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Economically, this is a country that is stuck in the middle in terms of development. Though we have come a long way since 1990, and are now categorised by the Asian Development Bank as a middle-income country with a gross per capita national income of US$3,917 (B133,377) in 2008. According to the International Monetary Fund, Thailand has the second-largest national economy in Southeast Asia with its gross domestic product measured on purchasing power parity estimated at $520 billion. It is also one of the world's leading exporters of natural rubber, rice, canned and frozen seafood, canned pineapple, cassava and sugar.

However, while we are reaping the benefits of the past, we cannot see where we will be going in ten years, and the prevalent thinking is to maintain the status quo. Still, there is neither a permanent status quo nor any room for complacency. Standing in the same place while others are moving forward is like going backwards. Maybe that's why we got so upset when the United States recently decided to grant Laos and Cambodia preferential financial treatment in trade and commerce.

We have apparently forgotten that for a long time we were a beneficiary of the US Generalised System of Preference that gave Thai exporters added competitiveness in the US market with low or zero import tariffs. Can we really be that self-centred?

As nations like China continue using the global financial crisis as an opportunity to recalibrate their economies to improve their competitiveness in trade and commerce as well as to achieve a better distribution of wealth, the predicament facing Thailand is how, if at all, it would be possible to sustain growth in the midst of a deep and prolonged global recession. Quite ironically, we seem to want to fight this battle by resorting to the age-old mentality of boosting purchasing power, as if the government can spend its way out of a recession. In 1976, British then-PM James Callaghan shared a few words of wisdom that remain relevant today. He said: "For too long, perhaps ever since the war, we postponed facing up to fundamental choices and fundamental changes in our society and in our economy …We have been living on borrowed time …We used to think you could spend your way out of recession … by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that option no longer exists."

And if we in Thailand think that such an option still exists uniquely for us, it may prove to be a self-defeating mindset that exhorts a heavy toll on our future generations and indeed their livelihoods.

Politically, we are at a major crossroads. The old political and social order is breaking up and is in dire need of a visionary and honest fundamental overhaul. However, what we have been doing is no different from patching up a flat tyre, hoping blindly that the patchwork will do the job of getting the beat-up vehicle to its destination safely. By luck or by draw, Thais always believe that when all else fails, our national "guardian angel" will go to work for us no matter how badly we behave or how self-destructive we become, and that eventually we will have a good and amicable outcome.

Many would want to dismiss the red movement as a flash in the pan, thinking that they have been paid to march in the streets. But on a closer look, we will see an increasing number of true believers, like the yellow shirts who do not have to be paid to get their voices heard. These are people who want "equality" and "democracy" even though it is not clear what or if they know what these terms really mean and entail. Theirs is a voice against the old order, which is being blamed for many or even all the woes the society is enduring. These are the voices of protest that should not be dismissed or silenced. It does not help that fuel is constantly added to the fire for reasons other than real public interest, while reckless political expediency gets cloaked in righteousness. Those exploitative hands smelled blood in the water and have capitalised on it.

Still, that should not be used as an excuse to ignore, belittle or underestimate the gravity of the issue, because it is real. Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may call protestors in his country "dirt and dust", but we should not do the same with our voices of dissent. Doing nothing constructive to retune the system but instead continuing with business as usual is like turning the country into a petri dish of destruction.

John Calhoun (1782-1850), the seventh US vice president, once warned that "the interval between the decay of the old and the formation of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism". If we ignore lessons from history, we are bound to repeat them. Political changes forced from the ground up are rarely peaceful.

Thailand is not fighting any outside enemies, because we seem to be becoming our own worst foes. Ours is a gallows politics where the leadership's rectitude may not be able to save it from being eaten up by the tiger it is riding. Like Madonna and the antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus, the money-advancing grist keeps reinventing itself to better infiltrate public coffers.

Will the country be fortunate and its leadership wise enough to have the courage to face up to problems by first admitting that all is not a joke? We will be living on borrowed time if we keep allowing protracted internal conflicts to continue, and the reckoning day will arrive soon as we as a nation will have collectively endangered the freedom of a peaceful and thriving democracy we aspire to achieve.