Seri Wongmontha versus the world press

Celebrity protest leader Seri Wongmontha is getting attention both from the locals and foreigners for his apparent disdain of the western media. Watch him debate a British journalist here.

Please join us on our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/bangkokpostlearning

John Sparks, (left) Asia correspondent for Britain’s Channel 4 News, faces off against celebrity protest leader Seri Wongmontha on the Ratchaprasong stage.

Seri versus Sparks: Who won?

Celebrity protest leader Seri Wongmontha is getting quite a bit of attention both from the local and foreign media for his apparent disdain of the international media and westerners in general.

On Monday, he gave a well-publicised impromptu interview to John Sparks, Asia correspondent for Britain’s Channel 4 News on the Ratchaprasong stage. Interestingly, the video is being widely shared through the social media for very different reasons.

Thais, especially supporters of the anti-government movement, see it as an example of a Thai putting a foreign journalist in his place, forcefully putting down Mr Spark's apparent attempt to discredit the anti-government movement as being against democracy.

Many foreigners, however, see Mr Spark's coming out on top, asking tough questions that were only partially answered. While Mr Seri made a reasonable start, as the interview progressed, he sounded increasingly arrogant and belligerent. It was not just what, he said, but how he said it.

Part of the reason, is probably the setting for interview. Dr Seri had a huge audience of anti-government protesters in front of him and he was obviously playing to them. And they were totally on his side against the "farang".

Mr Sparks, on the other hand, was speaking to an international television audience, and he, too, has received support from them.

What do you think? Watch the video and decide for yourself.

Dr Seri: If you would like to interview me, and ask me any questions, please do so.

Mr Sparks: I would like to do that, yes.

Dr Seri: OK, go ahead

Mr Sparks: OK. How long are you going to stay here?

Dr Seri: Well, we will stay here until we win and we hope that will be only just a few days.

Mr Sparks: Yingluck leads a democratically-elected government. She's not going to stand down.

Dr Seri: We'll, we accept her legitimacy that she was elected. Election is just a process of democracy but it is not democracy in itself. Being elected doesn’t mean that your corruption will be legalised or legitimised. Even when you are elected, but if you do something unlawful, if you violate laws, you violate the constitution, we have to overthrow you before the term ends.”

Any more questions?

Mr Sparks: One more, sir. Why not go to the people in a democratic process and put those points to them. Let them decide in an open election.

Dr Seri: We don’t have any channels to tell people what's going on because at the moment, we don’t have democracy, we have parliamentary dictatorship because Thaksin has a huge amount of money and he has bought so many constituents of the electoral process

He bought many provincial governors, he bought many provincial police commanders, he bought so many election committees and also he used his populist schemes to lure many people to support him.

They like the benefits and the incentives but they don’t know that Thaksin is corrupted. He cheated and stole a lot of money from Thai people. We don’t want people to have a beggar’s culture, waiting for subsidies without considering morality, ethics, merit and also good governance.

Any more questions?

Mr Sparks: Sure. There are allegations of corruption, of vote-buying on both sides....Corruption is endemic throughout Thai society.

Dr Seri: But there is a degree. Some degree [of corruption] people tolerate. But Thaksin went overboard and we will never tolerate his actions again. Not only corruption, but he try to own or to ownership of many public companies. No other government has done that before. There might be corruption, a percentage of the budget, but not by issuing policies to take ownership of the public companies. Before you say anything, please investigate and know the context of Thailand.

OK, that's it.

Story includes information from a Bangkok Post story by Lauren Higgs.

You can read what Mr Sparks said about the interview here: http://blogs.channel4.com/world-news-blog/flambuoyant-duelling-heart-thailands-protests/26695

สามารถฝึกอ่านออกเสียงและดูคำแปลได้ที่ : http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-from-news/389859/seri-wongmontha-versus-the-world-press