A tale of two newspapers: Gangs controlling motorcycle taxis

You are in the wrong business! From the Post (May 22, 2003): Gangs controlling motorcycle taxis in Bangkok earn at least 100 million baht a month from fees imposed on more than 1,800 motorcycle-taxi queues.

The Post gets people at a motorcycle taxi stand on Soi Charansanitwong 45 to go on record stating extorted money goes to the police. However, the last part of The Nation's article (May 23, 2003) tells of another drama going on at the Soi Charansanitwong 45 stand: Meanwhile, police said they would seek an arrest warrant for an underworld figure who allegedly threatened to take over a motorcycle-taxi stand from a businesswoman on Soi Charansanitwong 45... Metropolitan Police Bureau deputy commissioner Maj-General Chakthip Kunchorn na Ayutthaya said that to obtain an arrest warrant, police needed three witnesses to state that Narong had threatened Sompot.

While the Post reports the solution to mafia payoffs is a government plan to register the cyclists, The Nation is already reporting the next step in the saga: Motorcycle-taxi drivers who flocked to district offices to register their businesses under a government plan to free them from "influential figures" came away disappointed yesterday when they discovered that the registration forms had not been written... It then states about 100 motorcyclists drove to parliament to protest this inability to register.

Oddly, the Post article (May 23, 2003) also reports a protest of about 100 motorcyclists, but instead of protesting the government, the Post claims the gathering was to show their support for the government campaign against gangsters who extort money from them... The protest ended when a senior police officer spoke to them and convinced them to go back to work.