Chalerm angers Democrats with audio clip claims

There were protests in Parliament yesterday when Pheu Thai MP Chalerm Yoobamrung skirted around a ban on playing a doctored audio clip - which seeks to suggest the prime minister triggered the Songkran riots - by reading a transcript of remarks on the tape.

"The tape has definitely been edited for the purpose of making it clearer and cutting out unrelated comments and the outcome is uninterrupted six paragraphs of Abhisit Vejjajiva's remarks," Chalerm said.

He insisted the tape had not been doctored to deviate from the original message.

Regardless of the ban on airing the doctored clip from the floor, he ploughed on reading the remarks, which he said had been transcribed.

As he began to read, a number of Democrat MPs, including Boonyod Sukthinthai, lined up to protest his bid to defy the ban.

To overcome the protests, he cut short his prepared transcript by highlighting a summary of Abhisit's alleged remarks. He then posed a direct question from the floor, asking the prime minister to clarify the circumstances leading to the remarks, which lasted three minutes and 42 seconds.

In his rebuttal, Abhisit said the coalition's move to block the audio clip being aired was not a suppression of information but a pre-emptive move against a wrong precedent by allowing Parliament to be a venue that condoned fraud and falsification.

Although he recognised several parts of the three-minute tape as a compilation of his voice, the words were edited out of context, he said, adding it had yet to be checked whether the tape contained just his voice or had voice-overs inserted.

The audio was clearly false, he said, as he made a speech broadcast live from the Interior Ministry to declare the state of emergency in Bangkok before he was attacked by a red-shirt mob on April 12.

But the message in the doctored clip said the opposite - that the attack prompted his decision on emergency rule.

The tape allegedly recorded remarks he later made on April 19 and April 26, when he prepared for taping sessions at Government House to be aired by NBT. But there were several discrepancies from the original remarks in the recorded broadcast, he said.

For example, in his original speech he made references to attempts to seize and shut down television stations by unruly crowds but the doctored clip had that he had ordered the shutdown.