Is it fair to compare Prayut’s rule to dark days under Sarit?
Re: “Living here is not a bar to stating discontent”, Have Your Say, August 21
I am happy (seriously) to read that Uncle Steve (lungstib) is still content with living in Thailand after 27 years here, since otherwise he would have wasted the most precious years of his life. Let’s just say that comparing the current government with the Sarit Thanarat administration of the 1950s and early ’60s was a little bit over-dramatic. After all, Uncle Steve was not in Thailand to witness Sarit’s rule, while today, the many people complaining about a lack of freedom of speech are writing pretty much what they want in newspapers and on the Internet.
Personally I find solace these days in the old adage of the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971):
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
The coffee and the roses smell wonderful this morning, as usual.
By the way, Steve, please spell my name without the “h”, otherwise people may think I am a man of the cloth.
Budda Surintarad
Khorat
