Traffic jam in the “Bozo” gallery.
But this one is an olympic one. Albeit a very scary one…
Ranongrak has been nominated Deputy Finance Minister… Previously, she was a… nurse (her bio here).
Last week, she gave her first formal press briefing… And the thai journalists are still laughing.
To a question regarding VAT and its impact on the poors, she said :
“I think the VAT is quite fair. It’s just the tourists who pay, don’t they ? Other people don’t have any problem”…
And then the “bouquet final”.
“I am trying to learn everything that is under my responsability. As soon as I learned about my appointment, I did a search on the Internet to see what the Finance Ministry actually does”. (Bangkok Post)
! ! ! ! !
Her current responsibilities are considerable, and include: the Excise Department, the Treasury Department, the Export-Import Bank, the Comptroller General’s Office, the Islamic Bank of Thailand and Dhanarak Asset Management.
Serve it cold, and savour… 
UPDATE
Guess what… 9 months later (december 2008)… she is the new IT Minister ! Merci Abhisit !
http://thaicrisis.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/abhisit-government-list-of-ministers-and-first-critics/
Note from ThaiCrisis : unfortunately this article is not available anymore from Bangkok Post website… Removed ? I don’t know.
But I didn’t make it up (even if I wanted to, it would have been impossible : in Thailand reality goes beyond fiction !).
It was not a fantasy or a mistake of translators, or a one to one interview… It was her first press conference, and many thai journalists were there (those details were given in the BKK Post article). And were… surprised. Like us.
We all know that ministers are political positions… but there is a limit. There should be a limit.
This woman is nothing else than a disgrace.