STOP PAGETIME

Thaksin's watchdogs tiring after five years of 'barking'

I'm going to babble a lot today because I'm lost, so bear with me if you want to read on.

What's the best thing for Thailand now? What should I do, both as a Thai citizen and journalist? The clashes between supporters and opponents of Thaksin Shinawatra have got me thinking that perhaps the most sensible thing is to do nothing at all.

Perhaps it's no use debating who or what brought our country to this point. It's been "Rashomon" - the truth of a situation being difficult to verify due to differing accounts - from day one and nothing is going to change that. Thaksin is either God or the epitome of evil depending on who you are. Some of our readers are right - things written in this space are getting repetitive. We have laid bare all our opinions on the controversial leader, a stance supported by the information that we have. Should we stop attacking him and go on with our lives? Elections, they say, must be the ultimate judge.

Shall we stop exposing, ridiculing, criticising or scrutinising the embattled leader? This is not a sarcastic question. We have said as much as we could about this man - his political ethics, conflicts of interest, greed, wide-scale corruption, lack of respect for civil rights, selective use of democratic principles and so on. There is nothing new to say. Should we just accept that since he has been able to withstand our bombardment for so long that he is right and we have been utterly misled?

The "watchdogs" may have overstayed their welcome. Shall we stop barking? After all, if something worse than the Siam Paragon and Central World incidents were to happen, would it be worth it? What if someone gets killed? Things could easily spiral out of control. Both sides would trade blame and emotions would boil. Some people have already warned that it could be worse than "October 6" because both sides seem equally equipped to take each other on.

Thaksin has become a controversial religion. Like worshippers of God waging wars against each other, democracy advocates are now at each other's throats. Accepting him means embracing one value, and rejecting him may simply mean you cherish "just another value". If the "Thaksin value" is the overriding one at the moment, should we just get on with it? I mean, it could be the right value after all.

He spent a lot of taxpayers' money on populist programmes probably intended to cover up his guilt, but so what? Millions still support him and shouldn't that be of the utmost importance in a democracy? He may have cheated here and there, but so what? Nobody is perfect and millions still support him and shouldn't that matter most? He lacks political ethics and has been involved in numerous conflicts of interest, but so what? Democracy would have ejected him if he had been bad enough. No checks and balances? So what? Voters will take care of that. He may be a control freak who does not tolerate criticism, but hey, what have The Nation columnists been doing over the past five years?

Perhaps it's time to stop. We have done the best we could to tell you about the share concealment, about Ample Rich, about the excise tax decree that greatly benefited Shin Corp, about the Temasek deal, about the CTX scandal and the like, about the alleged effort to interfere with and bring the military back to politics, and so on. Despite having so much to tell we are getting repetitive, but the bigger problem is even though we come across and publish sure-fire evidence saying, for example, that he manipulated stock prices and evaded paying an obscene sum of taxes, it wouldn't matter. Why? The answer in 2001 was "11 million votes". It was "19 million votes" last year and "16 million votes" after April 2 of this year. In the overriding "Thaksin religion", this is the one and only commandment. Thou shall not question it.

I'm getting repetitive again. Sorry, couldn't help it. Will try better next time. There must be a lot of nice things to say about Thaksin, and if we can do that, it will, in his own words, benefit our country. To start with, if he has made the majority of Thais happy enough to vote for him, then nothing else should matter. I don't believe in the general concept of God, but I coexist peacefully with those who do. Thaksin has become another black or white thing in my life. Hate him and you may like this babbling, love him and this is self-pitying nonsense with the usual sarcasm. The media may have gone as far as they can to try to refute the Thaksin religion. Maybe it's time to accept that in a parallel "democracy", we can be the ones seen as Satan.

Tulsathit Taptim

The Nation