Thailand's future

A recent Bloomberg magazine article compares Thailand to The Philippines (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-30/move-over-thailand-the-philippines-is-southeast-asia-s-strong-man) - Thailand does not come out well. What The Philippines has - and the article points this out in various ways - is a commitment to democratic institutions. The American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton once observed "a government ill-executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government". There can be no doubt that Thailand's government in the last ten years has been "ill-executed" or as we would probably say these days "dysfunctional" because the royalist elite doesn't believe that the mass of the population has any rights. And what was it that happened in Thailand around 10 years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Thai_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat)?

As India's prime minister Narendra Modi said recently in addressing the Australian parliament "Democracy offers the best opportunity for the human spirit to flourish". It's just a guess that Aung Sag Suu Kyi in Burma thinks the same. And let's not mention last week's lecture to the Generalissimo by the Japanese prime minister about a rapid return to democracy. And guess what? None of them are Europeans who according to the Board's paternalists* are the ones trying to impose an alien form of society on Thailand.

* We're not Thai but we know what's best for the Thai people and it's not self-determination because they're little brown people so they're not capable of adaptation the way us whiteys are