The Thai people are waking up

Yet there remain so many places in the world where people are not yet ready to vote for good people, or even feel it’s right to talk about virtue in leadership!

Many Thais, perhaps even a majority, feel that any phu yai (person in a position of authority) must be respected regardless of what he or she does. They feel it’s not right to debate a leader’s ethics, for example, and indeed sometimes vote for individuals the rest of the world would feel were entirely unsuitable for public office. For this reason, many shady politicians are given the mandate to “look after” the very ministries they have been famous for robbing in the past. The fox is put in charge of the hen house, so to speak, and for many Thais that’s just how it is. Being a VIP is proof of a person’s good karma, so who am I, just an ordinary person, to question such a favoured individual’s moral values?

Until the farmer in khaki descends on the coop, cleans it out, clamps a new padlock on the door for awhile – and nobody has any problem with that one either!

But there’s something new in the present situation, isn’t there? For the first time in the history of Thailand the vast powers of the electronic media are being used to manipulate the electorate, and the huge, unsavoury mess is actually waking the Thai people up. Waves of violence and intolerance are being artificially generated by lobbyists and spinmeisters financed by special interests, sometimes even from outside the country, and the result is that the Thai people are on fire. It’s a rough ride, but what democracy has ever got started without the electorate waking up first and starting to shout?

And then that million-dollar question, one closely related to the hen house analogy above: Can democracy ever be imposed from the top? Is it possible that what we’re seeing right now in Egypt, or even in Burma, is a military machine facilitating the development of democracy from the top?

For it seems the Thai military really achieved something in the last coup. The generals knew they didn’t need to set things straight by force anymore, or couldn’t even if they wanted to. And as a result Thais are beginning to debate what they want and don’t want in public, and are beginning to clean up the mess all on their own. There’s still a lot of the old stuff left, and indeed the most divisive figures are the most antiquated, but the debate is fresh and assured!

Lung Kip

Chiang Mai