OPINION

A tangled web

According the Bangkok Post's unofficial poll results, the new election rules worked well as planned, i.e. preventing Pheu Thai's lopsided win.

Pheu Thai won 135 constituency MPs (C-MP) with zero party list MPs (P-MP), while Palang Pracharath won 98 C-MPs and Democrat 34 C-MPs, each got 19 P-MPs. But when the regime wrote the election rules, it only had Pheu Thai on its mind; it didn't expect the coming of Future Forward. The party won a respectable 29 C-MPs, with a whopping 51 P-MPs, totaling 80 seats, third on the leading board, behind only to Pheu Thai and Palang Pracharath, 135, 117, respectively. Worse (for Uncle Tu), Future Forward has made it clear that it abhors a military-backed government.

Looks like in the next election the regime will have to come up with some more weird and contorted rules to suppress Future Forward like it did with Pheu Thai. But remember that when you squeeze a balloon at one spot, it's going to bulge somewhere.

"O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!", Sir Walter Scott, 1808.

It is very admirable of Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the Future Forward Party's leader, to want to reform the constitution to prohibit future coups and to bring the army under civilian control.

While the youngster is well-intentioned, he has about as much political savvy as a sack of nuts and bolts and is ill-informed. Many banana republics have iron-clad constitutions, many of them quite similar, and based upon the United States Constitution. Yet nothing has ever prevented military takeovers in either Latin America or Africa. Thailand could have another constitutional rewrite as well, but we know the answer to a constitution needs to be worth more than the paper it's printed on.

Re: "Thaksin: Election 'rigged' as allies challenge army", (Online, March 25).

I think it is too early for Thaksin Shinawatra to call Sunday's election "rigged". As I understand it, Thaksin is upset because the election results showed parties under his control are losing big time -- especially in constituencies where he used to yield tremendous influence.

In Chiang Mai, Thaksin's hometown, candidates from his Pheu Thai Party, despite having won in this election, are losing half of their votes to candidates from the military-backed Palang Pracharath Party, and the newly formed progressive Future Forward Party. In the next election, there's a good chance Pheu Thai candidates may lose most, if not all, their seats in this province.

One other fact that Thaksin doesn't seem to realise is that there are more than 7 million first-time voters in this year's election. Most of these young voters, once they see Thaksin's face appear in the news, will ask: "Who is that old man with his pitch-black hair?"

As the old saying goes: "Out of sight, out of mind".

Re: "AirAsia apologises, drops 'Get off in Thailand' promotion", (Online, March 26).

An interesting story from Oz. Women's lib has gotten so far out of hand and reached such new heights of stupidity where every spoken word has a sexual connotation. It is high time anyone who says anything deemed inappropriate stopped apologising. Western culture has turned into "think before you say", and speech, advertisements, everything, has become so sterile that it has become boring. The AirAsia ads are wonderful, and AirAsia should not apologise for them. If these protesters do not like these ads, they are free to wear blinders and not look at them.