Wan Muhamad Noor Matha

Wan Nor at the opening of the Darul Aman Mosque in Chiang Rai , 2009

Wan Muhamad Noor Matha ( Thai วัน มู หะ มัด น อ ร์ มะ ทา , RTGS Wanmuhamatno Matha , pronunciation: [wan muːhàʔmát nɔː máʔtʰaː] , also Wan Noor for short , วัน น อ ร์ , *  May 11, 1944 in Yala , Thailand ) a Thai politician. He is one of the founders of the Wahdah group , a small lobby of assimilated and integrated Muslim politicians from the extreme southern provinces. Between 1994 and 2005 he held various ministerial offices (with interruptions), including that of Interior Minister (October 2002 to March 2004) and Deputy Prime Minister (March to October 2004) under Thaksin Shinawatra . From 1996 to 2000 he was President of the Thai National Assembly .

life and career

The from the southern Thai province of Yala native, ethnic Malay Muslim studied until 1969 at the Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok Educational Management . He then taught as a lecturer at the teacher training institute in Songkhla and studied at the same time for a Master of Education in social studies.

In 1979 he was elected to represent Yala for the Social Action Party in the national parliament in Bangkok, switched to the Democratic Party in 1986, to the Solidarity Party in 1988 and to the New Hope Party in 1992 . He always took a group of MPs from the predominantly Muslim provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala - the Wahdah group - with him. From 1980 he worked in the Ministry of Finance and Industry, in 1994 and 1995 he became Deputy Minister of the Interior and was then President (Speaker) of Parliament from November 1996 to June 2000.

Chavalit Yongchaiyudh's New Hope party formed a coalition and eventually merged with the Thai-Rak-Thai Party (TRT) of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra , in whose government Wan Noor became Minister of Transport and Communications in 2001 and Minister of the Interior in October 2002.

As transport minister he was confronted with a pilots strike in mid-2002, as interior minister he had started a war against the drug mafia and at the beginning of December 2002 promised to put an end to the uprising in the Muslim southern provinces within a year. After the rebels, which were also increasingly active in terrorism, had (allegedly) declared in 2004 that they would take Thaksin Rachaniwet (the southernmost palace of the Thai king) in Narathiwat province within 1000 days, Wan Noor and army chief Chaiyasit Shinawatra, Thaksin's cousin, became Thaksin’s Accused of inaction. Although Wan Noor's lobby had endeavored for economic uplift in the neglected southern provinces and the introduction of Sharia law at the local level, he remained silent during the police massacre in Tak Bai (2004) , since he had already been replaced as Minister of the Interior in March 2004 and became Deputy Prime Minister without portfolio had been determined. From October 2004 to March 2005, Wan Noor was Minister of Agriculture as part of a further cabinet reshuffle, after the Wahdah faction's election defeat (caused by the escalating Thaksin policy), he renounced a new ministerial office. He then oversaw Thai aid to victims of the earthquake in Pakistan as a special envoy .

After the 2006 coup and Thaksin's overthrow, Wan Noor was appointed director of the National Drug Control Center in 2006 and promised firm action. When the TRT party was banned by a “constitutional tribunal” set up after the coup in May 2007, he was banned from political activity for five years. The Matubhum party has now emerged from the Wahdah faction .

Immediately after the end of his temporary political ban, he joined the Pheu-Thai party in May 2012 , which is considered the de facto successor to the TRT. He was a member of the party executive and stood on the party list in the 2014 parliamentary election, which was disrupted by government opponents and retroactively declared invalid .

He was one of the signatories of the Amman Message ( Amman Message ).

Web links

• The secretariat of the cabinet: Mr. Wan Muhamad Noor Matha
• Biography with photo (Thai)
• Thai Cabinet Divided On Muslim-dominated South
• Wan Noor rules out a position in the next Cabinet

Individual evidence

1. ^ Former Thai Rak Thai executives join Pheu Thai. In: The Nation (Online), May 31, 2014.