Old at heart

re: "I stand with Greta" (PostBag, December 17, 2019) & "Will the Empire strike back at the Skywalkers?" (BP, Opinion, December 17, 2019)

Dear editor,

A Reader ("I stand with Greta", PostBag, Dec. 17), in his apt identification of the failing in some leaders of the Western world's response to Greta Thunberg identifies perfectly a major cause of the endemic rot in Thai society and politics, as seen in the old men's reaction to the bright young hope for a better Thai nation that is Future Forward: "A child should be seen, but not heard", which is plainly the preferred option of the ruling PM's government of the sort of people who support tenacious clinging against all reason to the bad old ways of the past that brought about the state of today.

Thankfully, Thailand's "brats" also sense the urgency, demonstrating moral courage as they take a patriotic stand for their nation whilst respecting the corruption-ridden old men with the polite disdain that they deserve for having mired the Thai nation, the Thai people, in a cesspit of greed-driven inequality and injustice that is in ever more urgent need of reform.

Worth noting here, as Atiya Achakulwisut reminds us in "Will the Empire strike back at the Skywalkers?" (BP, Opinion, Dec. 17) is that the PDRC street mobs of Suthep, whose willfully disruptive acts conveniently paved the way to the latest coup against the Kingdom of Thailand's form of democratic government with a constitutional monarchy as they boasted of striving to "Shut down Bangkok", insisted that they wanted reform. The reality could not have proved more different to the PDRC's false claims. "The 2014 coup, led by the current Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, was supposed to end the rabble-rousing and put the country on the path towards reforms." The obvious truth is that it is Future Forward who propose actual reform that is long overdue. When presented with the possibility of actual reform to move the Thai nation forward, the party of the old proves that it clearly fears and hates such reform.

But at least the deep fault lines dividing Thai society are coming into sharper focus for all Thais to see. That will help them to decide on which side to take a stand for the sake of their nation's future, just as Greta and those belittling her help to clarify what is at stake for our species on the planetary scale.

 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 December 19, 2019, under the title "Old at heart" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1819449/old-at-heart