‘Don’t use a coup to solve the problems of corruption. That will destroy the legitimacy of the whole justice system. It’s really a high price to pay,’ Kasian Techaphira, political science lecturer at Thammasat University, told Matichon reporters in an interview after the court ruled on the Thaksin assets case. 

Thailand is again in frenzy over coup rumors, perpetuated mostly by anti-government Red Shirts who need a reason to protest and by a media machine that needs a story. The top generals have denied that anything is amiss, words that mean little since they said the same thing before ousting former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006. 

Phuttipong Pong-anakekul, a second-year law student at Ramkhamhaeng University, wrote an article in Prachatai in response to what Surapon Nitikraipot, Rector of Thammasat University, said at a public forum on 25 Jan. 

Surapon Nitikraipot, Rector of Thammasat University, has spoken in a public forum in defence of the 2006 coup and its resulting constitution.  He argued that anti-coup activists should have also opposed the 1997 Constitution, as it resulted from a coup in 1991.  As a law professor himself, he said that there were no double standards in prosecuting the red and yellow shirts, except that the cases were being handled sooner or later.  

It’s 19 September, 2009. Three years after the coup - how time flies. Might some want to revel in nostalgic idealization of the past, of the complimentary-flower coup d’etat which ousted Thaksin Shinawatra? Some may at least want to look at things on a bright side and at least thank these generals for their invaluable service to ‘Thai democracy’.