Give Abhisit a chance to rebuild Thailand's future

Despite all that has been said and will be said, PM Abhisit Vejjajiva has done a good job so far under very difficult circumstances.

By not giving too much importance to Thaksin Shinawatra and Hun Sen's babbling and focusing on tackling the real problems, he has shown that he is not your average Thai politician. With him, it seems to be more about the future of Thailand and its people and less about personal gains and face-saving.

By the way, is it considered a loss of face to decide not to waste time and energy responding to uneducated comments from a fugitive and a former member of the Khmer Rouge? In any case, I think Abhisit is right to not care too much about them. They both do a great job at discrediting themselves and losing public support on a daily basis.

This also gives Abhisit more time to plan for Thailand's future by switching from populist policies developed under Thaksin's premiership to the far more difficult and ambitious programme of empowering people.

Thaksin's populist policies were not even original. We just called them "alms to the poor" because they were never meant to pull them out of poverty. Abhisit's project to empower people is not too original either. It is simply "the bottom-up" approach used successfully by various organisations.

If a child falls into a well; you have two ways of helping him: Keep providing him with food and water. In the long run, his problem won't be solved, but the child will develop affection for you.

The second is help him pull himself out of the well. You may give him a bit of food and water, but you may have to leave him on his own for a while. The child may hate you, but given the time and resources, he will find a way to get out of the well.

So it's time to decide what you want for Thailand? I personally am ready to give Abhisit more time and do my best to help him help us.

CANDIDE

BANGKOK

Labour unions, staff and the SRT should all be sued

I fully back the business operators who have threatened to sue the State Railways of Thailand (SRT), its union, and individual SRT staff for damages caused by the strike that severely disrupted south-bound train services for many days. As Thongyu Khongkant, head of the Import-Export Transport Association noted, transport by trucks costs twice as much as trains. Besides, as he said, "Who is going to do business with us if they cannot trust that we can deliver on time because of train service suspension?"

The SRT management is also responsible, for it has allowed the union to get away with holding us all hostage for so many years, and allowed one reform plan after the other to be tossed aside at the first growl from the union. Management has also apparently allowed low-quality spare parts to be used in repairs, risking breakdowns and accidents, and failed to rally the public and government to its side.

You, dear reader, and I must support these lawsuits, for the failure of SRT and its union to deliver safe, efficient, punctual services means that we must all pay the costs of the jacked-up shipping and passenger transport. Demand that our government keep up the pressure on SRT and its union to be accountable both for what they did and did not do, but should have done.

Likewise, SRT should sue its union for the Bt80 million it lost in passenger and shipping revenue. Raising kids without teaching them to be accountable leads to their being brats, thieves, and worse. So, too, with unions or management. Sue away!

BURIN KANTABUTRA

BANGKOK

Banning Thunska's film an autocratic act

Re: 'Quarantine' under lockdown, Daily Xpress, yesterday

It is instructive that on the day the annual Press Freedom Index for 2009 was released, in which Thailand was ranked 130 out of 175 countries, the Culture Ministry should announce it was banning the latest film by Thunska Pansittivorakul from screening at the World Film Festival of Bangkok. Freedom of the press is widely recognised as one of the inviolable cornerstones of liberal democracy and is enshrined as such in law by most fair thinking, modern states.

Freedom of the arts is no less important and is just as crucial to the healthy functioning of a participatory democratic society.

Thunska is an award-winning, independent film-maker of considerable national, regional and international note. His work is not easy and often challenges ideas and dictates, but therein lies its value.

The role of the avant-garde has always been to challenge and provoke and, by so doing, to forge new modes of expression and ways of thinking.

It is a culturally indispensable function that Thunska and other such young independent film-makers are performing - or, at least, trying to perform - for the contemporary Thai arts scene, ensuring that that scene remains creatively innovative, dynamic and progressive.

For the Culture Ministry to then bar Thunska's latest film is an appalling act of autocratic state intervention and repression that sends a worrying signal for the future welfare of the contemporary Thai arts, if not that of Thai democratic civil society at large.

DR BRETT FARMER

CHULALONGKORN UNIVERSITY

BANGKOK