Foreign media coverage of our crisis is distorted

They are now putting the blame for the Thai crisis on the monarchy. They are painting a simplistic picture of a very complicated situation and alleging that the monarchy has got involved in politics to protect its interests and privileges while all the time seeking shelter under the lese majeste law.

Much worse, they are suggesting that it is time for Thailand to embrace popular democracy, as Thaksin Shinawatra claimed to have championed, and do away with constitutional monarchy. At the moment, between the constitutional monarchy and Western style liberal democracy, the Thai people still have more trust in the 70-plus year-old system. This system is likely to remain until the majority of the Thai people trust their elected leaders to put the country's interest over their own vested interests. Notice every time there is a major crisis, who steps in and saves the day?

The international media deliberately ignore the root of the current political crisis, which originates from gross corruption, cronyism and nepotism. Instead, they focused only on the simple fact that Thaksin had got more votes than anybody.

They seems to forget that Thaksin had wrecked our institutions, put his family and friends in key positions and carried out bloody initiatives that resulted in questionable death of nearly 3,000 people in the name of drug war. Would you like to have him as your premier?

 Subsequently we have witnessed social and political clashes that at times gone out of control, pitting Thais against Thais.

If you have read The Economist' s Dec 4 edition, you may be wondering whether this UK magazine really knows what it is writing.

What kind of lese majeste taboo is The Economist talking about? It is all in the perception rather than reality. His Majesty the King does not prohibit people to criticise him or the Monarchy if they do so in an honest way.

Since 1932 no person has been sentenced to jail under the lese majeste law for criticising the Monarchy. Even King Rama VI, the King's uncle, did not put people to jail for criticising the Monarchy. In the old Ayutthaya period, the Siamese subjects also criticised the Monarchy when they had bad kings. But they all respected Monarchy as an institution first and the Kings as an individual second.

One has to differentiate criticism against the Monarchy from slanting, libelling or vandalising the Monarchy. Thaksin has sued a lot of people for libelling him. If you libel against the Monarchy, you also stand to get into trouble too.

If you have your doubt about the lese majeste law, just ask sharp-tongue social critic Sulak Srivalaksa. He has charged 15 times time with lese majeste and never once did he serve jail sentence. It was consistently ruled that Suluck had criticised the Monarchy rather than libelling it.

The problem we have is the exploitation for political gains by individual Thais and foreigners. All opposing forces in Thailand carry HM portraits.

The problem we have with the Econmists is that the publication ignored the fact that the Monarchy embodied a much more broader dimension of Thai society that include the Thai culture, tradition and statehood.

The international media also have suggested that the King was instrumental behind the 2006 coup. But they cannot provide evidence to back up this claim. Against this is slanting.

The King, from my understanding, does not like a coup because the sovereign power returns to him alone. He commands moral persuasion, but he does not have the power to tell the military what to do or not what to do. When the military took power in 2006 to pre-empt the clash between the Thaksin government and the protesters, the King had no choice but to endorse it later on. If he had not endorsed the coup, Thaksin would be forming a government in exile and at home the divided military would be shooting against each other, with the yellow-shirt protesters and red shirt supporters taking side. A civil war would ensue, just like what we have just seen in recent months.

In 1991 when Gen Suchinda Kraprayoon staged a coup, the King did not approve it but he had no power to stop the generals and his clique. If he had not endorsed the coup, which had already been staged, the country would be plunged into a state of vacuum, which was every more dangerous.

If you do a public opinion survey on the King's popularity, the approval of his kingship would be - I guess -- 98 per cent. There is no crisis of the Monarchy at the moment because the Thai people are not staging an uprising against him. The Red Shirt people support Thaksin but if you ask them to go against the Monarchy, very few of them would be willing to do so. The campaign of the Red Shirt people is that "we support the Monarchy but they do not support military dictatorship."