The Thai Rak Thai commanded significant support because of the promise of change after the 1997 financial crisis. Under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, creditors and potential lenders, we all behaved like defeatists. Then came Thaksin and his team members (not regarded by Thaksin then as merely helpers), who collectively believed in confidence building and changes in the way of doing things and offered to cure the ills. The population was tired of stereotyped politics and voted overwhelmingly for them. And in the beginning they were modest and respectful and lauded by most people, including myself, as saviours. Thaksin was even speculated about in some foreign papers as a possible successor to Lee Kuan Yew and Mohamad Mahathir as a regional leader.

What went wrong? Again, the answer is simple: Lord Acton's dictum "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely". The Thai Rak Thai's landslide victory with a three-quarters majority in the House changed Thaksin. Not content with this unchallengeable strength, all the checks and balances and independent forces, such as the media, senators, constitutional agencies, were tampered with to ensure a complete edge over any opponent.

The final curtain fell this week when Thaksin referred to his team members, on the point of departure, as merely "helpers". In other words, all credit was due to him alone. The "helpers" must be so disenchanted and must be getting ulcers on learning the value of their contributions to this man. What a way to say "thank you" to colleagues whose efforts unquestionably contributed to your success.

So, how to detect such a man at the beginning? My tip is, again, simple: just to see how well a man can take criticism right from day one. Intolerance is indicative of insensitivity towards fellow men. Another tip is to note how often he used the word "I". If it is too often, then he is likely to be a narcissist, defined in Wikipedia as "the pattern of characteristics and behaviours which involve infatuation and obsession with one's self to the exclusion of others and the egotistic and ruthless pursuit of one's gratification, dominance and ambition".

Songdej Praditsmanont

Bangkok

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Many great minds have been misled in the past

 Khum Somkid is quitting at last, it seems! Such a brilliant, practical, sensitive and decent man, how could you have taken so long? Or Kuhn Borwornsak? Or Kuhn Wissanu? What did you expect to achieve working so closely with such a leader? Where did you think he was leading you? And you, Khun Prommin, where do you think we're headed now?

Indeed, there's a terrible history of great minds who have been slow to realise that no great ideal can be accomplished if the means are not worthy of the cause. Vladimir Lenin, Mao Tse Tung, and even Joseph Stalin had their brilliant apologists well after the tragic facts of their misrule were revealed, Jean Paul Sartre being by far the most brilliant - and the slowest! Even harder to understand is the fact that there are still to this day so many senior citizens in China and the former USSR who saw with their own eyes how the people suffered and yet still come out to celebrate the memory of the leaders responsible.

My question is such a simple one, but no one seems able to answer it: exactly what great ideal did Thaksin Shinawatra articulate that could have drawn in so many brilliant and sensitive minds? What rallied three wonderful humanitarians like Prawes Wasi, Thongbai Thongbao and Chamlong Srimuang, for example? How could Khun Chamlong have sat down next to the defendant in that dangerously charged court way back in 2001? What was the ideal that could cancel out for our own Maha Chamlong such a glaring moral glitch? And if there really was an ideal, where did it go?

Was it social engineering - yet again, perhaps? Was that the ticket? Please tell us, someone, so we'll never be tempted to sit there again!

Lung Kip

Chiang Mai

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Anti-trafficking website should be multilingual

 The website www.stophumantrafficking.com, mentioned in your report on an unnamed team that was set up recently to act against human trafficking, is finally online. But it is only in Thai.

To be truly effective, a serious programme to stop or curtail trafficking in humans, especially women and children, must present a website in several languages. In Thailand, such a website must be in Thai, Lao, Khmer, Burmese, Malay, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and, of course, English. Especially English.

The head of the team, according to The Nation's report on June 24, is Veerask Kowsurat, but there is no information about this person published anywhere. The only reference that comes up through Internet searches is on The Nation's online public forum.

I see no reason to expect anything concrete or positive from this "anti-human trafficking team". It is probably like many other organisations, or rather "non-governmental organisations", in Thailand - set up with government support and hyped by the local press to cover up Thailand's deep involvement in human trafficking.

Over the past decade in my native village, which is up North, several children were sold by their mothers, who were prostitutes, to an international paedophile ring with the help of local policemen and welfare officials. Every single government official, from the village headman to the prime minister, ignored the pleas of other relatives to recover the children. Foreign embassies refused to do anything. NGOs came to the village to dissuade the relatives from their efforts to find the children. Some relatives were harassed by the police.

Of course, one hopes that one day Thailand will do something to recover missing children. For the time being, nothing is being done.

Charoeun Wanthongwong

Bangkok

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Students encouraged to shirk by school policy

 Many teachers at the school I work at are dismayed at being told by the administration that no one can be given less than 50 per cent in a test. This means that progress or lack of cannot be assessed in low-scoring students. It means there is no difference between the student who got 10 per cent in the test and the one who got 49 per cent. It means lazy students who don't work in class or do homework continue the same way because they cannot fail.

Some teachers will bump up all the marks so that the bottom student passes. This results in many good students scoring 100 per cent, even though their work was far short of perfect. This devalues the mark or score. When almost the whole class gets 100 per cent, what does it mean?

Yes, standards are as low as they can be when even students who should be in special schools are guaranteed to pass. But don't go expecting any changes soon; there's a very good reason why nothing changes. If you were a rich powerful person successfully lording it over the masses, what kind of people would you want to be lording it over? Clear-thinking, knowledgeable, analytical people who look carefully at things and ask, indeed demand, answers to difficult questions like "where did the money go"? Or would you rather have a load of people who just wai you and keep quiet.

In my school it is very important to march properly.

Andy Beszant

Bangkok

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What about some laws to protect the customers?

 Your Business section for two days running carried articles on pending legislation to protect local retailers from competition from big supermarkets and hypermarkets.

Any protection for the many consumers and customers of those big stores?

Observer

Bangkok

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France missing great chance to raise its world standing

 Perfidious Gaul. Jacques Chirac's government has played a sorry role in hobbling any international response to the Israel-Lebanon crisis, both by restricting its scope and by being niggardly in its offer of manpower for the proposed peacekeeping force. For historic reasons Paris carries some residual weight of influence in the Levant. And yet, it prefers to stand aside with insouciance while a vacuum of authority works its worst in southern Lebanon.

Is there no memory in the Elysee Palace of the France that once mattered in world affairs? There is unlikely to be a more fitting moment this decade to display some world-class initiative in committing to a plan of action that is worthy of both the confidence of Israelis and Lebanese in restoring order to chaotic Lebanon and of returning lustre to France's own image.

The French pretend to be players on the world stage; let them now commit the resources necessary to realise such ambitions.

Ron Goodden

Atlanta, US

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Bush could learn from Ross Perot's hindsight

 I wonder if George W Bush ever read the book "On Wings of Eagles" by Ken Follett. This is the true story of how Ross Perot got two of his employees out of Iran in 1979 as Ayatollah Khomeini was in the process of taking over.

Perot points out mistakes he made in doing business in Iran. He had not perceived the strains beneath the surface, he knew nothing about the Ayatollah Khomeini, and he had not foreseen that one day there would be a president naïve enough to try to impose American beliefs and standards on a Middle Eastern country.

Of course, he was referring to Jimmy Carter, but Bush should learn from that mistake.

Charlie Brown

Pattaya