OPINION

The money and the guns

Re: "Explaining Thainess", (PostBag, Oct 27).

At first l thought how nice of Vint Chavala to take the time to explain "Thainess to foreigners ... so they may gain more understanding of the Thai people" and their "attitudes and philosophy".

But as l read on my appreciation dwindled.

A few of us uninformed "foreigners" know about the geographical layout of central Thailand and that it produces a lot of rice. And most of us completely get the Thai notion of "filial piety".

What we "foreigners" are not so clear about is this "Thai" idea of "sufficiency economy" and "spend[ing] wisely" and exactly how it reconciles with Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation spending 573 million baht on speed guns for the police which, as Veera Prateepchaikul mentioned in his Oct 23 column, turns out to be at least four times their true value.

I appreciate Vint Chavala trying to educate me on Thai traditions, attitudes and philosophy but I feel he has picked some strange illustrations.

It is the Thai people in the cooking pan overflowing with water that are not understanding this "tradition" of flooding and it is the Thais who appear to have abandoned their elderly as they seek their riches in Bangkok rather than stay in the countryside practising sufficiency.

A good example did arise this week and maybe Vint can help me understand this. A man who threatened to wear a red shirt on a specific day this week was arrested for this "crime" and yet hundreds of drivers who refuse to stop at a red traffic light are allowed on their merry way by the watching policemen. This is something I truly don't understand and would very much like to see his explanation for.

In his Oct 23 letter, "Can't see the truth", Robin Grant refers to an article which describes "the plight of people being tried behind the locked doors of a military court, with no right of appeal" in his latest denunciation of the present government's efforts to restore normality to the country.

I would venture to suggest that the 1,600 people (of 2,800 in total) who human rights groups assess had nothing to do with the drug trade but nevertheless were killed during the infamous 2003 "war on drugs campaign" launched by the democratically elected government led by Thaksin Shinawatra, would have appreciated the same opportunity.

When TrueVision announced on Jan 1 that they had changed their satellite television format by deleting all HBO channels as well as FX channel and others, substituting them with cheaper quality stations, movies and programmes, the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) said they were going to punish the company for not announcing to their customers the changes well in advance, as is required in their rules.

What punishment did the NBTC dish out? They asked the company how it proposed to punish itself. Do I understand this correctly -- the government asked a private company what its own punishment should be? How did they reply? "Oh, we will give free temporary upgrades to subscribers."

What's wrong with this? The company gives free temporary upgrades all the time as a marketing tool to induce subscribers to continue to subscribe and then to later pay full price for the upgrade.

Re: "Suu Kyi's shame", (PostBag, Oct 28).

The refugees are in fact Bengali people from India, or specifically what was once East Pakistan and is now Bangladesh. Some of the present-day Bengalis living in Rakhine may be descendants of those who were already there and those brought in as hard labourers by the British colonialists when they annexed that region in 1824 and were recognised as Burmese citizens. Apart from those all the other later day arrivals were illegal migrants and thus were never recognised as citizens.

Give me some good reasons to prove that all of the 700,000 who fled to Bangladesh are our legal citizens. I'm sure the writer doesn't have one and he knows nothing about the real situations apart from what he learned from fake news.

Re: "Suu Kyi steps toward peace", (Editorial, Oct 28).

To resolve the bitter and brutal Rohingya conflict, there needs to be a full and realistic agreement between both sides. So far we have had no response from any Rohingya.

There are huge issues still being swept under the carpet. Will the Myanmar army accept responsibility for how it treated these people? Will they given full human rights in the future including the right to live a dignified life in future? Will they get decent reparations for the damage they have experienced? Will Ms Suu Kyi continue to deny their name?

What comes across is they are being treated as passive recipients of charity. Should they be grateful? Of course not.

Thank you Kantanit Sukontasap for your Oct 28 letter, "No bliss, but less stress".

I applaud you for writing about the reality of Thailand's political situation. I (and many others) fully agree. I do hope those "doom and gloom" critics who rarely have anything good to say about Thailand would rethink their status.

Contact: Bangkok Post Building 136 Na Ranong Road Klong Toey, Bangkok 10110 fax: +02 6164000 Email: postbag@bangkokpost.co.th

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