Thursday, October 17, 2019

Both are bad, but here’s why democracy is far better than military dictatorship

May 26. 2019
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Re: “Not The Nation’s fault the leopard didn’t change its spots”, Have Your Say, May 26.

S Tsow concludes that “whether Thailand has a military or a civilian government, the country is screwed because of the quality of the people who usually wind up running things”. How true.

But if I am going to be screwed, I prefer to be screwed by an elected government, which is under scrutiny of the opposition. People can protest against an elected government without being arrested and they can vote it out if they don’t like it. Furthermore, an elected government can’t conjure up a law to exonerate itself and neither can it tailor the constitution to allow itself to stay in power forever.

If we compare the junta to a football team, it has the luxury of appointing the president of the league, picking the referees and fielding 15 players in every match. Worse, despite knowing they can’t win, other teams willingly join the league instead of boycotting the competition. This decision justifies the junta’s monopoly on the championship.

The spectators shake their heads and tut-tut in disgust, but can’t do anything, because this is Thailand.

Somsak Pola

Samut Prakan

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