Tyranny Of A Minority

Turn of the tide? Day 6 of the PAD siege of Government House brings some powerful condemnation of the PAD’s “Tyranny of a minority” to light, as Chula’s Thitinan Pongsudhirak writes in the Bangkok Post. A core excerpt: “Yet this is the time for those myriad Thais – the silent majority – who never liked Mr. Thaksin then and despise Mr. Samak now – to come out and condemn the PAD’s blatant hijacking of Thailand’s democratic system.”

In a related commentary “White turns black” the Post‘s Deputy Editor-in-Chief Veera Prateepchaikul regrets: “PAD has failed me and, I believe, many of its supporters for its disrespect for the rule of law, manifest in the storming of the NBT building and threatening its staff, defiance of the court order and for its continuing occupation of Government House.”

Growing condemnation though of us ignoramuses doesn’t mean the PAD will listen and give in for the sake of the rights of the majority. Their “final solution” hasn’t been reached in time, expect a growing list of PAD threats. The closure of the airports was just a teaser to demonstrate how the protestors could paralyze the country: “We could do this on an even greater scale,” says PAD chief cheerleader Sondhi.

On the other side of the fence the last week still unthinkable happens. People once fervently opposed to Thaksin and Samak quietly side with the Samak government for the sake of national peace and stability. Who thought you’d ever welcome the red-shirted mob of the Democratic Alliance Against Dictatorship DAAC.

But how to stop those megalomaniacs’ loose cannons. Since the weekend even more barbed wire secures beleaguered Government House – with rowdies armed with bludgeons and the determined discipleship of the Santi Asoke sect as the backbones of a “political movement” that shows more and more signs of pseudo-religious delusion, instrumentalization and simple peer pressure, ready do go down in a “martyrdom for democracy.”