re: "Election obsessions" (Postbag, January 11)
Dear editor,
Echoing JC’s doubts about it (“Countdown to chaos”, Jan. 10), Clara Holzer (“Election obsessions”, Jan. 11) sensibly questions “the Bangkok Post's obsession with elections.” The answer is that the Post is “obsessed” with elections in the same way that most of us are “obsessed” with breathing. Elections are no more definitive of democracy than breathing is of being a thinking, feeling human, but just as the absence of breathing is a reliable indicator that there is no human person present, so is the absence of elections a reliable indicator that there is no democracy. But why value democracy?
The Post and many others, rather more than on Clara Holzer's short list, value democracy because it is the only form of government based on good morals. Elections are an essential tool, but as the examples of Mussolini and many others who got the trains running and the streets cleared of vermin show, perhaps even Trump, elections alone are no guarantee of the good morals that found democracy, for which a strong constitution enabling constant vigilance is also needed. The latest coup against a popular civil government and civil rule of law was committed because democracy was once again showing signs of taking solid root in Thailand. The sleazy Pheu Thai amnesty bill had been defeated by the voice of the vigilant Thai people and the awful rice pledging scheme was coming under increasing pressure from healthy vigilance. Democracy being the surest antidote to corruption, which thrives under repressive censorship, what traditional forms of systemic corruption might have been threatened next had such democratic shoots been allowed to take hold?
The Post and others are right to obsess not with elections but with democracy because democracy is the only form of government that is based on good morals. Even were it popular, the government of the current politicians making up a rule of law to enable their own agenda is an assault on good morals.
Felix Qui
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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.
The text as edited was published in PostBag on January 13, 2018, under the title "Defeating democracy" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1395090/leave-yingluck-be
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