Coups not the answer

re: "Regime is here to stay" (Editorial, May 22)

Dear editor,

Whilst the Post's editorial "Regime is here to stay" correctly points out that the "many Thais who initially backed the regime, … should have come to realise now that a military coup can never be a real solution to a flawed or corrupt government," the reality betrays an even deeper failure to understand Thai affairs by those Thai citizens who supported the coup. The piously unfilled promises made up to justify the latest overthrow of the supreme legal pillar of the Thai nation, the constitution that defines every other official Thai institution, should never have been credible to anyone given the decades long history of coups that have served only to prevent the evolution of healthy democratic solutions to Thailand's endemic corruption and other political ills.

The repeated coups that have undermined Thailand's political development, have also corrupted the social and moral well-being of the nation, thereby creating the desperation that led the nation to repeatedly vote for Thaksin, who despite his failings, including an extremely dubious commitment to democracy, appeared to not only promise, but to deliver real reforms long overdue to correct long traditional injustice and inequality. Naturally, those traditionally against democracy cast him as a villain, but the Thai people had awoken enough to see that this was but a shallow and false accusation, of no more worth than the promises of happiness from a coup leader: the nation sensibly continued to support Thaksin. Dubious political charges were pressed against him, while the real crimes of his drug war killings, which mainly harmed the poor who had voted for him, were conspicuously ignored, along with other very real capital crimes that occurred under Thaksin's watch.

It is this same desire of the Thai nation for real reform that led to the stunning success of Future Forward, the only party that has admitted to accurately learning the lessons of eight decades of Thai history. Correctly understanding the causes, Future Forward offered what millions of Thai citizens do now know to be the solutions that their nation desperately needs. Naturally, this is anathema to the forces against democracy,  who blatantly abuse the rule of law made up for that purpose to attack the leaders of Future Forward, whom millions of Thai people judged good on March 24.

The true wonder is that any Thai could ever have so failed to understand Thai history as to believe that yet another coup could end the coup-driven cycle of political, social and moral failures of decades.  Flawed though democracy be, it remains far better than every alternative, as Thai history since 1932 too amply attests.

 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 May 23, 2019, under the title "Coups not the answer" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1682352/coups-not-the-answer