Child-focused educational reform urgently needed

It is imperative to develop a step-by-step IT model architectural blueprint in order to construct a multi-storied high-rise structure predicated on a firm foundation base. Individualised learning building blocks should be held together, via a community involvement plan, with concrete applied thinking mortar.

Each and every child in the kingdom deserves Constitutionally guaranteed equal opportunity alternatives and free choice options to create his/her very own uniquely original edifice, featuring confident self-image know-how, essential life coping skills, cultural diversity awareness, risk-taking savvy, progressive innovations, moral ideals and civic-minded responsibility.

DR CHANCHAI PRASERTSON

BANGKOK

Editorial was on target but missed the real point

In your editorial "How long can we ignore the deep South?" you acknowledge Thailand is fighting an ideological movement but you lack the nerve to name it, even as you disparage the generals who are trying to defend us from it.

You remind me of someone who has given up on their own culture, like the already overcome Swedes whose justice minister recently said that Swedes should be "nice to (this ideology) while we are in the majority so that when they are in the majority they will be nice to us". What you and the deluded Swedes still don't comprehend is that this ideology does not define peace as the absence of conflict, but rather as submission to the ideology. Please contemplate this next time you motor along the highway to Suvarnabhumi Airport, past the towering temples to this ideology that were intentionally built there to proclaim that one day all of the Thai state, not just the south, will get to experience this kind of peace.

LAOSUWAN

KRABI

Thailand did not have a democratically elected govt

Re: Vote-buying does not constitute |democracy, Dec 12

Thank you, Mr Mildew.

Thank you for pointing out in your short and precise letter that if you've bought your vote, and afterwards - ruled by the court as guilty of vote-buying - then you were not democratically elected.

As a Thai, I cannot thank you enough, for I was beginning to think that perhaps election fraud was acceptable as democratic in the western way of life. For the past few months, Thailand has been constantly under attack for sabotaging a "democratically elected government" that I was beginning to doubt myself where we stood as a country, trying to get our elections right.

Even the Philippines pronounced us "politically immature". Now that hurts, particularly when it is no secret that whenever the Philippines hold their elections, they are usually nursed along by the US. For those who still question this month's rulings of the Constitutional Court, let me remind you that from day one when the votes were counted, at least five 'red cards' were handed out to candidates of this party, resulting in successive by-elections, which again stood in as much doubt as the famous one in Florida.

Members of the Election Committee were then bullied and their lives threatened. Some were discarded and others made to resign and replaced with more 'understanding' viewpoints. Or were plainly fired, so complicated was the procedure. The government that Thailand had was not democratically elected. It has been ruled by the Court as fraud and at the helm was a despot who would stop at nothing to gain absolute power. Look how the man ranted and riled and threatened "to reveal all" when he found himself cornered, his UK visa taken away. Is that not blackmail added to the bribery?

A THAI VOTER

The earth is not flat, we don't need any more proof

The earth is still flat in Chiang Mai.

Over and over again the man in Chiang Rai, who considers the earth as flat, gets space to repeat his flat-earth theories. And that in the very limited "letters to the editor" column, where instead more enlightening stories could be published. I fully agree with Mr Mildew's letter. I too, am very fed up, but the "flat earth" people may be excused because of black spots in their education. It is worse when a newspaper presumably edited by awake, reflecting, analytic and educated people slip this through. One time, okay, but not over and over again. We know it now! And the court has stated that too: government not elected, but purchased.

A JOHNSEN

PATTAYA