Many Thais cling to the belief that General Prayut Chan-o-cha is a good man, therefore his incompetence is forgivable.
While a person might be a lovely friend, a nice brother, husband, and uncle. That doesn\u2019t mean he\u2019s a good person. Even if he\u2019s a good person, what\u2019s the point of being good, if he allows everything else to be bad?
At the 27 April cabinet meeting, General Prayut Chan-o-cha had this to say, as reported by Wassana Nanuam:
\u201cCertain ministers speak poorly and gossip about me at meetings. You should be careful. I\u2019m the one who chose you for your job. Whether you like me or not, do not let me hear you gossip. If I hear about it again, I will be forced to fire you. I will confiscate your quota for myself. Again, be careful. I\u2019ve never done you wrong. I have a team that monitors all your Facebook. I do not trust, and I am not happy. Whoever creates conflict, hatred, or corruption, if there are problems, I will consider firing. I will not give you your party quota. I will take the quota back for myself.\u201d
Do these words reflect the characteristics of, never mind a good leader, but a good person?
Banyong Pongpanich is a well-respected man. He\u2019s the Chairman of Phatra Securities, Chairman of Phatra Captial, and a former advisor to General Prayut.
Last week in a Clubhouse session, he said General Prayut is a good and dedicated man who envisions himself like South Korea\u2019s Park Chung-hee or Singapore\u2019s Lee Kwan Yew. The general doesn\u2019t corrupt. As for those around him, we don\u2019t even need to go there.
The following is a summary of Banyong\u2019s indictment of the Prayut Regime.
The military-style top-down management. When he disagreed with the general during a meeting, the general\u2019s lackeys would caution him not to disagree because it would obstruct work progress. If he has any disagreement, he should inform them before the meeting.
The book \u201cOutliers\u201d by Malcolm Gladwell tells of a plane crash in South Korea because the junior pilot was too afraid to disagree with the captain. Hence, the ineffectiveness of the Prayut Regime in general and during the time of COVID-19 in particular.
The general is surrounded by bootlickers. As such, the longer he\u2019s the prime minister, the more he thinks of himself as a great leader. Consequently, the general believes the longer he\u2019s in power, the better it is for Thailand.
When Palang Pracharat Party was created, it was with the understanding that the party needed both \u201cwhite cats\u201d (good people) and \u201cblack cats (bad people). Then with time, the black cats would be set aside. But it turned out, at the end of the day, only the black cats are left.
Banyong cited a Chinese proverb that goes something like this: \u201cWhen a man becomes powerful, lizards flock to him, while good people distant themselves.\u201d
What then is the sum of the general\u2019s character? He\u2019s a bully. He\u2019s selfish, vain, shallow, petty, vindictive, and power-hungry.
Are these the characteristics of a good person? Even if he\u2019s a good person, what\u2019s the point of being good, if he allows everything else to be bad?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Many Thais cling to the belief that General Prayut Chan-o-cha is a good man, therefore his incompetence is forgivable. While a person might be a lovely friend, a nice brother, husband, and uncle. That doesn\u2019t mean he\u2019s a good person. Even if he\u2019s a good person, what\u2019s the point of being good, if he allows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,12,14,13],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thisurpt","tag-prayut-chan-o-cha-2","tag-thailand","tag-thisrupt","tag-whatshappeninginthailand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":475,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions\/475"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}