Forced ignorance

re: "Thailand tightens information law" (BP, May 25, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

As Kavi Chongkittavorn reminds us in "Thailand tightens information law" (Bangkok Post, May 25) things were looking up for the Thai nation in 1997. There was, at last, a chance that sound democratic principle would be implemented by legally mandated practices to actually reduce Thailand's traditional corruption by making transparency a reality. Sadly, this moral progress was anathema to some: two coups were subsequently committed against the Thai people to undo the progress towards democracy and to return Thailand to a state more favourable to the traditional plaque of corruption and other abuses protected by morally corrupt law.

What Kavi might have pressed a little more are the logical conclusions that follow from the efforts of the government of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha to keep Thai people uninformed about Thai affairs. It is essential to bear in mind here that the primary reason for censorship is always, without exception, to enforce ignorance of the topic being censored. In  a few cases, this ignorance is a good thing; for example, in times of war, keeping people ignorant of troop movements is an appropriate ignorance to enforce to protect national security. But in times of peace, who general X or minister Y met with last week and their bank accounts are not matters of national security. Nor are the acts of any particular person or government agency normally matters that should be kept secret for national security, which should be very narrowly and explicitly defined, with every allowed use of censorship being solidly defended as a necessary exemption from informed public opinion of worth.

The default position in a just, democratic society that values good morals and that wishes to reduce corruption and other abuses is to provide solid legal protection to the discovery and discussion in public of all matters pertaining to public figures, officials, the government and to the institutions of the nation legally defined under the constitution.

But Thai law as made up by PM Prayut and his predecessors who also committed coups against the popular, democratically elected governments of the Thai people necessarily entails  with logical rigour yet more seriously disturbing conclusions. Any public institution or figure that were genuinely good, that were actually admirable, respectable and as worthy as it were publicly insisted on being would naturally welcome the discovery of the facts of that reality and the free public discussion thereof. That the law stifles or actually criminalizes such discovery of truth can only suggest that public opinion is kept ignorant, uninformed and therefore, however sincere that opinion might be, necessarily of little worth for reasons that cannot inspire confidence or trust.

 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 26, 2021, under the title "Forced ignorance" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2121791/vaccine-irony