CONSTITUTION MUST STICK
Re: “‘Watch scandal’ now and amnesty bill then” ( BP, Opinion, February 2).
Academic Thitinan wrote: “The military aided and abetted a street-led movement that represented a coalition of interests against the rise, rule and resilience of Yingluck’s brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, and his power clique.” This warrants a little more discussion. In particular, what does it mean to stage a coup?
Since the constitution, as the highest rule of law, is necessarily the ultimate source of legitimacy for all other, dependent institutions of government for a society, this latest coup in the long line of coups against the evolution of democracy in Thailand was an assault on the central pillar of the nation.
When the central pillar of a society’s political foundation is repeatedly overthrown to protect the vested interests of those working against it, it is little wonder that democracy has failed to develop healthy civil solutions to civil problems.
No nation could thrive under such regular setbacks. No one expects any constitution to be perfect or the best for all time, as the more than 30 amendments made to improve even the excellent US Constitution show, but the solution to discovered failures is to allow the people to fix those perceived weaknesses. Nor have the US, the UK or Japan, or any other nation been free of corruption, often on massive scales.
However, such corruption and other abuses have never justified toppling the central pillar of any of these nations any more than it could justify any of the coups against the Thai nation.
Finally, the events leading up to the latest coup effectively showed that democracy was again taking a healthy hold in Thailand. Pheu Thai’s amnesty bill was so sleazy both in method and in content that even the UDD, the voice of the red shirts, officially came out against it, as I did at the time.
The Thai people were right to voice their indignation by protesting. But the events showed that the PDRC leaders and those allying with them against the rule of law that valued democratic principle were not interested in the amnesty bill except as an excuse to again overthrow the central pillar of legitimacy.
The protests did not subside when it was clear that the amnesty bill had been roundly defeated, but intensified as the leaders sought to inflict maximum disruption in their campaign to “Shut Down Bangkok” so as to force their vested agenda on the entire nation at any cost.
Let us hope that something has been learned in the near four years of regression since then, and that the latest constitution will be amended to bring it into line with the good morals at the heart of democracy.
This makes democracy morally superior to every alternative, even the most benign of dictatorships, which inherently reject the ideal that all citizens have an equal right to a voice in the formation of their society and its government, however offensive some might find some of those voices. Felix Qui