A sad but inevitable day as the Thai PM returns the old (dis)order to Pattaya to aid his somewhat predictable victory in February's elections. It's all for the good of the country you know - what a joke, a corrupt political basket case of a country. Nothing will ever change.

Kunplome Clan Regains Grip On Pattaya As Prayut Replaces Mayor
September 25th, 2018
After more than three years in political exile, the “Kunplome clan” regained its grip of Pattaya Tuesday when Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha replaced his handpicked mayor with the Chonburi ruling family’s eldest son.

Sonthaya Kunplome, 54, become the second brother to run Sin City when Prayut unceremoniously showed former Provincial Police Region 2 chief Anan Charoenchasri the door Sept. 25, a day after telling the media he hoped to remain active in Thai politics after next year’s planned elections.

The eldest Kunplome, who heads the Chonburi-based Palong Chon Party, has been serving as political advisor to the PM since May, helping the former general build a well-funded political machine.
If there’s anything Sonthaya and his family knows about, its money. The Kunplome family, which has ruled every level of Chonburi from the village chief to the Provincial Administrative Organization for 30 years, has never been interested in political colors or ideology. Even before founding Palong Chon for the 2014 elections, Kunplome-connected MPs gave their allegiance to whichever party headed Parliament.

Sonthaya was a sports and tourism minister to Prayut’s blood enemy Thaksin Shinawatra, for which he was banned from politics for five years after Thai Rak Thai was dissolved. Later, he became culture minister under Thakin’s sister Yingluck, who Prayut deposed in the 2014 coup.

Kunplome-connected MPs elected in the post-coup 2008 election flipped allegiances, joining the Democrat-led government. After Yingluck and the Red Shirts retook power in 2011, the clan turned coat again. Yingluck rewarded Sonthaya by having his wife Sukumol keep his seat warm as culture minister until his ban expired.

Why would any ruling politicians want such a bed partner, especially since the party only brought seven MPs to Parliament? Because they have no choice.

The Kunplome clan won every Chonburi constituency except Sattahip in 2011. It still controls the Chonburi PAO (Sonthaya’s brother Wittaya is president), held the Pattaya mayor’s office and city council until being replaced by the junta in 2015, and still holds a number of district, sub-district and village chief positions.

Bottom line: The Kunplomes are the gatekeepers for the entire Eastern Seaboard. Any Thai government that wants to do business in Pattaya has to go through them.

Prayut admitted basically as much Tuesday, citing the massive Eastern Economic Corridor project – which will funnel hundreds of billions of baht of government baht to upgrades of Laem Chabang Pier, U-Tapao-Rayong-Pattaya Airport and the highways and railways connecting them – as a reason for “strong leadership” needed in Pattaya.

Don’t believe it. The EEC is a smokescreen. Prayut needs the millions of baht that the Kunplome machine can raise for him from the grassroots to the penthouses of Pattaya.

The price for that access and support is – and always has been – a blank canvas to run Pattaya and Chonburi as they see fit. Except in cases of egregious hedonism that makes international headlines, both military and civilian leaders generally have left Pattaya alone.

While beach chairs and umbrellas were obliterated on Phuket and other southern beaches after the coup, Pattaya’s umbrellas were allowed to stay. As the military arbitrarily shut down Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy over the past four years, Walking Street was allowed to extend its hours until 4 a.m. The examples go on and on.

The only exception has been the military’s crackdown on encroachment of public property and, by extension, the graft goes with it.

Among the military’s many anti-corruption achievements was the end of the monopoly that moneyed families had on the beachchair business. Where before several families claimed ownership of the actual sand, renting out plots to umbrella vendors for millions of baht a year, the army revoked licenses and put them up for a lottery draw every year.

The junta’s handpicked Pattaya officials also dismantled hundreds of restaurants, apartment units, houses, office and even parts of a large hotel and major disco that were built on top of the city’s overworked storm-drainage canals. By comparison, Itthiphol removed only a handful of obstructions in eight years as mayor.

Finally, military leaders in Bangkok and Pattaya restored fiscal discipline to the city, cutting off funding for countless Beach Road fairs, irrelevant sports competitions and the meagerly attended Pattaya Countdown and Pattaya Music Festival.

Itthiphol spent billions on white elephants that undoubtedly filled the coffers of family-connected contractors and – critics allege – his own family, but did nothing for the city.

His legacy includes dozens of broken pedestrian-crossing signals, more than 2,000 inoperable CCTV cameras, the defunct and dilapidated solar-power plant on Koh Larn, the 774-mililon baht uncompleted football stadium, the youth sports-training complex abandoned a year after opening, a citywide sewer system incapable of handing even two hours of rain, and a garbage crisis so severe that trash now piles up on roadsides from Naklua to Jomtien Beach.

For everyone who has applauded the army’s assault on the rich and bribeable, Sonthaya’s appointment marks a very sad day for Pattaya. It’s a return to business as usual.