Prayut vows to solve land disputes as he woos Chiang Mai voters
As United Thai Nation Party (UTNP)’s PM candidate, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said he would help solve the land rights problems faced by Chiang Mai’s Mon Cham people if elected.
On Friday Prayut and other UTNP MP candidates were in Chiang Mai, a long-standing stronghold of Pheu Thai Party, to rally for votes.
While in Mae Chaem district’s Mae Raem area, Prayut was asked by mayor Wichit Metha-Anankul about his party’s policy on the prolonged land dispute between ethnic villagers living on Mon Chaem Mountain and the Royal Forest Department (RFD).
Prayut responded by saying everybody will receive justice if his party is elected to power.
The department is suing 116 ethnic families for “misusing” land allocated for agricultural and residential purposes. The villagers, most of whom are members of tribes who settled in the area since 1906, have argued that RFD is using old data as a reference in the classification of land usage. They argue that the town Mae Raem has changed drastically due to urbanization and booming tourism.
Currently, more than 30 cases are in court and some 70 are under investigation. The investigation process is making very slow progress as the department is resurveying all areas under dispute.
Prayut, meanwhile, promised to hasten the investigation to help end the dispute and ensure that villagers can continue using the land have been living on for generations. He also pledged to implement the “one map” approach, in which all land dispute cases are judged based on a unified, standardised, most updated map.
Prayut holds the third place as the preferred PM with 8.13% support, lagging far behind Pheu Thai’s Paetongtarn Shinawatra (33.81%) and Move Forward’s Pita Limjaroenrat (16.87%), according to Nation Poll. However, some 22% of the respondents have ticked the “undecided” option.
