What a shame for the ‘honourable assembly of good people' to pass the Internal Security Act just three days ahead of the general elections, while protesters of the bill went back home to rest.
What a shame that the protest against the Internal Security Act and other bills violating people's rights was joined by just thousands of Thai people.
That being the case, how can we trust the discourse of ‘good people' defined by the middle class and the elite? How can we believe in the middle class or the so-called ‘informed decision' of Bangkokians?
What has happened especially since the Sept 19 coup last year tells the lower classes who are ‘stupid and greedy for immediate benefits' that ‘good and educated people' are not one and the same as ‘Democracy'!!!
‘Good people' can do anything despite the dissent of the majority of people.
‘Good people' can do anything despite opposition in society.
‘Good people' can do anything despite the impacts on the majority-who are poor.
‘Good people' can do anything despite its contradiction to the logic they have claimed-to overthrow or support the overthrow of an elected government.
Just because those ‘good people' are righteous, honest, and well-intentioned toward the country, and religion and the monarchy.
‘Educated people' are those who do not care for immediate benefits, but for long-term ones, although those are their own benefits.
‘Educated people' are those who need not do anything about things that they consider have negligible effects on themselves-such as the Internal Security Act.
‘Educated people' are those who do not give a damn about (democratic) principles if such principles do not favour their own interests, just because they are educated, rational, wise, and prudent.
‘Educated people' has been a dominant discourse in Thai society in the past few years. Seemingly sound and irresistible, such a discourse has undermined the legitimacy of democracy and the rights of the people.
Moral integrity, good intentions and education, if they come with a narrow-minded attitude that refuses to see that Thai society consists of numerous small poor people who lack opportunity and power, but have equal civil rights, if they come without a clear understanding that democracy is a way of allocating power and benefits among all people, and if they come without rules that encourage public participation and accountability, are of no value in democracy, of no benefit to the poor majority of the people; they are just another discourse created to maintain the status quo, and a futile household mantra that cannot cure any disease.
Therefore, amidst the torrent of campaign exhortations to elect ‘good people', if the election result is not in favour of the ‘chosen' party/ies that have the image of ‘good and educated people', the uneducated and poor should not be blamed, as what has happened has proved that we cannot rely on the quality of being ‘good' and ‘educated' under the current system and rules.
And however the poll results come out, that is what reflects the people's will that the powers that be and the interventionists must listen to.
