister, there was the use of force to suppress, there were many incidents of extrajudicial killings, and the cases had expired. Another issue is the problem of the southern border provinces, which was ranked as low priority, even though the problem has been ongoing for more than 20 years. Therefore, she wants to know how Ms. Paethongtarn’s government will handle it to stop the fighting.
As for the perspective of the upcoming government policy statement, Ms. Angkhana sees it as no different from the government of Mr. Settha Thavisin, the former prime minister, including comparing it to the government of Mr. Thaksin, which does not seem to have anything new. However, the old problem of drugs is still a concern that the same thing will happen.
Source: Thai News Agency