Perhaps, the anti-FTA campaigners realised that the North Korean-type propaganda posters were failing so they decided they needed a new plan of attack. Rational arguments using facts and statistics, you ask?

No. Ad hominem attacks on negotiators seem to be the new tactic. Tom has a new post outlining a personal attack by Suriyan Thongnoo-ia, an anti-FTA campaigner, on Nitya Pibulsonggram,Thailand's chief FTA negotiator. The attack is just disgraceful. Tom has kindly translated the offending part of the article where Suriyan says:

... Mr. Nitya has no legitimacy to be Thai people’s representative because he has an American wife and a house in the United States. How can he possibly understand the lives of poor Thai people?

Good to see rational arguments by anti-FTA activists that will raise the level of debate. I thought I would do some digging on Suriyan to see what I could found about him.

Who is Suriyan Thongnoo-iad?
Back in 1997, he was the secretary-general of the Student Federation of Thailand. He was once a committee member of the Campaign for Popular Democracy. Back in 2000, Suriyan was (is ?) also an Assembly of the Poor leader or was he simply an adviser. Suriyan is also a representative of "Friends of the People" (clearly he is not a friend of the 61% of the people who voted for Thaksin though).

He has previously been a consultant for the aptly named Northern Peasant Federation also know as the Northern Farmers Federation (although now officially known as the Northern Development Foundation). He seems to be heavily involved with the Northern Peasant Federation and was one of the signatories for the Northern Peasant Federation in an agreement with the Thaksin government a few years ago.

Where does the Northern Development Foundation get its money?
The Northen Development Foundation have a budget of 3,000,000 Baht and are supported by the Toyota foundation, and the Netherlands government. So I wonder if he thinks the organsiation has legitimacy in understanding the lives of poor people in Thailand given the foreign influence it is under? Maybe the evil rich foreigners are out to exploit his organisation and all the poor Thais.

Suriyan and his views on the political process
Suriyan's views on the political process and the legal system in Thailand make interesting reading. On 12 December 2005, the Nation reports how the Federation is not happy on the current draft of the community forest bill:

“We are going to submit our demands to Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and we will also rally in front of the Parliament House,” Suriyan Thongnu-iad, who represents the Northern Farmers Federation, said yesterday.

His federation has brought more than 5,000 farmers down from the North to stage the rally.

Meanwhile, hundreds of forest dwellers from the North and Northeast are due to arrive in Bangkok soon after marching nearly 1,000 kilometres from Chiang Mai to demand that the people’s version of the community forest bill be made into law. The marchers, some of them with physical disabilities, had reached Saraburi yesterday.

Suriyan said his alliance would submit its demand to the prime minister tomorrow and would rally at Parliament House on Wednesday.

He called on the Parliament to scrap the bill version prepared by the joint House-Senate committee.

This doesn't sound too unreasonable a democratic protest. However, just 2 days later the Bangkok Post reports:

Suriyan Thongnu-iad, a representative of the Northern Farmers Federation, said if their demands are not met, forest dwellers would begin declaring their own community forests

Nice to see that we have a supporter of the democratic process here. His views certainly have changed since last year when he said that "[d]emocracy is the least bad regime in society." Why don't we all just ignore the rules we don't agree with?

Finally, the Thaksin government was not the first government to incur Suriyan's wrath either. He previously called the Chuan government 'insincere".

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