Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the acting Thai Prime Minister and there have been news reports about the attempt to dissolve the House; I have talked about it at length. The Council of State here in Thailand has stated that an acting Prime Minister, a caretaker Prime Minister is not legally allowed to request or if you will, to try to trigger dissolution of the Parliament here in Thailand, and that seemed to have been disregarded and then there have been intervening events that have happened since then. 

Now for those who are interested in that, I'm going to quote one article here especially from the Bangkok Post. I urge you to go to the Bangkok Post to learn about all of those developments for yourselves. It's a good article, and for the most part, tip of the hat to the Bangkok Post. I think they do a good job in covering local Thai politics especially what's going on here in Bangkok so for the most part I try, I don't want to be critical, but in situations where I see that there is room for critique I want to throw in my two cents because as I have stated in prior videos, especially the past two weeks, there has been a lot of spin going on and what I don't like it is where I see what looks to me like the media kind of having their own bias sort of starting to tilt or maybe attempting, whatever you want to call it, possibly affecting the narrative when it is not really warranted. The whole point of this, I'll get to here in a moment. Let me quote this article directly and I urge again those who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail for your own edification, Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: House to Vote for New Thai PM on Friday. As we have discussed in other videos, it appears that Mr. Anutin Charnvirakul has secured the votes from The People's Party in order to set up a new coalition Government. We will see the finality of that apparently on Friday Bangkok time. That being said, quoting directly: "The House of Representatives will hold a vote for a new Prime Minister on Friday, House Speaker Wan Muhamad Noor Matha announced on Wednesday night. The announcement came after the Privy Council reportedly returned a draft Royal Decree to dissolve the House submitted by caretaker Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai citing procedural and legal concerns according to sources at Government House. Mr. Phumtham submitted the dissolution decree on Tuesday in his capacity as caretaker Prime Minister. The move was intended to resolve the political deadlock following the Constitutional Court’s removal of Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra from Office last week." And that is where my critique in all this comes down to. It's just saying that the move was "intended". How does the Post know that? And beyond even that, I think reasonable people could infer that there were political, I should say possible political desires underneath that decision to try to trigger a dissolution. And that has been kind of my thing as I don't like to see the spin getting too far out of control if you will, with regard to how this has been covered. Again, as we have discussed in other videos at length, the Council of State itself, and somebody from The Office of the Prime Minister have said you can't, an opinion has been issued and said look, an acting Prime Minister, a caretaker Prime Minister cannot trigger dissolution of the House because ultimately Mr. Phumtham was not elected to be the Prime Minister. He is not on the slate of the possible Prime Ministerial candidates; he is just acting in a caretaker capacity; in effect he is a placeholder, he is not "the Prime Minister". That is why he is called the acting Prime Minister or the caretaker Prime Minister because he is different than the Prime Minister itself. 

But my biggest issue is how can intent be attributed? Now if the Post had said the "alleged intent" or the "supposed intent" or something like this or the "apparent intent" and I'm not trying to get semantically critical here, but this stuff matters especially in light of the fact that this is a pretty big deal going on over here, and these little kind of turns of phrase can have an impact on how people view these things especially the English language community who are sort of viewing this from outside and have to view this stuff through the prism of the media that's covering it. 

So the point I am trying to make is, again I am not trying to be overly critical of the Bangkok Post. This may have just been sort of kind of an oversight while writing this out. It may not have been intentional whatsoever, but I don't think we can attribute anyone's intent on this thing just sort of stating it as a matter of fact; probably better to state that well the "apparent" intent etc. That being said, I think it was important to provide some nuance on this with regard to the overall coverage again, because of the import of these circumstances as they are evolving.