BANGKOK — Interior Minister Chalerm Yoobamrung has decided against blocking 29 allegedly controversial websites and has added them to his personal bookmarks instead.
The shock move came two hours into his scheduled review of the sites at the Information of Communication Technology Ministry today.
Chalerm, who brought his laptop, was still immersed in a lengthy forum discussion on one of the sites, Prachathai.com, as of press time.
Chalerm was said to have been so engaged by some of the blogs he had begun posting comments and engaging in back and forths using his new posting name “I-M LERM”.
After an hour on New Mandala, Chalerm allegedly told an aide that “Colonel Jeru is just too much!”
Chalerm also read Stickman for 45 minutes, concluding he “knows more about Thai women than even I do.”
Chalerm then asked a 24-year-old IT assistant at the ICT to bookmark all the 29 allegedly controversial sites so he could “enjoy browsing them at work.”
The news of Chalerm’s reversal has been received with a huge sigh of relief among journalists, bloggers, and website editors, who have spent much of the last two days conducting random google searches of their names with words like, “monarchy” and “king” next to them to see what would pop up.
