“The Degenerates”

It is now about the middle of 2009 - or about 4 - 5 months since I quit my involvement with Thailand after a long game of cat and mouse between me and the powers that be. The first 13 chapters of this book has floated all over the place and the feed back from those who support me - through their contact with me through e - mail had been 99% positive.

Most find it amazing, interesting but also very dangerous to my health.

And dangerous it is because, even now, strangers keeps mentioning the words “Pracharn Tao Eng” to me or near me - intentionally. To those that doesn’t know Thai, it means sort of like self - incriminating cum prosecution cum expose. It is off - course part of the old mind game that had been going on for a long time.

Well, at this point in the book you will either think I have lost it completely or believe what I have said. Some may pick and choose parts and have mixed feelings. All I will say in my defense is that after the book went public for about a month, about five people came up to me and asked if I had a lighter. That had never happened before.

If you remember, it was the same question those cultural guys asked me at Singh Beer House when they struck up a conversation on purpose to tell me that the coup people were after Thaksin’s life.

Then another example of how the powers that be are still after me is when I visited my club - the Royal Bangkok Sports Club and at the bar while I drank coffee, a guy came up to talk to me and suddenly said he had not seen his friend “Whit” for quite some time and he was a good friend.

Well “Whit” is the name of my hard core Amart friend who threw money out of his window for me to scrape up from the asphalt street so my wife could deliver my kid. But you can see that the crap they have been shoveling my way - yes I probably deserve it - is still flying my way.

What get me angry really though isn’t all the “Heckling” I get from strangers, but that their anger and craving for revenge really are quite deep - in that they have actually called people I have been trying to get work with, and telling them not to hire me.

Then they also call up my mobile phone and insult my father right into my ears. I am getting used to all of this off course - having taken it for a long time and I tell my good friend Koong who works at a prestigious media foundation and the Thai Journalists Association that I have finally begun to fight back in my way - meaning I don’t just stand still like a punching bag for people to hit but that in my way, I no longer take their crap.

But over all it has been very hard because everyone around where I live knows I was a former key Red Shirt player. While they hated me for that, because around Asoke Road it is the rich man’s territory - since I have gone neutral, they don’t get to play the “hating games" they love so much on me. So it is really funny seeing them try so hard to “jump - start” my political activities again.

Like I will be sitting at lunch minding my own business and they will come over and sit right next to me and “slap the newspaper” on the table loudly for me to look at, so they can start a conversation with me on politics. I swear - I must have had newspaper slapping down on me about a hundred times by now.

So one day, I finally had it with silence on politics and basically told a bunch of people that Thais were crazy because when the Yellow Shirts occupied the airport, lots and lots of people supported it as a way to rid the country of Thaksin’s influences. But when the Red Shirt blocked the ASEAN Summit, the same people who were all for blocking the airport, suddenly now says the Red Shirt are sick animals because they hurt the country.

I told them that the Thai central bank officially estimated the airport closure cost the country about US$6 billion, but that the blocking of the summit cost the country little compared to the airport.

Well I might have gone too far because I told them that while the Post and the Nation ran stories to the tune that the summit blockade was the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to Thailand, in fact, when the Yellow Shirt stopped the airport, the Post and Nation just stood still saying nothing.

“Millions stranded across Thailand with the airport closure, but just a bunch of heads of state had to escape the summit closure,” I screamed to a guy one day, real pissed off and didn’t care anymore if I were to land back in the nut house.

So to sum it up, I told that group of people who had been trying to get me to comment on Thai politics that “Thailand is degenerating into the abyss.”

You see, a good friend Peter said my book is just too full of questions but gives no answers. That is really because I am sick of having crap forced down my throat and so I try my hardest not to do the same with my readers. But if I were forced into it, I would say the following:

“The choice in Thailand is not right or left, because that is for the people to decide. But the choice is to fix the system or not because the current one doesn’t work and only results in those in power forcing their will onto others. If anything, the past five years has proven that too fast a move to the future or revertion back to the past, just doesn’t work in Thailand. There needs to be a way for a smooth transition. Then there is a truly serious question about law and order in Thailand, because what Thailand has, isn’t law and order but just power plays and connection.”

Unfortunately for Thailand, the Thais have degenerated to the point that they can’t think what is good for the country in the long - term anymore. Simply stated, there are very few Thais left who give enough of a crap about Thailand to stop thinking only in terms of left and right.

As for me, I wish I can leave this country and seek neutral ground so I can think clearly about what to do in the future. But the powers that be, I am sorry to report, have blocked my way out. And so I am a political prisoner in Thailand - even as I walk free.