For Ploenpote Atthakor, apparently a Deputy Editorial Pages Editor at the Bangkok Post, democracy is something that can’t possibly include red shirts. This Deputy Editorial Pages Editor at the Bangkok Post has recently had what she describes as her “first encounter with the people in red in the flesh.”
While it might be astounding that a Deputy Editorial Pages Editor at the Bangkok Post has never, ever had an “encounter” with red shirts, we can well understand that a Deputy Editorial Pages Editor at the Bangkok Post probably only hangs out with the yellow-shirted lot that tend to inhabit the Post.
This Deputy Editorial Pages Editor at the Bangkok Post says she:
happened to find myself in the middle of a red-shirt gathering at the Democracy Monument on Sunday. It was Oct 14, and the people in red were celebrating an historic event associated with our nation’s democracy _ the student-led uprising in 1973 against Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn and his clan.
She was obviously in the wrong place for the site was a center of red shirt activism recalling the historical struggle for democracy against the military and its palace backers of 16 years.
We know she was in the wrong place because she found it odd that the “main message was … a blasting of the military and dictatorship repeated again and again.” She probably meant to type Thonglor into her satnav rather than Rajadamnoen…. Or maybe she meant to go to the non-Democrat Party’s “men in black” rally at Lumpini Park? Certainly she was out of place at a rally celebrating democratic activism.
She asks a rhetorical question:
Come to think of it, isn’t it ironic that the commemoration of such an historic event was dominated by just one group? Doesn’t the sheer absence of other voices highlight the dark side of Thai democracy nowadays?
Our answer is, no, there is no darkness, unless you mean the proto-fascist ultra-royalists or the old conservative rightists in the palace. The message is that the average people of Thailand have stood up again, even when they know the military and the conservative elite may well cut them down again.
Then my destination was right before me. The place looked gloomy with just a few visitors. The only things that reminded visitors of its historic past were some wreaths which were placed there as part of the commemorative ceremony.
Many have indeed “sacrificed their lives for this thing called democracy,” most of them gunned down by the military, and .
And Ploenpote Atthakor, a Deputy Editorial Pages Editor at the Bangkok Post, still has a long way to go before she understands the struggle for democracy in Thailand.
Her attempt to think what the heroes of 1973 and May 1992 is an ignorant and pompous piece of self-delusional nonsense, made worse by a concocted attempt to appear tolerant when she simply hates red shirts.
This is one of the worst pieces of “journalism” we have seen for a couple of years. Her claim that “we have not gone anywhere” since 1973 is infantile, hypocritical and ahistorical dribble.
