The Last Charade

The Last Charade

          As the song’s lyric goes: “when we played our charade, we were like children posing”, the opposition Democratic Party members were simply acting like children posing as Members of the Parliament at a parliamentary session on May 30^th.  The submission of a series of reconciliation bills in the Parliament by the coalition parties provided enough pretext for the opposition party and a hordes of pseudo-Fascists to instigate a political upheaval on the scale that would expectedly precipitate the use of extra-constitutional means to topple the Yingluck Government reminiscent of the demise of the Thai Rak Thai Government and the People’s Power Party Government.  This time, to the chagrin of the PAD whose reputation as a street mob is to be respected, the Democrat Party had upstaged the PAD in the Parliament and had stolen the limelight in every news media.

Not satisfied with their usual antics for instigating troubles in the Parliament, the opposition party indulged in unorthodox and childlike tactics to destabilize the government and to aggravate the already polarized political situation. Like spoiled brats, members of the Democrat Party were playing a daring ‘tug of war’ game with the Speaker of the House to the point of manhandling him out from the chair.  Realizing that it was not yet their best shot, the Democrats, a misnomer in the Thai political system, took out their rage on an inanimate object that the Speaker of the House sat on and acted in contravention to democratic norms and human decency by gorging the throat of their opposite number, short of strangling him to death. Bunching into a pack of wolves intent on devouring their victim, these unruly ‘Democrats’ hurled projectiles at the Speaker of the House in the manner  which defied any attempt at their deserved characterization. 

This “sad little serenade” has striped the Democrats

of any pretense of their love of democracy and their oft-stated adherence to the parliamentary process.   They have demonstrated beyond any doubt that they would have no scruples to resort to any undemocratic and unorthodox means just to have their way in politics.  This was the behavior of the same group of people that shunned democratic process by boycotting a election 6 years ago, by condoning the military coup d’etat in September 2006 that brought down an elected government, by surreptitiously forming a government in an army barrack against the will of the people, by ordering bloody crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters in 2009 and 2010, and by colluding with the Yellow Shirt PAD (PAD have abandoned their trademark yellow color which they themselves have soiled) to topple the democratically elected Yingluck Government by any means.  There seems to be no end to their misdeed regardless of whether they are in or out of power.  Like the song says: “I hear it still, I always will.  Best on the bill Charade”.  Could this best act in Parliament be their last charade that portends to another country’s misfortune?   

By Dr. Pithaya Pookaman, former Ambassador