Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing “Big Joke” that is Surachate "Big Joke" Hakparn yet again. Why do we discuss him so often? Well he first came on our radar some years back when he became the Head of Thai Immigration. He's had a very interesting career to say the least here in Thailand, a lot of ups and downs, just kind of an interesting character to watch quite honestly and sort of his career and how these things sort of go. There is a lot of wild ups and downs when you are sort of covering “Big Joke” but it is also pretty major news especially with regard to law and law enforcement here in Thailand.

As we discussed in prior videos, he was making comments regarding the Retirement Visa some weeks back and then more recently we have now seen that he was subject to a search warrant at his home as we did a video on, but I thought of making this video after reading recent article from the Bangkok Post that's bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Torsak tipped as new top Cop. Quoting directly: "Deputy Police Chief, Police General Torsak Sukvimol is strongly tipped to be named the new Police Chief on Wednesday following a high-profile house search of another contender, Police General Surachate "Big Joke" Hakparn as part of a police probe into online gambling websites." Quoting further: "A source in the Police Commission said Mr Srettha is," (Mr Srettha being the Prime Minister here in Thailand,) let me quote again: "A source in the Police Commission said Mr Srettha is widely expected to name Police General Torsak for the top police post at Wednesday's meeting." Quoting further: "The majority of the Police Commission does not support Pol Gen Surachate because he stands accused of unfair transfer of junior officers, which has upset several in the force, the source told the Bangkok Post." When you get back into that article, I believe we quoted it in the article we were talking about where the search warrant was issued and they actually interviewed “Big Joke” at the time and asked what's this going to do with regard to any bid for the National Police Chief, and he said he was not a candidate for that; we cited that in a prior article on a prior video. So apparently, this doesn't really come as any particular surprise to him. As noted further in this article, and we urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail, a lot of good information in there, but as noted in that article they even go on to note that Big Joke has quite a number of years left in his career and he would be quite young if he was promoted to the National Police top slot. So again kind of implying that just because it may not be happening this year, doesn't mean we might not see “Big Joke” as the National Police Chief one day. Of course that all remains to be seen. 

Now why is this particularly relevant especially with regard to the audience this channel because we do discuss immigration quite a bit? As we discussed in prior videos, he was talking about in the past possibly bringing forward or promulgating draft legislation for the Parliament to consider changes with regard to Immigration here, specifically pointing to the Retirement Visa specifically as a point of concern of his. Now as the National Police Chief I think he would be probably in a much better position to be able to affect those changes if in fact that is what he would want to do. I think he would have more ability to do that if he became the National Police Chief. The fact that it looks like he is probably not going to be named to that position, leads me to believe that we probably at least for the foreseeable future, have a reprieve or don't need really to worry. Now I could be wrong, we could see a change tomorrow but I don't think so. I think we probably are looking at a situation where at least for now and into the foreseeable future, we are probably not going to see any changes to the Visas associated with retirement here in the Kingdom of Thailand.