re: "PM backs senators' picks" (BP, February 23)
Dear editor,
In addressing the understandable concerns of his political opponents, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-cha asks of the senators hand-picked by the NCPO: "Don't they love the country? Everyone loves the nation. The love of the country and democracy shouldn't be monopolised only by political parties and politicians." Although he answers his own rhetorical question, that answer should not be dismissed as disingenuous. Surely the PM and those who support him do in fact love their nation, as do all other Thais, however dissenting their opinions, and as do the many non-Thais who freely choose to make Thailand their home.
But there is more than one type of love. There is the healthy love of a husband or father who respects his beloved partner or mature child as an independent person with their own aspirations, strengths, and goals, including the ability to decide for themselves how best to live their own life. Healthily loving parents and spouses enable their beloved partners and adult children to be a free persons, supporting them in their endeavours, even when their chosen course might be contrary to the sincere wishes of the loving partner or parent. Then there is the sort of love, no less real, that is the pathological love that leads to stalking, to obsessive control of the beloved object, and even to kidnapping and coercion.
The proof of the love that the senators have for the Thai nation will be shown when they vote for the next prime minister of Thailand. Will they prove themselves healthy lovers supporting the liberty and self-determination of their beloved, or will they prove themselves inclined towards the pathology of the obsessive that keeps the beloved fed on mind-numbing drugs, locked in isolation, and restrained in a straightjacket lest their overtures not be obediently reciprocated as demanded?
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 February 25, 2019, under the title "It's love, actually" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1634550/its-love-actually
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