Not holding my breath

As a man who is against military rule in any shape or form, people naturally assume I must be all for a return of the politicians. Unfortunately, like many correspondents to this newspaper, I have witnessed a succession of corrupt, greedy unlawful representatives whose only intention was to increase their personal wealth. It is a sad fact of Thai life that only the rich, with large fortunes to sustain them, get involved in political activity and hence find themselves on an election ballot. When elections roll around the public are free to vote for some old faces who were all involved in shady, nefarious activities in different parts of the country for different parties but who all have no idea of life on a minimum wage on a building site or farm.

Organisations that allow political activity for the Thai workers have either been outlawed or are discouraged by the wealthy elites that make the rules so we see no organisation to represent field workers, house builders, shop assistants or noodle vendors which would have some hope of bringing about real change. Income inequality is at its highest because the rich make the rules to benefit themselves.

Only when Thailand finds its equivalent of Jose Mujica from Uruguay, will there be changes. As that man once suggested, “We invented this thing called representative democracy, where we say the majority is who decides, so it seems to me that we [heads of state] should live like the majority and not like the minority.”

Sadly, I won’t be holding my breath to see that come about in this country. LUNGSTIB