[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index ][Thread Index ]

In rides Sanan (Sanan Kachornprasar



Subject: In rides Sanan (Sanan Kachornprasart)

Good reading and on the mark. 


"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.

CCT wrote:
> 
> In rides Sanan
> Sanan 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".
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> "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.
> "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.
> The rest of the entourage cooed consensus, including Pornchai
> Trakulworanont, Thammasat's dean of the Sociology and Anthropology
> Faculty.
> 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.
> He was just one of thousands of students who fled the city to seek
> refuge with the CPT in the jungles.
> The interior minister also let drop that a government expert on
> terrorism had told him he did well by not calling the students
> terrorists.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> The order emphasised political means rather than military in the fight
> against the communists.
> 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.
> "Would the country have benefitted from such a development?" he asked
> -------------------------------------------------