Why this baby isn't clean or presentable

Kermadist Chiaracharuwat has taken me to task a number of times, and in so doing has always knocked some sense into my head. This was never clearer than in a letter he wrote to me last January: “The common people have grown up, Lung Kip. It is now their time. Your generation has done a good job; we did not become socialist, we escaped the killing fields, we escaped the wrenching change of communism. The common people are thinking for themselves, thanks to the developments that Lung Kip brought on.” (“It’s the turn of the younger generation,” Jan 19th, 2012).

But there’s an element still missing in this, the relationship between the precious baby and the bothersome bathwater that cleans him up and makes him presentable. Every revolution, however “good” or “reasonable”, involves some degree of violation of the baby in this way – indeed, it’s a rare society that goes through significant social change without losing a whole lot else in the process. 

A huge irony in the bringing up of children is that good parents are sometimes the worst parents because they’re too helpful and obliging. By the same token, and I agree completely with Khun Kermadist on this, the Constitution Court did a real disservice to the Thai people when it let stand that “illegal” verdict in 2001, which made the 2006 coup inevitable and, step by step, brought on all the turmoil that followed. That’s why the Truth for Reconciliation Commission of Thailand calls the 2001 case the “root cause” of the conflict – had the top court acknowledged that it found Thaksin guilty, which it did, and explained why as clearly as it did following the Ratchadaphisek case in 2008, the Thai people would have had parents steady enough for them to move on as a new generation with good governance intact. By breaking the law, the court broke the system, and now we are where we are.

And just to be absolutely sure I’m making myself clear, it’s my conviction that the whole court did this, not just one or two compromised justices, and that they did it not because they were incompetent or corrupt but out of respect for the people! The whole court blinked at a blatant wrong in order to give the Thai people what they wanted, Thaksin Shinawatra. And by so doing they blessed what he stood for, and made his sort of governance appear clean and normal 

Here’s the point. When parents start serving their children’s whims they may be more popular at the moment, but in the long run they screw everything up. The baby isn’t clean at all, in fact, what is more presentable – and it just bawls on and on for more!

Lung Kip

Chiang Mai