Real heroes don't run away

Somsak Pola is right that, if our shirt buttons are put in the wrong holes, we’d look like Charlie Chaplin. But for Somsak to compare his allegory to Thaksin’s trouble and jail term and say that all this must be undone is ridiculous.

Thaksin is a man, not a shirt button. Furthermore, he was a national leader. Yet when he was sentenced to a jail term for a corruption case that he could not fight, he ran.

Great leaders don’t run from adversity. Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa, walked gallantly into jail and stayed there for 27 years for a crime that he did not admit to. Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s great democratic icon, did not travel to the United Kingdom to see her husband on his deathbed because the powerful military might not allow her back to be with her people.

As for Thailand’s opposition Democrat Party and the military leaders at the receiving end of Somsak’s diatribe, at least they stay here and are willing to fight their cases regardless of the outcome.

They don’t run away from their own shadows and conscience.

Vint Chavala

Lamphun