The Nation
7 Jan 2018
Is Thailand doomed to see a repeat of its past failed experiments with generals in power?
Most of us knew it all along that Generalissimo Prayut Chan-o-cha wanted to remain in power after he returns the mandate to the people, a promise that he kept pushing back for various reasons.
But on hindsight, it does appear that he wanted to make sure the ground rules were tilted in his favour to ensure that his return to the prime ministerial post will be on his terms.
This past week, Prayut told the public that he is a full-fledged politician and that he was no longer a general. No one really knows what that is supposed to mean in real terms. Prayut can call himself whatever he wants but a politician – like it or not – is an elected representative of the people.
Nobody pleaded with him to become prime minister; he pulled it off through a coup in May 2014. He seized the moral high ground and claimed he and his cronies were sacrificing themselves for democracy and a coup was necessary to end the color-coded (reds versus yellows) political crisis that at times brought the country to its knees.
But if the past decade tells us anything, it is that both sides of the political divide were extremely self-centred and delusional in thinking they had a monopoly on righteousness.
Their endless bickering paved the way for the military to return to politics – not that they had left it in the first place.
They had the help of a well-known conman from the South. Suthep Thaugsuban had no problem sacrificing the Democrat Party to sell his soul to the military by leading street protests in order to pave the way for the May 2014 coup.
Call it audacity or just pain dumbness, Suthep even admitted that he and the junta had been chatting about a coup since 2010. Obviously, Suthep has never read Mark Twain who once famously said, “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.”
Suthep may be history but what Thailand is now facing is the possibility of Prayut as the next prime minister. For many people, this is something hard to swallow.
First of all, if history is to be any lesson, all coup plotters have difficulties – usually in the form of bloody street protests – when they make the transition from junta to a politician.
Prayut and his cronies, who called themselves the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), were the architecture for a ground rule that is tilted in favour of the military. All the while, he and the NCPO were presenting themselves as honest brokers, as people who were above Thailand’s gutter politics.
It cannot be that the idea to become the prime minister came out of the blue, like a lucky lottery number.
And what about the future of his sidekick, the country’s security tsar who thinks expensive watches are what make a man?
He should know that what counts is not the price of his watches but his integrity.
Strange as it may seem, crazy fantasies can mutate into desires. But as the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for. Not because you’ll get it (and you will indeed get it because the playing field is levelled in your favor, including the Constitution), but because you’re doomed once you do.
They must strive to earn a place in history as men who tried to live by their ideas and ideals – something the PM claimed soon after the coup (actually, all the Thai junta chiefs make that claim) – and not measure the value of their lives by the stars on their shoulders or the watches on their wrists. They should know that what counts are those small moments of integrity, compassion, and rationality.
There are other ways to measure the significance of your lives, dear Generalissimo.
Perhaps this Batman and Robin duo should try valuing the lives and views of others and stop pretending that the public can’t see through their quirky ambitions.
(Accessible at: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/opinion/30335581)
