Today in the Bangkok Post there is a letter to the editor:

Mr Amsterdam, in reference to the article ”Is democracy a problem?”, posted on your website and Twitter, I wish to respond as follows.

First of all, I assume you know what freedom of speech is. What I said in the interview (with Matichon newspaper, Nov 12) is an opinion that many others share. I am a housewife who sees the flaws in my country’s democratic system. Notwithstanding that, I am a law-abiding citizen who complies with her democratic duty of voting at every election, local or national.

Anyone who calls himself a democrat would also acknowledge my democratic right to criticise democracy in my own peaceful way. In fact, if democracy can’t be criticised, then surely it wouldn’t be democracy at all.

Now, let me share my perspective: You, Mr Amsterdam, are now serving a former leader whose political party was disbanded for election fraud and who himself was convicted of corruption whilst in office. Like me, he chose to criticise society; but unlike me, he chose the route of violence by supporting an uprising that led to many deaths and the burning of private and public prop erties. All the while he says he ”loves democracy”. I understand that your paid duty is to whitewash your employer, but I am confident that the whole world sees him for who he really is.

VORAKORN CHATIKAVANIJ

BP: Vorakorn Chatikavanij is, of course, Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij’s wife. A few days ago, BP wrote a blog post entitled “Is democracy the problem?” which was a translation of some comments that Vorakorn made in an interview with Matichon so was a little surprised to see there was a similiar post at Amsterdam’s site. After looking at Amsterdam’s site, BP discovered there was nothing on the English language part of his site, but on the Thai language part of the site there was a post entitled “ประชาธิปไตยคือปัญหา?” (Is democracy the problem?) which then contains “โดย Bangkok Pundit” (by Bangkok Pundit) and links to the Bangkok Pundit front page.  The rest of the post is simply a translation of BP’s post. Hence, in fairness, to Vorakorn she mistook it being a post in Thai on Amsterdam’s site because of Amsterdam’s (or more likely someone helping him with the site as I don’t imagine his Thai language skills are proficient enough to do that translation) incorrect labelling of the post. BP has asked Amsterdam that he correctly label the post as a translation so there is no confusion. [UPDATE: Amsterdam has now tweeted in response to say that the post has been updated to remove the confusion (and it has been)]

On the substance of Vorakorn’s letter to the editor, BP reader Sceptic has commented in the original post in response. Below is an excerpt:

Kh. Vorakorn claims her democratic right to express her point of view but she does so in such a way as to infer that that right to free speech has somehow been challenged. In fact, as she well knows, no one, least of all Mr. Amsterdam, has written anything to suggest any such thing. The only real challenges to free speech in Thailand in recent years have come from the government of which Kh. Vorakorn’s husband is a leading light and which has taken such extreme and repressive measures to restrict open discussion of the issues that affect all Thai citizens. This has resulted in Thailand’s all-time low rating of 153rd in this year’s world press freedom index. Despite her recourse to these diversionary tactics, Kh. Vorakorn, who describes herself as “very authoritarian” (A trait she clearly shares with a certain former Prime Minister!) deserves credit for having the courage to raise a point of view that, as she says “many others share”. That view would appear to be that she and they, in particular the Bangkok priveleged classes, have grave reservations about the value to them of democracy at all and certainly do not want it if it means that Thaksin’s supporters amongst the rural masses should ever have control of government again. I seem to remember that her husband expressed a similar view a few months ago. The important thing is that we should know where they stand and that not everybody who takes cover under the shield of the “Democrat” Party actually subscribes to democratic values.

BP: Vorakorn can certainly criticize democracy, but her statement was saying that democracy was the problem. She is entitled to that view. Actually, in the original post, BP didn’t say she couldn’t hold those views. It was just that her comments were revealing of her views…