We say no more lies, but are we ready to hear the truth?

As if that is not cruel enough, he is in a spot where a deep, dark chasm lies beneath, perhaps populated by famished, carnivorous creatures. People have asked, demanded, pleaded for him to say why he did what he did. To this question, no matter what he says, he is not going to come out a winner. It is a classic case of damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. It is our Thai version of “Hunger Games”.

If his answer is what he reportedly told the former US ambassador to Thailand, Skip Boyce (uncovered by WikiLeaks), that he did it because at that time, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra was at his weakest and he, General Sonthi, was at his strongest, it does not really work. That is not an answer to the question “why”, but rather a description of circumstances in which he acted.

If he says he staged the coup because he was about to be stripped of his position as commander of the armed forces, then he will be admitting to a high crime against the state – for acting greedily to uphold his self-interest at the expense of a democratic state. Of course, he cannot claim self defence for such a crime; there is no justification.

If he says he staged the coup because he knew for a fact that the then prime minister was about to use the armed forces at his disposal under the emergency decree to crush demonstrating citizens, which would have resulted in a bloodbath, then he will be immediately persecuted in a red-shirt kangaroo court for throwing a fabrication against the former leader whom the red shirts regard as their hero. It will be an act of sedition as far as they are concerned, if not a suicide.

Already a call has come from General Prem Tinsulanond for General Sonthi to speak truthfully about who the mastermind of the coup was, if it wasn’t General Sonthi himself, as speculated by some factions. 

To date, we have not heard much from General Sonthi, who seems to be taking to heart the golden rule that silence is golden.

In the United States, a person can invoke the Fifth Amendment while being questioned by authorities. A man has the right not to answer any question on the ground that it can and may be used to incriminate him. But in Thailand, we are not that magnanimous. There is no escape mechanism available as a defence.

For many of us, it is rather strange why General Sonthi would accept the chairmanship of a committee that sometimes intends to function as a truth commission, sometimes as a confession booth, symbolic of contrition, and sometimes as a whitewash contrivance. 

The most telling statement that General Sonthi has made amidst all the grilling was the answer he gave when asked if he would do it all over again if given another chance. There was no hesitation as he answered, “Yes.”

Truth and politics are generally an oxymoron. Politicians say things to please their constituents, to get elected and re-elected or to attain legitimacy and wider popularity. Truth-telling is not one of the requirements for electing politicians. That’s a reason why in the US, the trust of the people in their elected legislators and officials on the honesty and trustworthy question has been in the teen level. The latest poll was 12 per cent.

Earlier this week at the Nuclear Summit in Seoul, South Korea, US President Obama was unwittingly caught on microphone in a conversation intended only for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, asking for “space” until after the November election when he would have “more flexibility” to deal with contentious issues, “particularly with missile defence”. 

American presidential candidates during the campaign season have been known to make unapologetic about-faces on their political stands on many issues. They say what they think will get them elected. It’s not only confined to presidential politics, it’s politics at every level, universally.

That brings us to the logical conclusion: politicians lie to satisfy voters.  They lie because we the people do not want to hear the truth, as the truth sometimes is hard to swallow, and truth does not fit neatly in a sound bite.

If General Sonthi speaks the truth, and it is not what we expect to hear, can we, or will we accept it as fact, and at face value? In the same vein, do we want to hear the hard truth about the true state of our economy and where we are heading? Do we want to hear that our economic development will not be possible without a real and concerted effort to improve human resources and social development? Do you want to hear how badly we fare in those two areas?

Harry Truman, one of the most underrated presidents in US history, once said that his choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician – and “to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference”.

At the end of the day, the law of supply and demand holds: if there is no demand for invented truth and half truth, no one will feel so compelled to lie. 

It was also Truman who captured the need for the public to hear all versions of sugar-coated, poisonous statements, when he said, “I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.”