Coups and corruption

re: "Ex-PM Anand says coups have retarded Thai democracy" (BP, March 6, 2022)

Dear editor,

The Bangkok Post's article, comments banned of course, "Ex-PM Anand says coups have retarded Thai democracy" (March 6) was a timely piece of plain speaking. It was most encouraging to see former PM Anand Panyarachun bluntly speaking the truth: that coups committed by those with lame excuses for trampling the Thai people's aspirations for democracy into the dirt beneath their jackboots have, in Anand's words, "retarded Thailand's democratic development, leaving a legacy of failed administrations and corruption." Spot on. The single greatest cause of Thailand's persistent corruption is the military coups committed against the Thai people.

 To Anand's comment that "most governments between coups did not do much better in terms of Thailand's democratic development," the salient response is that although those governments were indeed rotten, they were also fledgling efforts towards democracy that would, if allowed, develop the transparency, openness and accountability that is the only antidote to pervasive corruption and other abuses. Few would dispute that, for example, the governments of Chatchai Choonhaven or Thaksin Shinawatra were fonts of corruption; what was needed was stronger protection by the laws and courts for free speech on all matters so that their corruption had no place to hide. 

 Had due democratic and legal process been allowed to do so, even the worst of those abuses by civil governments could and would have been solved, as the history of other nations prove possible absent coups. But some did not want democracy to succeed in Thailand. The military coups against the Thai people's popular governments did exactly what Anand says: they retarded Thailand's political development to ensure that corruption could and would continue, thereby also retarding Thailand's social, moral, and economic growth, for which the Thai people have for many decades paid a heavy price.

 Fitting for the latest spate of arrests and imprisonments of Thais peacefully protesting for openness, transparency and accountability, for exercising, in other words, the free speech that is foundational to democracy and that is essential if corruption and other abuses are to be effectively dealt with, Anand's conclusion reminds us that "The law should not be used as a tool for persecution." 

 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 13, 2022, under the title "Coups and corruption" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2278347/needs-must-not