Coup leaders at fault

re: "Dangers of democracy" (BP, PostBag, March 14, 2020)

Dear editor,

No, Dusit Thammaraks, not a single Thai coup against the nation's rule of law with a constitutional monarchy for the past 70 years at least was "made necessary by the consistent failure of our version of democracy." Those coups were staged to prevent democracy developing to solve very real social and political problems. The fruits of the repeated coups is seen in Thailand's retarded education standards, which all too well reflect the political and social problems that remain entrenched, as intended by coup makers working to prop up a corrupt status quo that the Thai people's nation should have been allowed to move beyond decades ago.

The problems that Dusit Thammaraks identifies as continuing to plague Thailand in 2020, even after another six years of undemocratic rule, are very real, especially the presence of people in government who clearly lack both honesty and integrity, including but not limited to the famously credentialled Deputy Minister for International Flour Sales and Monkey Feeding. But this persistent failure that blatantly characterizes PM Prayut's government is not the cause of coups. On the contrary, such an epidemic of systematized corruption is a symptom of the unjust law made up by and at the behest of coup leaders who have for seven decades set not only the legal foundations enabling the corruption and other abuses of the people in unjust rule by law and subservient institutions, but who have also set the example of arrogant disdain for the moral principles that found democracy.

Had the Thai nation not been subjected to the repeated coups under fake excuses of abolishing corruption (a sick joke that only the most naive could credit) and similar fake claims, or protecting despotic myths that flatly contradict the good morals of democracy, Thailand would long ago have solved many of the political problems that instead remain endemic in 2020. Specifically, Thailand today would be a more just society, with a stronger rule of law both respectable and respected by all, and led by politicians whom the people had learned to critically judge and from whom they demanded a high standard of honesty and integrity. That Thailand that could have been would also have had a stronger economy, with far greater wealth to be shared by all Thais. Today's reality is the high cost that the Thai people have paid for the power lusts of coup makers and those colluding with them against the respect that democracy dictates be accorded all.

And Mr. Thammaraks, you do not have to be Western to deserve respect and an equal voice in determining the form of your nation's society, laws and government.

 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 March 15, 2020, under the title "Coup leaders at fault" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1879015/anutins-racist-silence