Regime scorns public

Re: “Election buffoonery”, ( Post Bag, Feb 14).

I must thank JC for telling us why democracy, flawed though it be, is preferable to every alternative, certainly to dictatorship that trashes the rule of civil law.

As JC concedes, the current US president seems a poor choice, a “buffoon-in-chief” as I had put it. However, JC’s insulting tirade branding the US citizens who elected President Donald Trump as buffoons mirrors all to well the mindset of those colluding with Suthep Thaugsuban’s People’s Democratic Reform Committee mobs clamouring for a coup to overthrow the central pillar of the Thai nation yet again. They spewed out equally offensive insults at the Thai people who had voted first for Thaksin Shinawatra, then his proxies and finally for Pheu Thai. Those self-righteous arrogantly labelled their fellow citizens ignorant fools.

This is not only insulting to that majority of the Thai people, it is false. I disagree with the US people’s choice of president, but that does not mean those who voted for him are buffoons. They are not. Nor does the election of deeply flawed Thai politicians show the Thai people to be so ignorant or foolish as JC and the likes of the arrogant PDRC mobs and allies insist, and doubtless believe, as an excuse to deny them a voice in the form both of their government and of their own society.

JC makes another common mistake of those lauding dictatorship when he claims that it is “squabbling” democracy that has caused 19 coups in Thailand. Wrong. On the contrary, it is when democracy looks like taking healthy root that it is overthrown by those who do not want the Thai people to have a fair voice in the affairs that affect them, their lives, and their nation. The Thai nation is the nation of the Thai people, all of them, not merely those who happen to arrogantly assume that they know better than the low classes what is best for everyone.

The usual oligarchy of rich and powerful certainly known how to run things to keep the rich and powerful in riches and power. They know how best to ensure that there is a sufficiency of luxury watches to lend to close friends, along with spiffy leopard rugs for the mansion and a sufficient number of Ferraris in the garage to speed home in after a night of drunken partying. But they neither know nor care about the concerns, the wishes, the preferences, and lives of others, even if occasionally letting a few miserly crumbs drop from their sufficiently laden tables.

JC asks for an alternative to a coup. That is easy: The Thai army could have done its duty to the Thai nation. It could have served the civil government of the Thai nation. It could have protected and upheld the constitution of the Thai nation. It could have ensured, perhaps with a short period of martial law, that the streets were cleared of the mobs determined to “Shut down Bangkok”, and it could have ensured that the February 2014 election went smoothly so that the Thai people could chosen a new civil government of their nation. Much good could have been done.

Neatly as it might fit his false characterisation of the Thai people as “immature juveniles”, the “politicians brute” (my actual phrase) are not teachers bringing order to a noisy classroom. However, an inept education system does ruthlessly suppress critical thinking in accord with the prime minister’s “12 Values”, while harsh censorship does indeed aim to keep the Thai people uninformed on national Thai affairs, as seen in the imprisonment of civil rights activist Jatupat Boonpatararaksa. Much as the coupists do indeed strive to turn the Thai people into “immature children” who they can then boss around like Stalin, Mao or Mugabe, all of whom thought they knew better than the citizens what was best for the citizens, they are wrong.

The Thai people, like the American people, are best qualified to decide what is best for the Thai people. It is this basic respect for each and every citizen as equally persons deciding how to live their lives that is the defining characteristic of democracy. Elections are but a tool of democracy. It is this basic respect for his fellow citizens that JC appears to lack. It is this basic respect for their fellow Thai citizens that the coup politicians and their supporters lack. This lack is a deep moral failure.

FELIX QUI