OPINION

Army in denial

I get the feeling that the first words in the army's manual for dealing with sticky situations are "deny, deny, deny". Admitting to mistakes is a manly, brave, adult thing to do, so the fact the army almost always denies and refuses to admit to a mistake even when they are caught with their hands in the cookie jar makes me think that the army is pretty much composed only of boys.

This does not fill me with confidence in them, even though I know they often do good work helping people in disasters such as floods.

But it seems to me that they need to spend some time in self-reflection and ask themselves if they really think people will trust them when their first instinct is always to deny.

But then again, maybe they just don't care what we think about them since they constantly show their disrespect for us by not telling us the truth.

Re: "THAI staff angered by exec promotions", (BP, Oct 10).

THAI staff's union is right to protest against the promotion of the wife of the airline's chairman and the board's decision not to punish former executives believed to be involved in corruption.

THAI's defence is that the wife of THAI's chairman was selected by a seven-member, high-level committee -- but that does nothing to reassure us that she's qualified for promotion.

What top THAI executive would dare say that his chairman's wife shouldn't be promoted? Did impartial investigators probe the suspects before clearing them of corruption charges? How do we know the investigators were free of conflicts of interest? Lastly, why hasn't the board decided to dissolve its subsidiary, Thai Smile? What ideas has the board come up with, other than to sell more fried doughnuts -- which is far from sufficient to cover THAI's liabilities of 332 billion baht?

THAI should pay the National Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate the promotion of the chairman's spouse, conduct an investigation into the executives suspected of corruption, and look into the decision not to dissolve Thai Smile.

In the meantime, THAI executives should take half of their compensation in cash and half in THAI shares, saleable after THAI's accumulated losses have been paid off.

We are running out of topics to flog. The need to reform education (been through it), the Covid thing (information overloaded to death), school brutality toward children (over and over), licensed and unlicensed teachers (the saga never ends), tourist schemes and scams (if we ever see tourists again) corruption in all arenas political, police and military, (yada, yada, yada, what else is new?)

Perhaps, like the Parisians, it is time to take a month off, put down the pens, stop dispensing advice, halt the vituperation, and all go on much needed vacations.

We then can return refreshed, to start all over again. Obviously nothing will have changed during our absence, so we can continue where we left off. Will we be missed? Doubtful. But it will give many a chance to "recharge batteries" in order to start the same repetition to bore more readers to death.