Taipei, May 26 (CNA) The Thailand Trade and Economic Office (TTEO) complained in a letter sent to a local English-language newspaper about what it described as "groundless claims" about the Thai government and judiciary's "abuse of power" set forth in an editorial.
The letter was in rebuttal to an op-ed piece published May 19 in the Taiwan News, titled "The Warning for Taiwan in the Thailand Crisis." The Thai courts were impartial in their guilty verdicts against former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his allies for corruption and electoral fraud, and it was Thaksin himself who jumped bail and fled overseas, rather than the Thai Supreme Court confiscating his bail and ordering his arrest, according to Wanthanee Viputwongsakul, acting TTEO executive director of the TTEO, the de facto Thai embassy in Taiwan.
The letter came days after the close of a massive protest that called for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to dissolve the parliament and saw demonstrators occupy a main shopping district of Bangkok for two months, leading to dozens of deaths when government troops cracked down.
Wanthanee said in the letter that the present Thai government came to power through diplomatic means and that Abhisit will continue to press ahead with his roadmap of reconciliation that was announced May 3 but rejected by the Thai opposition.
In a separate letter written by Thailand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs to CNN, the ministry also blasted a recent newscast titled "Thailand's Violence" on the network as "shallow and lacking sensitivity" about the Thai monarchy. (By Chris Wang) ENDITEM/J