What is it to be Thai?

re: "Political rifts 'haven't faded'" (BP, July 27)

Dear editor,

Yes, the Thai nation is divided; but that reality check is not necessarily a bad thing. Rather, look on the rifts as a gift, for which the ruthlessly self-serving politicians self-elected of the past five years should be thanked for helping to clarity. Five years of their failures have proven the old stories no longer able to unite the nation: however loudly the dictators of tradition chant their mythic mantras, for too many those incantations now no longer work their magic to legitimate a twentieth-century status quo that allowed a minority the political means to greedily raid the national coffers.

The divides between the old and the new, between the better educated and the traditionally educated, between democracy and dictatorship, between the old men's parties and the rising groundswell for a progressive future, will not be bridged by any outworn myths. This realization dictates that new ideals be forged to unite the Thai nation for the future, to embrace deeply overdue reforms to defining what it means to be Thai. In the now not so early 21st century, what is it to be Thai? This is a healthy discussion.

Nor is there anything uniquely Thai about this need to re-evaluate national identity: as the Trump presidency and Brexit show, the US and UK among others are going through similarly rough transitions in the ever evolving understanding of what makes their nations. Painful though it be, such change is a symptom of a living nation, one that is not a dead museum exhibit. And that's a good thing.

 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 July 29, 2019, under the title "What is it to be Thai?" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1720583/a-taxing-matter