The justice of karma

re: "Cops in crosshairs over 'delayed' sobriety test" (BP, January 12, 2023) 

Dear editor,

There is a manifest lack of cultural sensitivity in the fuss about the esteemed Bentley driver who prima facie appears to have received unequal treatment at the hands of the Royal Thai Police (RTP) investigating the possibility of his injudicious use of the drug alcohol, a major contributor to Thailand's historically horrific road kill statistics for generations. 

The non-disputed facts, not merely that he was in fact driving a Bentley but also his respected status in the business community, establish solid financial worth. It must, accordingly, follow that he is a man of seriously excellent karma, for which such wealth and status is the expected reward. Since the karmic forces cannot be wrong, it follows that his net worth and position in society is fully deserved. This entails that in this life or a past life he shrewdly procured a rich sufficiency of merit either by honest labour, or more expeditiously by generous donations and persuading so sufficient a number of others to make merit for him as to persuade the karmic bureaucracy to see that he is a truly benevolent and righteous person, to whom it accordingly allocated with unimpeachable impartiality the full richness of duly deserved assets and respect.

Any suspected impropriety in fleeing the scene can be wiped clean by further merit making, perhaps even going so far as to pray and meditate in addition to a generous donations as usual. Should more extreme merit making be needed, he could even retreat for a spell into a proper silence at a suitable monastic retreat. Indeed, generous donations have already been put on the table to fully mitigate any possible loss of merit points. 

The RTP are not to be blamed for properly respecting the venerated social norms of many decades in modelling their own treatment of this or any other Bentley driver on that of the ineluctably incorruptible justice of karma. 

 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 January 15, 2023, under the title "The justice of karma" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2482864/such-noblesse-oblige