Disharmony is Thaksin's legacy

I feel I should respond lest Mr Barlow and others remain unaware of the true facts. He is incorrect in saying the rural poor had been pitted against the Thai elite for as long as democracy has been tried in Thailand, that nobody cared about them until Thaksin came, and why they hardly bothered to vote.

It is equally incorrect that Thaksin acknowledged the division in Thai society and for the first time attempted to improve the lot of the poor majority.

The fact is there was no class distinction in our society after King Rama V peacefully ended slavery and eradicated the class hierarchy. Before Thaksin, the nation enjoyed relative harmony. There was no difference in whether you were rich or poor, educated or uneducated, influential or not influential, or whether you were a Thai or a foreigner. The concept of an elite class (ammat) was introduced by the red shirts. They deliberately set out to divide our society, create hatred and separate the rural Thais from the urban Thais.

As an Interior Ministry official for 37 years, I organised or supervised general elections (general elections were that ministry’s responsibility until 1997). Rural people were eager to cast their votes, but they voted in accord with their village heads, schoolteachers, monks and government officials whom they respected. There were others who sold their votes to party canvassers or were threatened by other influential people. 

There are good and bad people in every society, and past governments did not do enough to quell the bad people. People in the countryside were fooled by rogue politicians into the kind of life that put them into debt and taught to live on credit. All of this ran counter to the sufficiency economy upheld by our King. Poor farmers fell into the red traps. They began to mortgage their land with government banks. Eventually these banks would be bankrupt and sold to public. It was the cruellest way of taking the farmers’ land and making profit from state-owned properties. If the military had not intervened, Thais would today be fighting among themselves, with the North, Northeast and possibly also the South divided. Thailand would likely have become a failed state. Most Thais recognise this and support what the current government is trying to do for the country.

Populist policies are acceptable provided there is no corruption. The rice price-pledging scheme would not have been bad had it been done properly, to the benefit of the people. But corruption was widespread and billions of baht went into the pockets of rogue politicians. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha is fair in not using his special powers to punish the previous government, but rather leaving the decision to the courts. History will decide who was right and who was wrong. 

Dusit Thammaraks