Beware fool’s dream
Re: “Graft a ‘human trait’”, (PostBag, Jan 15).
I am glad that Clara Holzer agrees with the point I had emphasised that “democracy does not stop at elections”, which are, as she writes, but a small step, albeit an essential one, in the difficult process of achieving and maintaining a healthily functioning democracy. We are also in agreement that the temptation to corruption is a human trait.
However, Ms Holzer appears to have missed the evidence I pointed out showing that democracy had been taking solid root in Thailand: The defeat by the outraged voice of the Thai nation of Pheu Thai’s sleazy amnesty bill and the increasing pressure being put on that government to come clean about its rice pledging scheme. Such are only possible when vigilant citizens are accorded the right to seek and to speak truths, which is why free speech is a cornerstone of democracy.
To further clarify an issue that continues to confuse Ms Holzer, democracy, whilst certainly being no guarantee of it, is indeed the “surest antidote to corruption” for the same reason: corruption can only be eliminated when financial, legal and other forms of corruption can be discovered and openly stated for what they are, something only possible under the democratic principle of free speech which is conspicuously absent under the currently ruling set of Thai politicians, who are unelected and unaccountable.
Censorship is beloved by the corrupt precisely because they have much to hide, which is the reason that undemocratic governments always make up a corrupt rule of law to confer the impunity of ignorance that censorship bestows on corruption. Yes, Clara Holzer, much as history shows that many of its particular instances fall short, democracy remains the only form of government whose founding principles make it inherently opposed to corruption.
It is a fool’s dream to think that an opaque government intent on using its own made up rule of law to silence healthy investigation and critical questioning of its acts and motives will be less corrupt than a democratic alternative: the forced ignorance alone precludes any sound basis for such a pious belief.
FELIX QUI