Parliament should not be dissolved, nor should the government change the Constitution just because a few hundred thousand people have been protesting. These few hundred thousand people do not represent the whole country. It is for this very reason that the main opposition parties are afraid to participate in the April general election. They know very well that they cannot win because the Thai Rak Thai is still popular with the majority.

In a real democracy, the majority elects the government - if the opposition parties cannot accept this fact, how else would they expect to win power? So now the opposition parties are demanding that the Constitution be changed so that they stand a better chance. These are the same people calling the present government a dictatorship and undemocratic. If they respect democracy, they should seek to change the government through an election, not through street rallies.

In a constitutional monarchy, the prime minister advises and seeks the consent of the monarch to dissolve Parliament. Only upon getting this consent can the Parliament be dissolved and a general election held. The main opposition parties are now boycotting the election because they refuse to recognise the dissolution. The prime minister has acted in accordance with the Constitution to dissolve Parliament. By boycotting the election, the main opposition parties not only question the constitutional process, they also question the wisdom and integrity of His Majesty the King.

I respect and support the action of many intellectuals in opposing and questioning the government. For a real democracy to function there have to be checks and balances. I have always supported a strong opposition. This would be the best chance for the opposition parties to return in bigger numbers. But the opposition is not performing their role by excluding themselves from this democratic process. I don't know who we should be calling a dictator, the embattled prime minister who is calling for a fresh mandate from the country or the media tycoon who is trying to bring down the government by organising street protests.

In the Philippines people are now going out into the streets to try to topple President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Do you remember how she came to power in the first place?

SL

Bangkok

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Shin sale shows Thaksin's respect for democracy

 It has been said that the gods drive to madness those whom they wish to destroy. Such is the case of Thaksin Shinawatra, the man who very strongly influenced Bhokin Bhalakula and the Thai Rak Thai to put forward the unbelievably impudent proposal to legalise the Shin Corp sale after the fact and to allow businessmen-politicians to mix up private interests and government affairs.

"Tycoonocracy" and democratic government do not mix at all: to make gazillions and to govern require two very different kinds of skills and shrewdness.

Bush, the front man of oil and other multinationals, has led the US into another bloody Vietnam and into an enormous national deficit. Berlusconi has legitimised his own and all other corporate wrongdoings and driven the Italian economy into stagnation.

Thaksin has repeatedly shown his disdain of Thai democracy, law and the Constitution, which he is supposed to uphold, by his actions and words.

The Shin Corp sale with its tax-avoidance legalistic contortions is the last straw.

The voters had indeed elected him, but by default: there was no one of the old guard with any credibility left and he projected himself as a new man and the only alternative. He is however part of a systemic culture that has produced too many "unusually rich" politicians.

The present objections to him are beyond his understanding: that the Shin Corp scandal represents a major obvious breach of his mandate and that therefore he has lost his legitimacy as a prime minister.

If he does not resign and let a royally sponsored technical government take over, and if he returns to government after the mockery of elections he has called, the result will be a dictatorial kleptocracy and a revival of the old discredited political system in the Kingdom.

Krabong Kuverakorn

Bangkok

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Different noise pollution law in this part of Samui?

 I have been travelling around Thailand on and off for a decade now, and have noticed how different each part is. A while ago I visited Koh Samui, where I have been many times before. This time I thought I would stay in the middle of the nightlife area, so I rented a room in a guest-house a stone's throw from a famous disco on Chaweng Beach. I was prepared to take a bit of noise - after all, that's where the party is.

But nothing could have prepared me for the entire building literally shaking along with the loudspeakers of an open-air swimming-pool nightclub behind the guest-house. It might sound like I am exaggerating, but this is the actual truth. And this went on night after night until almost sunrise.

According to some locals I have spoken to, there has been a change among the local police top brass since I moved out. But friends of mine who stayed in the same establishment quite recently say there was still the same horrible noise. So the new sheriff is either deaf or he just doesn't care.

I'm not against late nightlife, but when the music is so loud that I can't hear the television at full volume inside my own room at 5.30 in the morning, there is something wrong. I mean, the nearby disco and bars close when the law tells them to, but not this place. Why this difference in applying the law? And don't tell me the police haven't noticed, because the techno music in this place can be heard streets away.

Sleepless in Samui

Surat Thani

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Limited opening hours have killed nightlife

 Re: "Quality tourists demand the right to 24-hour partying", Letters, March 5.

I could not have made the case more forcefully myself. The government has most certainly not only turned Bangkok into a dead city but also Pattaya, as anyone with any brains has long predicted.

I recently visited two other tourist destinations - one local, one international - and quite frankly they leave these two past queens for dead. It also goes without saying that the crime rate in Thailand has escalated out of control. I wonder how it will all end. Badly, I suspect.

While officials line their pockets, the masses get only crumbs - and these crumbs are becoming stale. Get rid of the brain-deads that have treated the tourism industry with such contempt. Tourism aside, how can any entertainment industry survive on the "official" seven hours of opening per day? Tell that to the illegal pavement bars (run by "you know who").

David Hawkins

Weymouth, England

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'The Nation' leaning too far to one side in its reporting

 I am distressed to see the professionalism of The Nation reporting diminishing as the crisis surrounding Prime Minister Thaksin grinds on. While it is easy to report in an unbiased fashion during times of relative political calm, a newspaper's professionalism should be measured by its ability to abide by high ethical standards during times of crisis.

In my view, The Nation's reporting has fallen short of reasonable standards of unbiased journalism. Regardless of one's views on the issue, the level of partisan commentary, much of it passed off as "analysis", has increased to the point where very little reliable information is gleaned from Nation articles. While laying claim to be "Thailand's Independent Newspaper", the tone, editing and vocabulary of most articles now dominating coverage seems imbued with a zeal to see the current prime minister unseated and thus is very much dependent on and reflective of one point of view.

Implied in this coverage is a latent, know-what's-best-for-the-public elitism, that underscores the current and worsening polarisation of some segments of society over this issue. It also places a strain upon the gestating democratic process in Thailand, where mobs seek to trump elections and journalists attempt to influence rather than inform voters.

PQ

Bangkok

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Forgotten poor living in miserable conditions

 I and three others have just completed a month's study tour of the worst poverty in the Kingdom, at our own expense, and our findings were saddening.

Our corrupt leaders and their corrupt business associates should do this tour and see the conditions in which some of our brothers and sisters and their children are living in the Kingdom, caused partly caused by their never-ending greed for money and power.

In Chon Buri, not far from Bangkok, we saw families living on a monthly pittance in conditions not fit for humans, over open sewers, surrounded by rats and diseased dogs and without electricity or water supply. The children had chronic skin diseases and other health problems because of their environment.

We found such conditions all over the Kingdom, including the South.

Most children from such areas never attend school and live with violence as their peers take to dealing drugs and very often prostitution as a way out of their misery. We saw hundreds of thousands living under these conditions. Children from these backgrounds will eventually turn to crime and prostitution and continue the cycle of misery, as they have no other way out.

My associates and I have a lot to be thankful for in not having been born in similar conditions.

Yes, Thaksin and your friends, you have done a lot of good for yourselves but without doubt have never addressed the poverty and misery in our nation. Had we just seen the "good" you have achieved?

Following this study tour, my heart bleeds for a lot of my fellow Thais, especially the children.

We should start an online forum and ask ourselves: are their any Thai politicians left among us with a grain of integrity; are there any Thai politicians left with some feeling for our nation and its people? Is there not one among us who could become "father/mother" of our nation and steer us out of our misery?

I remember your statement, Thaksin: "We are now a developed nation." That's the joke of the century.

A Saddened Citizen

Bangkok

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