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BKK Post (14-10-99)In rides Sanan
- Subject: BKK Post (14-10-99)In rides Sanan
- From: mandalay@xxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 21:30:00
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<font size=5><b>In rides Sanan<br>
S</font></b><font size=3>anan Kachornprasart, the deputy prime minister
and interior minister among other things, has been basking of late in the
praise of his advisers for not calling Johnny and the Dissident Students
"terrorists" but "students fighting for
democracy".<br>
Call this manoeuvre whatever you like, but the faithful who surround the
crisis-buster say it was largely responsible for ending the 25-hour
siege.<br>
At an informal meeting at the Royal Turf Club, Maj-Gen Sanan's
alternative HQ and favoured dining spot together with his entourage,
"The Boss" briefed the faithful last week on how he managed to
avoid any violence and bring things to a peaceful conclusion.<br>
The former cavalry officer-and don't they always come trumpetting to the
rescue?-said he acted on his own initiative. No one advised him not to
call Johnny et al "terrorists", he just did what he thought was
appropriate.<br>
Maj-Gen Sanan compared the Burmese dissidents to the Thai students of the
mid-'70s who were forced to join the communists in the jungles after the
horror surrounding the Oct 6, 1976 bloodshed.<br>
"They are fighting for the democratic cause in Burma just like the
Thai students who once joined the communists in their struggle for
democracy in the mid-'70s. We've never branded our students
communists," explained the liberal-minded Maj-Gen Sanan.<br>
"You made the right decision to call them democratic fighters and
not terrorists," signed an appreciative Anek Laothammathas, dean of
Thammasat University's Faculty of Political Science and a Sanan
adviser.<br>
The rest of the entourage cooed consensus, including Pornchai
Trakulworanont, Thammasat's dean of the Sociology and Anthropology
Faculty.<br>
Mr Anek was himself a student activist in the early '70s and joined the
Communist Party of Thailand-since outlawed-following the Oct 6 bloodshed
when the student movement was crushed by military strongman Adm Sa-ngad
Chaloryoo, who also toppled the elected government headed by M.R Seni
Pramoj.<br>
He was just one of thousands of students who fled the city to seek refuge
with the CPT in the jungles.<br>
The interior minister also let drop that a government expert on terrorism
had told him he did well by not calling the students terrorists.<br>
Maj-Gen Sanan is said to have been pleasantly surprised when he was told
by his advisers that a senior columnist with the Matichon newspaper,
Chern-att Datchani, who had never written a good word about our hero for
at least a year, had congratulated the efforts of the minister-and for
two days running!-in his column.<br>
But there were disappointments. The advisers just couldn't help shaking
their heads at the attitude of Gen Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, the former army
chief and now opposition leader who maintains that Johnny and his pals
were not democratic fighters but your common household terrorists.<br>
Gen Chavalit during his army days had helped draft the highly regarded
66/23 Prime Minister's Office Order which was so successful in bringing
an end to the communist threat back in the early 1980s.<br>
The order emphasised political means rather than military in the fight
against the communists.<br>
And now for a last word from one of the Sanan advisers, a man of the
belief that things could have turned quite nasty had not the boss decided
to treat the students as idealistic but misguided youths rather than
terrorists.<br>
"Would the country have benefitted from such a development?" he
asked<br>
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