In his 1999 speech, Thaksin expressed his admiration for Buddhadasa’s ideas, and interpreted them in a way which aligned with the concept of a social contract: Buddhadasa saw that politics is thamma and thamma is politics. Politics is a duty. Politics is organizing the mass of people in society to live together peacefully, without crime. It’s the same as the social contract theory which old philosophers like Montesquieu, Rousseeau, John Locke, and Thomas Hobbes talked about. This is really about organizing people to live together peacefully without hatred or taking advantage of one another. When politics is a duty, it accords with the third principle of the thamma, namely doing one’s duty according to natural law. (Chumphon 2002, 117)