OPINION

Unfit to be our leader

France’s streets have been bloodied by the massacre of more than 100 Parisians, but junta chief Prayut Chan-o-cha is already using the attack to justify his repression of the Thai people.

Just hours after the gunshots ended yesterday morning, Gen Prayut warned Bangkok Post reporter Wassana Nanuam that a free society inevitably leads to “power vacuums” and terrorist attacks like the one in France, implicitly pinning the carnage on France’s way of life. A government adviser, professor Panitan Wattanayagorn, later blamed the Western idea of “freedom of expression” for the Paris attacks. This pair of statements puts on clear display the Thai junta’s moral corruption.

Gen Prayut’s first instinct should have been to provide strength and comfort to the French people. If there is a time for sympathy and not paternalism, today is it. Leonard Bernstein, the great conductor, once said, “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”

That Gen Prayut resorts to statements of fear instead of ones of common humanity is shameful, but more than that, it reveals his true character — and reaffirms why he is unfit to lead any decent society.

Geng Ngarmboonanant

Re: “Reds invented elites” (PostBag, Nov 14).

Dusit Thammaraks’ letter summarised voting in the Northeast before 1997. This is what I saw when living there continuously from 2000 to 2003: Average people, mostly farmers, were scared to death to even consider voting any way except the Thaksin way.

The War on Drugs reinforced that attitude, because it kept people in line, by killing some of them every once in a while. Where were the UN and other “world bodies” when that brutality was going on, and why is the history of the era not being written by them?

That deadly element, by the way, is still there, quietly waiting to return to power.

Guy Baker

What the former Interior Ministry officer wrote in his “Reds invented elites” letter is exactly what I have been saying to my contemporaries and anyone in the younger generation who is patient enough to listen and wants to know about Thai society in the past.

People in the country have always been united, with our Majesty the King in the deepest corner of our heart, until capitalist ideology and inequality crept in.

Thank you so much Dusit Thammaraks for putting into writing what I never have, but know to be the truth.

Lucy Tan-atichat

Khun Dusit Thammaraks says, “there were no class differences in our society after King Rama V peacefully ended slavery and eradicated the class based society.”

The Kingdom of Thailand is, by definition, a class based society. Class and its handmaiden, the patronage system, continue to lay their heavy hand on the people of Thailand. This often takes the form of a cruel slap in the face to the least privileged among us. Such is the case of Preecha Kaewbanpaew, the 77-year-old former teacher accused of sedition, or Ophas Chansuksei, a 68-year-old pin-badge vendor convicted of lese majeste for writing on two toilet doors.

It is very often the case that members of the privileged classes would have others believe equality prevails in society, and their wealth and status derived purely from hard work.

Khun Dusit also states, “Before Thaksin, the Thai nation lived in relative harmony. There was no difference whether you were rich or poor.” There is not a single iota of compassion contained in this assertion. Rather it can be better understood as a symptom of the very disease that afflicts Thai society and which it so callously seeks to hide.

Mr M

Dusit Thammaraks seems to live in Nirvana. He says before Thaksin and the red shirts, all Thai society was cohesive, peaceful and never found wanting.

Poor farmers did not just fall into a Thaksin-engineered trap. Sorry. I have worked with rural farmers in Buri Ram since 1966, and even then they detested the pretentious central government and lies being told to them; before there was ever a red shirt. They mocked officials who made them wait for hours under the sun, just so they could come and pretend to be admiring the village’s latest pro-central government achievement, and then leave after a five-minute speech extolling the state’s wisdom.

When I want to fool my grandson into looking the other way, I say, “Hey, look at the bird!” We could be in the kitchen, bedroom or movie theatre; no matter where we are, he will look. There is no bird. But I can get him to look anytime.

The Thai word amart, in fact, means civil servant, consultant, adviser. It has come to mean elite, I believe, given the close liaison between the amart and the masters they serve. Pretending they don’t exist is one thing; asking a reasonable and logical mind to accept the lack of common sense is another. But that is the way of the amart, is it not?

Frank G Anderson

Re: “Underworld still going strong” (Opinion, Nov 13).

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha should look into why Pol Maj Gen Paween Pongsirin, head of the investigating team in the Rohingya trafficking case, abruptly resigned. Pol Maj Gen Paween’s investigation was so successful that it led to 153 arrest warrants, including a senior army general and a powerful provincial boss in Satun.

However, in his resignation announcement, Pol Maj Gen Paween complained his superiors made a veiled threat against him. This unfair treatment clearly shows there is nepotism going on. Corruption is also rampant among high-ranking officers. Good officers should be recognised for the good deeds they have done — not allowed to suffer from groundless bias and intimidation.

Vint Chavala

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