Under förra veckans parlamentsdebatt verkade inte Pheu Tha så värst intresserade av att läka några sår, en kommentar till spektaklet från en före detta chefredaktör på Bangkok Post.
There are lies, damn lies, and even lies to cover lies By: Veera Prateepchaikul Published: 27/04/2009 at 12:00 AM Newspaper section: News Adolf Hitler once said: "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it and eventually they will believe it." And Franklin P Adams, the well-known American journalist and radio personality: "The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all the time."
These two famous quotes pertaining to lies were deliberately selected to describe the conduct of our legislators, particularly the opposition Puea Thai MPs, during the joint parliamentary session in parliament last Wednesday and Thursday which was originally intended to be a brainstorming forum to search for solutions to the country's protracted political crisis.
Instead of a constructive discussion in a civilised manner, the entire event was turned into a circus with one after another Puea Thai MP piling scorn and accusations on the Abhisit government and the military for their alleged brutal handling of the red shirt protesters during the Songkran riots in Bangkok with the support of questionable video clips, unsubstantiated evidence, hearsay, wild imagination or pure fantasy.
Piecing together the essence of the Puea Thai MPs' vicious barbs during the debate, one could draw a picture of the riot and the government's response to it as seen from the Puea Thai's distorted perspective, apparently intended to mislead the gullible.
The key message to the public from the Puea Thai party is that what the public saw from the television or the actual riot in action with their own eyes might be just an illusion; the black colour they saw might actually be white and vice versa.
Here is the Puea Thai's summarised version of the red shirt protest, the riots and the crackdown by the military.
- The red shirt protest was peaceful, non-provocative and none of them were armed. The red shirt protesters who were seen making Molotov cocktails right at the protest site or who were seen lobbing petrol bombs on advancing troops were mere fake protesters probably on somebody's payroll to discredit the red shirts.
- Red shirt protesters did not storm the venue of the Asean plus 3 and Asean plus 6 summits at the Royal Cliff Beach Resort. In fact, they were allowed onto the premises by police and soldiers. Also, they were not responsible for the cancellation of the summits. On the contrary, it was Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva who chickened out and cancelled the summits.
- The red shirt protesters did not threaten Mr Abhisit when he went to the Interior Ministry to declare the state of emergency for Bangkok and neighbouring provinces. Instead they were there to rescue him from a mob masquerading as red shirt protesters. Also, the smashing of the prime minister's car was the work of outsiders.
- Red shirt protesters had nothing to do with all the gas tankers hauled to Din Daeng and other spots nearby to block the advance of the soldiers.
- Soldiers used live bullets to fire on unarmed protesters, several of whom were believed to have been killed and their bodies hauled away in army trucks to be destroyed at some unknown locations to cover up the crime.
- The burning of hijacked buses, the vandalising of a mosque in a Muslim community on Petchaburi Road and the shootings which were widely thought to be perpetrated by red shirt protesters were in fact staged by third-hand elements in the guise of red shirt protesters. Anyone could don a red shirt and be seen as one of them, so said a Puea Thai MP.
- And last but not least, Prime Minister Abhisit was solely to blame for causing the worst political divide ever seen and for causing incalculable damage to the country's economy for imposing the state of emergency without any justification.
Having initially heard some of these absurdities, I simply could not believe my ears that they actually came from our grown up and well-educated MPs. After all, my hearing is all right and also I was not in the field among sheep in the company of a bunch of shepherd boys.
What a waste of time, energy and expense.
The only achievements - if they are worthy enough to qualify as achievements - of the marathon talk fest are the promises by the prime minister to set un an independent and impartial body to look into the riot and to lift the state of emergency.
As for the Puea Thai party, if its real agenda was to add fuel to fire to stir up hatred of the government and the military and to further deepen the ever-widening political divide, it could claim that as an achievement.
[*]Veera Prateepchaikul is a former Editor of the Bangkok Post