If knowledge is power, referendum voters are suffering blackout
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We now have a draft constitution to vote upon, but how well informed are the voters? Consider that the junta has ruled that “people who propagate information deemed distorted, violent, aggressive, inciting or threatening so that voters do not vote or vote
Last week the junta forced the cancellation of a Chiang Mai seminar on the charter by two professors from Chulalongkorn and Ramkhamhaeng universities and a civil servant from the Culture Ministry. And Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam has warned that those trying to persuade citizens to vote against the draft could be arrested.
So to what extent will we know what we are voting on? For example, does it still guarantee our kids 12 years of free education, as under the Yingluck regime? Will our education system teach them how to think rather than just what to think?
In the words of John Madison, fourth president of the United States, “A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. And a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
I fear we will have an election in form but not substance. We’ll have, as Madison put it, “a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both”.
Burin Kantabutra
