Professor Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, minister for information and communications technology, is a veteran collector of firearms, with about 320 handguns, shotguns and other weapons currently in his possession.

"I still practise my shooting regularly at a firing range near my home. I usually get off 100-200 rounds in the mornings. I used to be 100/100 sharp. Now it's probably 99/100 or slightly less," says the 59-year-old minister.

Sitthichai was born in Thailand in 1948. His father was a Chinese military officer in General Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist army, some of whose members retreated to Thailand after they were defeated by the People's Liberation Army led by Mao Zedong.

In 1967, Sitthichai earned a high-school certificate from St John's School in Bangkok. The following year, he went to Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Engineering and earned his bachelor's degree in engineering from the University of New South Wales under the Colombo Plan scholarship programme in 1972.

He earned his PhD in solid-state electronics from the same university in 1975.

After returning to Thailand, Sitthichai started his teaching career at King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Lat Krabang.

"I was dean of the Faculty of Engineering from 1984 to 1988. In 1989, two colleagues and I jointly set up the privately run Mahanakorn University of Technology to focus on engineering education," he recalls.

"The initial investment was around Bt100 million. Khun Yongsak of Laem Thong poultry group, Khun Anan Anantrakul [former permanent secretary at the Interior Ministry] and I have equal stakes of one-third each.

"Over the past 18 years we've produced about 40,000 engineering graduates. Now we also have master's and doctoral programmes in engineering."

"In 1998 I was also the first Thai national to receive an outstanding alumni award from New South Wales. Since 1990 I've also been a visiting professor at London's Imperial College of Science and Technology."

Soon after the turn of the century, Sitthichai, then president of Mahanakorn University, met interim Premier General Surayud Chulanont, who was at that time the chief of the Army, during a campus visit.

Surayud was particularly impressed by the private university's technology orientation. Faculty members of Mahanakorn University, collaborating with the University of Surrey in the UK, managed to successfully launch the country's first small-scale satellite, named Thai Paht, into orbit in 1998.

The Bt300-million pilot scheme was aimed at making Thailand a regional centre for micro-satellite communications.

Given his academic background, Sitthichai was invited to join the Surayud Cabinet last September as ICT minister.

"I'm just an acquaintance. I don't know the premier very well. He seems to be the strong, silent type. That's quite a challenge for me, because some policy initiatives need inter-ministerial coordination, for which only the premier can issue orders," he says.

"At the moment I'm trying to create a more level playing field in the mobile-phone industry. The Council of State is expected to determine by end of this month if existing mobile-phone concession contracts are in violation of the Public-Private Joint Venture Act BE 2535, because there are several amendments bypassing this legislation."

"As a result, the four concession contracts [given to DTAC, AIS, True and Hutch] are unequal in terms of the ratio of revenue-sharing with the state, resulting in unfair competition.

"In addition, the state is set to lose Bt80 billion-140 billion in revenue over the next 6-9 years due to a regressive revenue-sharing ratio," he says.

Since consumers always benefit from a level playing field on the supply side, mobile-phone users should be hoping that Sitthichai is as successful in targeting the unfair practices as he is on the shooting range.

Nophakhun Limsamarnphun

nop1122@yahoo.com