His concluding “advice” as an “academic” is for Thailand and the rest of Asia to emulate the “compromise” Myanmar’s military-led government made with Suu Kyi’s political party. In reality, it was not a compromise – it was coercion and capitulation enabled by tremendous influence funneled into Myanmar through Suu Kyi’s political front by Myanmar’s former colonial rulers and their partners across the Atlantic in Washington. Caving in to foreign coercion and dominion by compromising with the milieu of foreign-backed terrorists and traitors arrayed against them is not sound advice an academic should be giving Southeast Asia’s people and policymakers.
Thitinan categorically failed to thoroughly analyze and qualify his conclusions with the actual dynamics driving both Thailand and Myanmar’s political crises. By doing so, he finds himself merely repeating Western-generated propaganda, not engaging in sound analysis. Calling him an “academic” undermines real academia, and the Bangkok Post’s constant allowance of column space in their paper to him without any semblance of counterbalance undermines journalism.