BANGKOK – A local group of political agitators found themselves at a loss on Saturday when attempting to outline an action plan to enact economic sanctions against the city-state of Singapore.
The Anti-Sing Thais, or AST, a loose coalition of anti-Thaksin PAD members, university students angry about the Temasak buyout of Shin Corp, and football fans still upset about the narrow loss by the Thai national team to Singapore in February’s Tiger Cup final, met on the weekend to “finalize our charter” and “determine an action plan,” according to Urophong Nunsai, the AST’s president.
“We started off by trying to list all the Singaporean products we could think of, and that took an hour – and we still only had five items,” Urophong said, showing a notepad on which he had handwritten a short listing of items including Hainanese Chicken Rice, Cha kway teow, fried Hokkien noodles, Popiah, and “the word “lah.’”
“We had laksa paste on the list, but then when someone asked what it actually was, no one knew,” Urophong continued. “Three of us took a quick trip to Tops but no one there had heard of it, either.”