Moribund Elite Card rises like a phoenix – Bangkok Post, April 26, 2012
…Political intervention is pressuring the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), the TPC’s sole owner, to reverse its plan to shut down the loss-ridden card operation, a brainchild of fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Chartthaipattana party chief adviser Banharn Silpa-archa, currently banned from politics, met Thaksin recently in Dubai. Chumpol Silpa-archa, Mr Banharn’s brother, is the Tourism and Sports minister.
Shortly after Mr Banharn’s return, the ministry ordered the TAT to dust off the business plan for the Elite Card…
Earlier: About the Elite Card program
Earlier: Elite Card Abandoned
Ai Maew telling Chumphon to revive Elite Cards at all cost – No wonder …
Perhaps it would be better relabelled the Noveaux Riche’s Amaart Card
One supposes the whole idea of the Elite Card (that the likes of the above mentioned would ever admit to) is that sufficient rich tourists will suddenly materialize to rapidly enrich the poor. Well naturally the political mafia is actually going to get most of it, if it ever happens anyway. Someone should tell the above that rich people don’t tend to like slumming it in a rubbish-strewn mess – it reminds them too much of their own exploitative tendencies. (I doubt that Barnharn would understand that though, since he doesn’t seem to care a toss whether his own decadence destroys an economically-challenged community or two. We actually thought there were no poor people in Barnharnburi.) I guess we wouldn’t have to look very far to find the above mentioned personally profiting from this. Not that there is a single person in authority here who has the balls to put a stop to it.There has to be some secret reason why such greed-driven thickos are prepared to prop up something that most experts wrote off as a crock of shit years ago.