'Rumour-mongers who hurt the set' look like scapegoats

It's strange that the police got their hands on the two suspects - Thiranan Vipuchanan and Katha Pajajiriyapong - by tracing them through two fairly unpopular websites.

About 200,000 hit the Prachataiwebboard.com every month, while Sameskyboard.org gets half the number. Since few people ever visit these sites, its impossible that they can have any influence over anything in this country, let alone the stock index.

The issues discussed on the two sites, run by two former student activists, usually centre round politics and social issues rather than investments. They regard themselves as the alternative media.

Of course, there are some stock investors who participate, but they rarely post anything related to the market.

What might have alerted the police is that these two websites are regularly mentioned by the yellow shirts, and are used as their mouthpieces to post issues about the monarchy.

Though members at these webboards might bring up sensitive issues sometime, they have never gone beyond the red line so far.

The authorities probably got a bit confused when taking action against these two suspects. They probably wanted to go for "lese majeste" combined with stock manipulation, but finally settled on the computer law.

The suspects, both with experience in the stock market, were arrested separately on Sunday for violating the Computer Crime Act's Chapter 14, which forbids the importing of false data that could threaten national security or cause public panic.

If found guilty, they could be sentenced to a maximum of five years in jail or fined Bt100,000 or both.

Charging Thiranan for importing data that threatens national security is questionable because all she did was translate a Bloomberg news report.

She posted the translation on the website, under the pseudonym "bbb", at 6.09pm on October 14 - hours after the stock market had closed.

Therefore, it is really difficult to understand how this report posed any threats to the stock market.

If the translation is regarded as false data, what about the original?

The Bloomberg report by Richard Frost headlined "Thai Stocks, Baht Slumps on King's Health Speculation" is still available on Bloomberg.com and the Thai authorities appear to care less about it compared to what they are up to with Prachatai and Samesky.

Initial investigation found that the two suspects' investment portfolio was in no way connected to the fluctuations in the market, so it's not like they benefited financially from their posts on the webboard.

Though the two are out on bail, the story is nowhere close to ending because authorities have come no where close to solving the fundamental problem.

They still haven't worked out what is wrong with the system, why the Stock Exchange of Thailand is so sensitive to rumour and why the market authority don't have a mechanism nor the ability to deal with such rumours.

The day when the SET index started plummeting, the SET president Patareeya Benjapolchai merely urged investors "not to panic" but provided no solid grounds to back her plea. Obviously nobody believed her and the stocks kept falling.

Thailand is facing uncertainty both politically and economically. Political problems have still not been resolved and the economy is not as bright as the government wants us to believe.

Rumour mills work well in such uncertain conditions.

As long as the government is unable to provide political and economic stability, the rumour mongers will keep gossiping and speculating.

Now the problem is how will the authorities handle this?

Actually, the government should look into the SET manager's ability to handle panic situations and hold the management team responsible for failing to control things.

Instead of looking for more scapegoats to cover their faults, the government, the authorities and all concerned parties should stop and ask themselves how rumour mongers can cause so much damage and find ways to stop the rumour mill from spinning.