New Economic party-list MP Mingkwan Saengsuwan tendered his resignation as a member of parliament in the middle of the general debate today (Thursday), saying that he has not felt happy in his legislative role for the past two years.
Taking to the floor at about 5pm, Mingkwan said that he feels, after almost eight years, that Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has been in the office long enough, while the country’s economy is nose-diving.
He said that he doubts the prime minister’s leadership ability and vision, citing some of the latter’s questionable suggestions. For instance, he proposed opening more pawn shops to solve the problem of household debt, told farmers to raise fish instead of planting rice when they are hit by floods, suggested people pray when there is a storm, threatened the use of military trucks to deliver goods when truckers threatened to go on strike and advised Thai people to raise two chickens per household to address the poverty problem.
The MP accused the government of a complete failure in handling the COVID-19 pandemic, causing household debt to balloon to 15 trillion baht and public debt to 9 trillion, while increasing the number of poor people to about 20 million while oil prices rose seven times in January alone.
Mingkwan said that his speech today focused on the prime minister and that he would like to ask him, after almost eight years in the office, whether Thais feel happy.
He also blamed the prime minister for adding new words to the political lexicon, such as cobras and banana eating monkeys, saying he would ask the prime minister what he has done to those MPs who have switched allegiance from one party to another.
As far as he is concerned, Mingkwan said he will not betray his constituents.
At one point during his speech, the MP became emotional as he said that he has not felt happy in his job at all over the past two years and announced that he has decided to quit as an MP today.
The House Speaker interjected, asking him not to cry or become too emotional.
