These days in Thailand, not a single day passes by without AEC (Asean Economic Community) on the headlines. The billion-baht worth of AEC campaign is zeroed in on with one single issue: to prepare the country and Thai people to compete with other nine members in the Asean Economic Community by 2015. Under the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the AEC platform has been accorded a top priority and morphed into a major populist policy. Any reference that has the word "AEC" in it would certainly get the government funding. That explains why there are hundreds of AEC seminars in the past several months. At the Asean foreign ministerial meeting over the weekend in Phnom Penh, the Asean leaders still struggled with the date when the Asean Community (AC) would start. Foreign Minister Hor Namhong, the Cambodian chair, told the meeting that the AC should begin on 1st of January 2015 not on 31st December as agreed by the Asean economic ministers in their earlier meetin...