🇹🇭 Bangkok mourns fire disaster

Hello friends!

I never know how to write an introduction when the lead is a terrible disaster. It’s such awful news in Bangkok with much more to come, so we’ll follow along for a few weeks.

Erin Cook

What horrible news to wake up to in the region yesterday. At least 28 people have been killed after a fire broke out in a Bangkok pub late Sunday. There’s some terrifying footage racing around online of the Rong Beer Na Lat Phrao blaze in the famous Chatuchak neighbourhood, which I will not share here.

“Most of the people who died were found in the toilets. When the fire broke out, they panicked. There were no lights,” national police chief Kitrat Panphet said, as reported by the BBC. The outlet also spoke with Kaew-udon Poungppany, a 24-year-old from Laos, who said he’d attempted to use a fire extinguisher but was overwhelmed. His brother was killed.

Authorities have vowed a thorough investigation here, with it being widely suggested it was sparked by some sort of faulty wiring. What’s really going to pinch here, however, is that while Bangkok is an enormous city and bad things do happen everywhere, questions are already being asked about the robustness of licensing and safety checks.

Amorn Pimanmas, president of the Thailand Structural Engineers Association, inspected the building yesterday and suggested the combination of a low ceiling and foam may have created a toxic air nightmare. The building had passed inspections in April but, as Amorn told the Straits Times, “It’s not like we don’t have the law. It’s the problem of how the law can be strictly enforced.”

Much more to come on that front.

Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul visited the site and recounted to media what he’d been told by survivors. He said a musician who had been on stage as it broke out said it started very rapidly and led to ‘blasting’ and the crowd panicked.

I find myself torn between the inevitability of Myanmar being welcomed back into the fold of Asean and Myanmar forever not quite a pariah, but in the naughty corner. I’m easily convinced of either outcome depending on who I read because I think both are plausible. It’s probably somewhere in the middle, vacillating eternally to the frustration of literally everybody. At least until Thailand takes the chair in 2028 and then who knows.

Sunday may have given us a taste. The bloc’s foreign ministers agreed to a totally chill and casual chat with Tin Maung Swe, the new foreign minister in this dastardly ‘government’ that took control after ‘elections’ over December and January. The meeting was pushed by Thailand, whose foreign minister, Sihasak Phuangketkaew, said that members still are committed to the Five-Point Consensus but “the key issue here is what is the strategy to implement it,” as noted by Sebastian Strangio at the Diplomat.

Meanwhile, Filipino Foreign Secretary Maria Theresa Lazaro said the Myanmar delegation had been asked about the status of Aung San Suu Kyi, who is back under house detention after her 2021 arrest and jailing. “My recollection of the statement of the Myanmar foreign minister on Aung San Suu Kyi is that she’s ​in good health and that the premise of how he said this is that ‘she is a relative, ⁠she’s a sister and therefore we will take care of her,” Lazaro told media, as reported by Reuters.

Syed Saddiq is free (and vindicated). Malaysia’s Federal Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s acquittal of ‘criminal breach of trust, misappropriation of property and money laundering linked to funds from Bersatu Youth’ charges against the political wunderkind, thanks to Malaysiakini for the succinctly laid-out line.

It’s the end of a very long road for Syed Saddiq, who is the current MP for the seat of Muar, a founding member of youth-oriented Malaysian United Democratic Alliance (MUDA) and the minister for sport and youth in the Mahathir Mohamad cabinet. I think his immense political success at such a young age has put him in many a crosshair over the years, but he has long maintained he’s always been strictly above board.

Even in this, he has been perfectly poised (none of the Twitter tirades of his former boss, for instance). “When you are pushed into a corner and see no hope or light at the end of the tunnel, do not ever abandon your principles, your integrity and your dignity for an easy way out,” he told media outside the court yesterday. The whole experience has proven the Malaysian judicial system is robust and just, he has noted many times.

He’s not going anywhere but up, I guess.