Why negative opinion polls are never bad news for Thai society

How would you like to live in a society where 80 per cent of the young people think there is “no space” for “good people”?
You simply wish the Abac Poll that reported this set of findings got it all wrong – or that the questionnaires posed to the 1,127 youngsters aged between 12 and 24 in Bangkok were simply drafted in a misguided way.
If it’s any consolation, my own interpretation is that the kids might have misunderstood the question. But then, my instinct tells me there must be some truth in the outcome of the opinion survey.
We have, after all, been told by earlier polls of young people that they are willing to tolerate corruption among politicians and bureaucrats if they personally stand to benefit from those undesirable acts – or if, as a result of corrupt practices in high places, the country could prosper economically.
That poll drew strong reactions from the country’s Counter-Corruption Commission (CCC), whose spokesman warned Abac Poll to either stop making such sweeping conclusions or to rephrase the question so that it started with a much more logical assumption: “Can a country prosper under a corrupt government?”, or something along those lines.
Abac Poll has soldiered on, however. And even if you don’t quite agree with some of the questionnaires drawn up by the pollsters, the controversial questions about moral and ethical issues need to be asked. To me, the more shocking the findings from the surveys, the more enlightened Thai society becomes.
If nothing else, such questioning of the young population at least offers us a rare reflection of the “new attitude” towards social values which, without a doubt, are undergoing some major changes, whether we like them or not.
The controversy dealt with here was based on one particular question in the whole set of questionnaires: “It has been said that there isn’t enough space for good people in Thai society. But it has also been said that there is still sufficient space for good people. What do you think?”
This of course has nothing to do with facts, logic or in-depth social debate. It’s a question that appeals more to emotion and feelings. Abac Poll reported that 80.1 per cent of the respondents agreed that in Thailand today, there isn’t adequate space for “good people”. And only 19.9 per cent said “good people” could still find some space in today’s social environment.
The pollsters obviously didn’t offer a clear definition of what “good people” represent in this context. And it was far from clear what “space” meant in the current situation. One can assume however that the general feeling of the majority of the young people who responded to this question was that “being good” was equivalent to be “being part of the mainstream”.
In other words, one can also assume that if most young people think “good” people can’t find “space” in the current social scene, it follows that most of the “space” is being occupied by “not-so-good” people who, by logical extension, form the majority of society.
Can we then go further to suggest, if we were to believe this poll, that since democracy is based on the wishes of the majority of the people, the current political system that we claim to have is controlled and run by “not-so-good” people?
But then, that would go against the very principle of a democratic system which, at least according to theory, is supposed to operate under the belief that the voice of the majority will help determine policies and actions of a society for the sake of the overall “good” of humanity.
If you think the whole survey has been badly misinterpreted, don’t blame Abac Poll. In fact, we should encourage more public-opinion survey agencies to conduct similar polls to really get to the bottom of the story. Before we kill the messenger because we don’t like the message, let’s get more messengers to concentrate on the same mission.
The fact that we are too scared to face facts shouldn’t be used as the excuse to stop our ears to more bad news about our very own social malaise.