The victim card

The victim card

If you are a patriot working tirelessly and selflessly to try to save your country from the lower classes but some people think you are responsible for the actions of your friends and mentors, you may be a victim.

If you are a senior minister constantly hounded by vultures and jackals about your personal possessions and close friends so that you suffer so much stress you have to seek professional medical help, you're a victim.

Army friends for 30 years and the top two men in the all-male junta running the country.

If you have sacrificed your job and family time only to be pursued by scavengers yammering about signing some pledge of elections, you could be a victim.

If people refuse to accept your straight-faced and even your angry claims that your friends lent you stuff and then they inconveniently died, so therefore to hell with people, that makes you a victim.

The progress of the military regime now has got to the point where, if it ever allows national polls at all, they may be to elect new people for the hard-working but hard-done-by men at the top. The current ones are such a bother.

Last week, "people" -- if you still use that word for members of the media -- "people" had the absolute effrontery to ask Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha what he intended to do about The Watchman. Just as if anything his 30-year friend and mentor and No.1 deputy prime minister does has anything to do with him. What a nerve.

Do? What is wrong with such "people"?

"This is a personal matter, er, a personal flaw. Leave it to the anti-corruption agency." Since the alleged corruption had nothing to do with state funds, Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon would take care of it himself, and Gen Prayut had nothing to do with the outcome.

So, while Gen Prayut's dedication is to wipe out corruption, it is only at the state-money level. Personal corruption isn't part of his task. Why would people even think it is?

And if you think that's extreme playing of the victim card, you weren't watching Gen Prawit. The Watchman specifically blamed the media for photographing and documenting his 25 different watches, current value than 35 million-plus baht and counting. That media broke the news and foreign media replayed it.

If it weren't for them, there wouldn't be any problem here, right?

The prime minister worked very hard to one-up even that ackamarackus. It turned out that he had absolutely nothing to do with the extremely secret project -- until Isra news agency found out about it -- to finagle the organic law process to delay the 2015 election once again, this time to 2019.

For the short of memory, on Oct 10, 2017, two months after actually signing the pledge, Dear Leader said exactly: "I don't want to delay. In November 2018, there will be an election. Is it clear?". In its Oct 11 edition reporting that solemn promise by the supreme political authority and junta chairman, the Bangkok Post published a graphic detailing the four previous times he promised an election would happen in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

But it's not his fault. The men he personally appointed to the National Legislative Assembly (NLA), all by themselves decided to amend and twist and bend the election law completely out of shape in order to delay the 2018 election to 2019. And why would the junta-appointed legislators do such a thing?

It's a complete mystery to Gen Prayut and all his advisers. He didn't call the NLA to ask, let alone lobby these NLA members working completely on their own to break his promise. Instead of trying to convince the NLA that he had to have an election in November because he promised the world, the US president -- and, oh yeah, almost forgot -- Thai voters there would be national polls by Nov 25, 2018, he flew to India.

The enemies and piranha of the media and 69 million Thais are to believe this was done behind his back. He knew nothing.

Democracy is all about accountability and if the men at the top are unaccountable, then it's the opposite of a democracy.

But if your best friends have gone behind your back, taken action to subvert the spirit of the law, made you look bad and forced you to break your promises, it's certainly not your fault, because you are a victim.

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