America apologises - for doing the right thing

I really don’t have a problem with the embassy officially calling one of its Fourth of July party invitees an “anti-Thaksin activist”. It’s the subsequent “apology” that has been bothering me.

Okay, you don’t like Thaksin Shinawatra. Big deal. I mean, that’s a really, really big deal. You should be proud about it, right? You have taken a stand and, right or wrong – it’s not something you should hide. The guy who received the invitation card identifying him as an “anti-Thaksin activist” should have run out of his home like a madman and waved it like a lottery ticket that’s won first prize. What happened instead? Anti-Thaksin people cried foul and the US charge d’affaires apologised.

Mind you, the invitation gaffe was a Freudian slip, but the apology was a genuine insult, to me at least. It’s America’s unequivocal statement that being “anti-Thaksin” is bad. Simply put, would the acting ambassador have to personally apologise if an invitee was wrongly categorised as a “professor” or “political expert” or “CEO”?

You apologise when you accidentally describe your guest as an “alcoholic”, a “womaniser” or a “sugar daddy”. That the envoy had to personally seek forgiveness from Pramote Nakornthab automatically placed Pramote in an unpleasant category. Basically, the ambassador was saying to Pramote, “Sorry we gave you a bad name.”

The only sensible apology in Pramote’s case is nowhere near being offered. The embassy “classifies” Thais and, worse still, it uses Thaksin as a barometer. Thais, in the embassy’s eyes, are either pro- or anti-Thaksin, and that’s it. The situation, however, is a lot more complicated than that. There are people who love democracy but think Thaksin endangers it. There are probably pro-Thaksin people with dictatorial tendencies, too.

It’s very complex, but the embassy made its own judgement about what’s bad and good or right and wrong in this country. The classification somehow must have made its way to the computer and the rest is history. The clerk or junior official responsible for sending that invitation to Pramote was just a downstream product of the embassy’s ideological cultivation that is dubious at best or misguided at worst.

But enough of that already. Many Thais, me included, have warned Washington that Thailand’s problem is not about a small bunch of people trying to control or abuse the majority. It’s a national strife with the country divided almost down the middle. If the United States wants to take sides, it does so at its own great risk.

What has happened is just a glimpse of what’s in store for the United States. The incident drew cynical chuckles, but it also has added another straw to the collective Thai back. The so-called apology speaks volumes, and not in a good way.

“To err is human,” said American envoy Patrick Murphy on Twitter, using a “humble pie” hashtag. The American embassy has apologised in both a serious and a cheeky manner. Murphy personally presented Pramote with what was called a “proper” invitation card. I saw their photo and wonder why the “activist” looked rather grim and the diplomat looked a bit proud.

“To forgive is divine” is perhaps what the envoy wanted “anti-Thaksin” Thais to add to his Twitter message. Well, the full sentence – To err is human; to forgive is divine – leaves no doubt as to which act is harder.

To me, calling Pramote an “anti-Thaksin activist” on an invitation card is not a mistake. Undiplomatic it might be, but never was it a mistake. Making a mistake is when you intend one thing and do something else. A mistake is when your action contradicts your intent. A mistake is when you call John Kerry “Mr President” instead of Secretary of State. Pramote must have been regarded as “anti-Thaksin” by the embassy’s people, and somehow their perception of him became public, and that’s that.

The invitation card was nobody’s mistake. It’s not Pramote’s fault if he’s anti-Thaksin. It wasn’t the embassy’s fault to say so on the card. Why does the embassy have to apologise for calling a man what he is, quite correctly?

So what “erring” was the American envoy referring to? He needs to educate me on that one.