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| Out: Samak, who lost his job for hosting a cooking show while in office, visited a market Tuesday. Reuters |
As a TV chef, Thai P.M. cooked his own goose
Prime Minister Samak was forced to quit Tuesday, after a court ruled he'd broken the law by hosting two TV cooking shows while in office.
from the September 10, 2008 edition
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On Monday, he testified to the court that he hadn't broken the law, because he wasn't an employee of the cooking programs. The court dismissed this defense, though, and scolded the defendant for misleading answers.
Samak wasn't in the courtroom Tuesday. In typical style, he began the day by touring an outdoor food market in northeast Thailand before attending a cabinet meeting, and then flew back to Bangkok, where he gave reporters the slip.
Given the laundry list of complaints against Samak's administration, including allegations of corruption and closet republicanism – a grave crime in Thailand's constitutional monarchy – being struck down for illegal on-air cooking is a curious misdemeanor. But in a political war of attrition, every strike counts.
Moreover, with its broad interpretation of the constitutional ban on moonlighting, the court has sent a clear message to Thai politicians who thrive on legal loopholes, says James Klein, country representative of the Asia Foundation. "Al Capone – they got him for tax evasion. They got this guy for doing a cooking show. It's the principle," he says.
Opposition activists from the People's Alliance for Democracy, which has occupied Samak's offices for two weeks in an effort to unseat him, cheered the verdict, which was shown live on TV. But they aren't packing up their tents yet, after the court left open the possibility of another Samak-led cabinet.
In public, Samak has shown no sign of backing down in the standoff with the PAD, a grouping of businessmen, academics, and royalists. His bulldog image, cultivated over decades of right-wing politicking, meshes with his on-screen persona as an ebullient foodie who charges into food markets and tells vendors how to prepare their dishes.
That brash approach is a turn-off for professional cooks, but it plays well among the urban poor in Bangkok who elected Samak as the city's governor in 2000 and continue to see him as a champion of their cause.
Gaysorn Mala, a cook in a family-run restaurant, says Samak has shown Thais how to prepare many tasty dishes. She enthuses over his ability to cross over from the kitchen to the parliament and back, proving that being a dab hand at dishes can translate into public life.
"He can do anything. He can cook food in the kitchen and do many other things, so I guess he can definitely be prime minister," she says, during a break from her smoking wok.
Earlier this year, as pork prices rose and newspapers groused about the economy, Samak recommended Thais eat a cheap soup made with chicken bones and squash called sikrong kaitomfuk. "You can make a nice soup for the whole family. It tastes just great," he said, according to Reuters.
But Tuesday's guilty verdict may not be the last to stick in Samak's throat. Last week, the Election Commission approved a campaign-fraud case against his People's Power Party. The Constitutional Court may now decide to dissolve the party, the same fate that was meted out last year to its predecessor, Thai Rak Thai, that Thaksin founded a decade ago.
A defamation suit against Samak is also pending. He has appealed against a lower court that found him guilty over comments he made on his TV show about a rival politician. He also faces at least three corruption cases.
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