General Sonthi said that today's soldiers tend to be less patriotic, demonstrate less courage and are preoccupied with second jobs that they take to enrich themselves. According to him all of these factors have contributed to the military's dismal performance in its attempt to restore peace and protect civilians in the southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat against a campaign of terror being waged by Islamic militants/Malay separatists.

"Soldiers [in the battlefield] avoid patrol duty. Graduating Army cadets opt to specialise in electronic warfare to avoid frontline combat assignments or get themselves into engineering corps so they can earn extra money on the side doing road maintenance jobs," Sonthi said at a seminar held at a Bangkok hotel on Monday to discuss a plan to boost the number of certified nurses in the strife-torn region.

While Sonthi should be commended for his candour, he must also be held responsible for his failure as Army chief and now CNS chairman - the single most powerful military leader - for having tolerated such endemic incompetence and lack of professionalism, which endangers national security instead of bolstering it.

Sonthi must have a strong grasp of a host of problems facing the Army, and indeed the Navy and the Air Force, which have been languishing as a result of a corruption-prone patronage system, bureaucratic inefficiency and a lack of battle-preparedness in the absence of armed warfare with another country for about two decades.

The last time Thai armed forces were engaged in a conflict was in 1989 when Thailand and Laos fought a short but bloody war over the border village of Ban Romklao. The Thai Army suffered a humiliating number of casualties then, forcing Bangkok into a negotiated peace with Vientiane.

For almost two decades there have been talks about streamlining the cumbersome armed forces into smaller, more effective fighting forces. Little has changed, however, and the military continues to be burdened with a top-heavy structure with hundreds of generals, marshals and air marshals, many of who do not have a real job to do. Soon after the September 19 coup last year, the Defence Ministry demanded and was given an almost 50 per cent increase in its budget this year, increasing it to a whopping Bt115 billion.

This massive injection of funds into the Army, Navy and the Air Force has not resulted in a commensurate improvement in performance. When military commanders are unable to persuade their troops to fight insurgents, they have to resort to recruiting poor villagers, give them a few weeks of basic combat training, arm them and send them off to do the dangerous job that the armed forces should be doing.

In the meantime, the situation in the deep South has gone from bad to worse with over 2,300 people killed and more than 6,000 injured or maimed in 6,850 insurgent attacks and terrorist acts since the insurgency broke out in January 2004. The daily violence has shown no sign of abating.

Sonthi should be commended for having the guts to tell the Thai public how ill-disciplined, unprofessional and incompetent the Thai armed forces have become. But he should not stop there.

What he needs to do is reform the military drastically, improve their battle-preparedness, eliminate corruption, and impose professionalism. All this must be done before he leaves his post as CNS chairman and Army chief.

The military should not be given the option to remain beyond public accountability and continue to be a power player in politics. The worst thing that could happen to Thailand would be for the military to cling on to power beyond the next election while continuing to shirk its responsibility to defend the country. Thailand could lose both democracy and the war against insurgents in the South.