Rangsiman Rome - a correction

I've had chance to talk to firebrand politician Rangsiman Rome a couple of times this year, once when we met in Pattani on 28 April, during the twentieth anniversary of the military assault on the Kru-Ze mosque, and again for an interview in Bangkok in July.

Rome (as he is usually known) mentioned to me that there's an error on p. 140 of our book Future Forward: The Rise and Fall of a Thai Political Party (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2020). Anyarat and I said that 'He had protested against the Yingluck government’s handling of the 2011 floods before turning his attention to resisting the NCPO.' This is not correct. Rome protested over the Yingluck government's handling of the amnesty bill in 2013, not the flooding.

We are very sorry for this mistake. It's a passage that both Anyarat and I worked on, but we can't find any source for this point in our notes. Mea culpa.

NIAS Press no longer exists, sadly, but since the beginning of 2024, the NIAS backlist has been taken over by NUS Press. In due course they will issue a corrected e-book version of Future Forward to fix the mistake.

Rome has since moved on from Future Forward to Move Forward, and thence to the People's Party. He continues to be a rising star in Thailand's political firmament.

I've included two photos I took of him when we met.

Duncan McCargo