Thai Cabinet Reshuffle: New Public Health Minister Good or Bad for Cannabis?
r/CannabisThailand Newsletter - Issue #93
Sawadee Everyone,
About a week ago Srettha denied that there were plans for a cabinet reshuffle. Then he flew up to Chiang Mai and had meetings at the same hotel that Pheu Thai’s defacto leader, Thaksin, was staying but claims they didn’t meet nor did he discuss any cabinet reshuffle.
Lo and behold, there was a cabinet reshuffle.
While some of the spots being shifted around are important, the one that probably has the most impact on cannabis is Cholnan Srikaew being given the boot to be replaced by Deputy PM Somsak Thepsutin.
What makes this difficult to judge right away is the fact that Cholnan didn’t seem to be entirely anti-cannabis and Somsak has a lot of friends on both sides.
Cholnan always struck me as a guy who was caught between a rock and a hard place. He actually understood that repealing cannabis legalization was going to be very difficult but Srettha kept making demands and public statements which made Cholnan’s job even more difficult.
The final straw may have been the Srettha France24 interview where Srettha made comments that Cholnan attempted to walk back.
Cholnan was the guy who was taking all of the heat. He was getting pressure from PM Srettha while also taking fire from pro-cannabis supporters and pro-cannabis business concerns.
The other major headache Srettha made for Cholnan was the fact that the government coalition hadn’t agreed to a complete recriminalization of cannabis which Srettha intimated at during his France24 interview.
All of the political parties joining a coalition government agree to support a common agenda so they can all work together. But Srettha’s comments went far beyond what the parties had agreed upon so, in essence, that would allow any of the parties making up the current government to jump ship as it would be seen as a breach of contract.
So there was Cholnan, stuck trying to appease his PM and minimize the damage Srettha had caused and on the other side he was getting squeezed by a lot of very pissed off pro-cannabis concerns as well as coalition partners that didn’t sign on to recriminalize cannabis.
Anutin even popped his head up to issue a statement after the Srettha interview reminding the PM that they had already settled the cannabis issue implying that they had come to an understanding on cannabis and this was not part of the understanding.
Cholnan eventually buckled and told everyone that those were only the personal opinions of the PM and that the party’s stance had not changed.
Apparently that was seen as disloyal and did not sit well with Srettha because Cholnan lost his job shortly thereafter.
That said, his comments may not have been the only deciding factor for Srettha. The cabinet reshuffle seems like it was intended to shore up support for the digital wallet scheme which has been running into roadblocks.
But what did the cannabis community get by Srettha making Somsak as the new Minister of Public Health?
Somsak seems a bit of a wildcard. He recently lost his post at the Ministry of Justice after an uncharacteristic outburst directed at those questioning Thaksin’s stay at a military hospital while he was incarcerated. He is also known to be very close to Thaksin.
Yet, he was also once a member of Bhumjaithai a little over a decade ago, so there’s hope that he will sit down and listen to Bhumjaithai more than Cholnan seemed to.
In early April Somsak told Thai media that while laws regarding kratom had been rolled out successfully he was frustrated that cannabis laws had not been implemented yet. He called the process for cannabis “incomplete.”
Additionally, he said, “The best way to unlock or not unlock is to do it completely. If this is still evenly matched, then there must be a law that specifies what the law must provide. If we talk casually like this, it's a laughable thing because there's no law to support it. Must go and do it seriously.”
He also emphasized that kratom and other medicinal herbs will help generate tens of billions of baht in revenue for Thailand because it is has laws which dictate what the rules are but cannabis lacks these laws.
That does not sound like Srettha’s vision of recriminalizing cannabis completely, yet he was just given the job of overseeing the creation of laws to regulate cannabis.
Ultimately, any policy being advocated by Pheu Thai goes through Thaksin. And while one of the things Thaksin will always be remembered for is his drug war which some NGOs claim resulted in close to 3,000 extrajudicial killings, Thaksin is forever a pragmatist.
The real question is whether or not Thaksin can come to terms with some form of legalized cannabis.
The other thing to keep in mind is that Srettha himself is a dead man walking. Thaksin has already said that Srettha is a good transition PM but his daughter will lead the way to victory for Pheu Thai in the next election. Ouch.
But Move Forward Party is still the largest progressive party and Pheu Thai didn’t perform up to expectations in the last election. The only reason MFP are not in power is hubris and immaturity which led them to put their trust in the Senate to do the right thing, which, of course, they did not.
The next election will see a different senate and MFP has probably learned some very valuable lessons by having the PM spot taken from them by Pheu Thai.
That means that despite Thaksin’s visions of his daughter in the PM office, this won’t be a cake walk for Pheu Thai and he’s going to need to fight and claw to even be in a position where his daughter would be a viable PM candidate.
That’s a very long way of saying that Thaksin may be in a deal making mood. As Pheu Thai approaches the one-year mark in office, the lack of wins is becoming more and more noticeable to the general public so there may be more willingness to wheel and deal to put a W up on the board.
That also means that Anutin and Bhumjaithai have a lot of leverage.
Pheu Thai need Bhumjaithai to get some wins. However, backtracking on promises about cannabis is not a great way to get Bhumjaithai support.
So, as usual, we’ll have to wait and see how this plays out but that’s basically the playing field at the moment.
Stay lifted and enlightened,
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