Slap in Thai faces

re: "Mixed up priorities" (BP, PostBag, April 27, 2020) 

Dear editor,

Thank you Burin Kantabutra for telling it exactly as it is and as it needs to be told in "Mixed up priorities" (PostBag, April 27). While we Bangkok Post readers comfortably online at home might be suffering some annoying inconveniences, our troubles are nothing compared to the real desperation into which the official response has plunged many good Thais who want nothing more than to earn a very basic living for themselves and their families. To even talk of yet again bailing out THAI and other utterly useless white elephants at such a time is a slap in the face to the Thai people. Something is seriously sick in the governance of Thai society that this can be so.

 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 April 28, 2020, under the title "Slap in Thai faces" at  https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1908950/slap-in-thai-faces
  

Broken by design

re: "Covid-19 exposes our broken system" (BP, Opinion, April 23, 2020)

Dear editor,

Well said as always Khun Sanitsuda Ekachai: "Covid-19 exposes our broken system" (Bangkok Post, Opinion, April 23) is honest, incisive, and timely. But it would be contrary to reason and the mounting decades of evidence to have expected anything but a grievously battered, broken society after the acts of the current prime minister, who himself  follows a long line of equally selfless army generals who overthrew Thailand's supreme rule law to make themselves supremo PM generals.

The daily news regularly reports how the self-styled sacred in Thailand have long set the standard of rejecting Buddhist and other spiritual teachings, have long set the example of  treating the Thai nation as their purse or punching bag, and of smearing those institutions upon whom they insist on associating themselves.

 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 April 25, 2020, under the title "Broken by design" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1907150/broken-by-design
  

Preferably profane?

re: "Soldiers admit to torturing siblings" (BP, April 21, 2020)

Dear editor,

How much more must the Thai people suffer to feed the insatiably sacred Royal Thai army?

Might something more accountably profane provide the Thai nation a better deal all round?

 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 April 22, 2020, under the title "Preferably profane?" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1904720/thai-time-warp
  

Time to lead by example

re: "'Team Thailand' to save nation" (BP, April 18, 2020)

Dear editor,

Really? The man who first made himself prime minister, after promising not to, and who then had himself made prime minister after repeatedly insisting he wanted only to retire, has now "stressed the need for unity and cooperation from all parties during the current hardships." He might consider doing what good leaders do: leading by example.

He could start by respecting justice and the rule of law: It is not too late to finally take the oath of allegiance that section 161 of the Thai constitution explicitly requires. He could start by respecting the wishes of the Thai people for fresh young people who might lead the nation forward to a better future. He could start by encouraging the Thai nation to understand Thai affairs, such as what their national leaders have done to help in the emergency, and how they conduct themselves in their daily lives. He could start by cleaning out his cabinet: Does he really need a convicted international heroin dealer? He could start to do so much to allow Thai nation to become what it could be and what the Thai people deserve it be.

As for his notion of issuing "an open letter to 20 of the country's richest billionaires to ask them to join Team Thailand," Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha might first consider how they came to be the richest before inviting their input. They might have good business sense if they are young and self made, but if they are the sort of rich people who made their billions by, for example, buying state monopolies on alcohol or mobile phones, they most likely have little of worth to offer for wealth creation. Even worse if they merely inherited billions. The prime minister would do better to ask Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos: they have proved themselves in fair, open free markets, unlike the communist-like protections that made too many Thais unjustly rich at the expense of the Thai nation.

Would Thailand's richest be so patriotic as to insist on greatly increased taxes for the rich, and high death taxes? That might actually help address the social malaise that sees the greediest 1% of Thais owning an indefensibly whopping 67% of the nation's wealth.

 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 April 19, 2020, under the title "Time to lead by example" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1902700/time-to-lead-by-example
  

Thailand unmasked

re: "Coronavirus blues and clues in Thailand" (BP, Opinion, April 17, 2020)

Dear editor,

As Thitinan Pongsudhirak points out, Mother Nature's infinitely mindless Covid-19 assault on humanity also lays bare aspects of traditional Thai society that are themselves viruses sucking the life out of the nation.

The economic malaise of forced salvation has thrown into stark contrast the lives of those who preach such deceits as "sufficiency economics" whilst living in careless luxury, even to the obscenity of fashion-coordinated face masks, and the precarious lives of the honest, hard working Thai people, the cooks, the taxi drivers, the vendors, the factory workers, the waiters, the teachers, and the good sex workers, who create Thailand's wealth, now thrown on the bonfire to protect the ungrateful rich and powerful from natural reality.

And as Thitinan notes, the Internet means that today even Thai citizens now know these truths about their nation's long-shrouded traditions. It will be most interesting to see how the self-replicating coup maker and those he fronts from Thailand's self-serving status quo respond to the rising tides of awareness of Thai affairs among the Thai nation.

 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 April 18, 2020, under the title "Thailand unmasked" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag
  

Queen of hearts

re: "A queen of wisdom" (BP, PostBag, April 11, 2020)

Dear editor,

Apichai Sunchindah, thank you for those kind words regarding my long regnant queen ("A queen of wisdom", BP, PostBag, April 11), whose crown needs no draconian laws for its modest maintenance.

I trust you have been enjoying the excellent TV series from NetFlix, The Crown, which gives we her subjects and others useful perspectives on the glorious acts of the House of Windsor since dear Liz acceded so very long ago. And showing how she and her family weathered darker days is that excellent 2005 masterpiece The Queen, starring the redoubtable Helen MIrren as a somewhat bewildered monarch in the face of public outrage following Princess Diana's death by media: such a dear.

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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 April 13, 2020, under the title "Queen of hearts" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1898440/govt-dragging-its-feet
  

Handling the truth

re: "Decree risks overreach" (BP, Editorial, April 7, 2020)

Dear editor,

"Causing panic in society" was exactly the dishonest excuse used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to suppress early warnings about Covid-19. The entire world now knows how that legalized suppression of the free speech of honest people has worked out.

The whole notion of "causing panic in society" as a criminal offence is deeply flawed. If the truth causes panic, that normally means the population needs to be better educated to handle reality. The mere claim that the people cannot handle the truth, typically a fake claim by the state officials abusing it, cannot justify criminal sanctions against those seeking to keep people accurately informed.

With very narrowly defined exceptions, such as obtain in war time, the state has an obligation to prove it false before taking criminal action against the person making a claim in good faith. That such poorly defined laws exist is itself symptomatic of a gravely sick government infected by pestilential corruption.

Why would law makers anywhere, even in Thailand, seek to deliberately infect their nation with the foreign contagion symptomatic of the communist and other repressive ideologies?

 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 April 8, 2020, under the title "Handling the truth" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1895225/handling-the-truth
  

Sacred, but cursed

re: "Bad judgement is risking lives" (BP, Opinion, April 6, 2020)

Dear editor,

Yes, Veera Prateepchaikul, the uninformed and ill-considered decision at Suvarnabhumi Airport to "let 152 arriving Thai passengers go home on Friday night after they protested and refused to enter quarantine at state facilities" was another "stupid mistake," and as you say, "again, it involves an army officer". You wonder why? The answer is no state secret: quite the contrary.

Because, Veera, the sacred do not make mistakes. The sacred are infallible. The sacred are beyond puny human law. The sacred are above justice. The sacred hold none their equal. The sacred is unaccountable. That is what it means to be sacred.

That is why Thailand, the Thai people, remain so much worse off in every way than they deserve to be. The sacred has been a curse on Thailand for many decades as its unmitigated pursuit of all too earthly power, property and prestige has retarded the Thai nation in every way: socially, politically, economically and morally.

If only it could cleanse itself of the accursed traditions of sacredness, the Thai nation would flourish as it deserves to.

 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 April 7, 2020, under the title "Sacred, but cursed" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1894490/lets-see-more-testing
  

The 'injustice' system

re: "Unburden deathtrap jails" (BP, Editorial, April 1, 2020)

Dear editor,

The Bangkok Post is right that a proposal from the Thailand Institute of Justice's (TIJ) Executive Director Kittipong Kittayarak should be promptly followed, however radical it might appear ("Unburden deathtrap jails", Bangkok Post, Editorial, April 1). The proposal to free several groups of prisoners crammed into Thailand's famously overcrowded system is measured. It is sensible and rational. It is informed. It is compassionate and humane. It is, in short, just.

People, even Thai citizens, continue to be human beings, to be persons, even when they are guilty of a crime, even when they have actually done something that justifies imprisonment. When a society locks people up to protect itself from harm by the offenders, which is the sole moral justification for any prison sentence, it has an obligation to care for those it has locked up. If it  refuses to provide adequate care, then the incarceration becomes unjust. At the moment, the required social distancing cannot be maintained in Thai prisons, which means that the Thai prison system is even more an injustice system than it has traditionally been.

But the injustice in the Thai and many other traditional prison systems yet more grievously flouts good morals. To the suggested groups of prisoners whom the TIJ suggests be released, a further group needs to be added. Those who ought never have been imprisoned in the first place should also be released. Specifically, all who are truly guilty of nothing more than a victimless crime, which includes all drug crimes, gambling and similar personal vices that do not in themselves directly harm or threaten others. There has never been any justification for locking people up merely because they drink red wine or shoot heroin, because they sell Singha beer or deal yaa baa, because they gamble or bet on dice with friends, or because freely consent to buying and selling adult sex. Victimless crimes are exactly that: victimless.

Yes, if someone has a track record of drinking and driving, that drug use combined with the driving harms or directly threatens to harm others so justifies imprisonment; but the mere drinking of a few whiskys after work does not justify incarceration or any other action by the state, however paralytic the drinker's drug use makes him or however much she heaves up her stomach in alcoholic bliss. Yes, if a gambling addict puts her children in peril that is a crime warranting prison, but not the mere gambling addiction. Yes, if a sex-buyer knowingly passes on a deadly disease, that is a crime deserving punishment, but not the mere buying or selling of sex by adults.

Yes, if someone deliberately breaches social distancing guidelines for no good reason, that is a crime that threatens others so might justly be punished. If, however, the persons involved in that violation were forced to do it by the official justice system, then the it is that prison system that is guilty of the crime committed against its victims.

 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 April 2, 2020, under the title "The 'injustice' system" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1891410/the-injustice-system