About 100 NGO workers, activists, students and academics have signed an open letter addressed to their peers in civil society, rejecting the Reform Thailand plan being pushed by Prawase Wasi and Anand Panyarachun, and criticizing it as illegitimate and untrustworthy.

According to the letter, the signatories are part of the civil society movement, including current and former NGO workers, students, academics and social activists who are seriously concerned with their fellows’ response to the call to the Reform Thailand.

They say that the claim of a certain group of people who are participating in Reform Thailand that they represent the people’s sector or civil society is bogus, misleading society into believing that the majority of the people’s sector agrees with the idea.  In fact, a number of members of the people’s sector have criticized or rejected outright the reform plan, because it is illegitimate and does not address the problem of political inequality which is currently the main conflict in Thai society.

Reform Thailand is just a ploy which the government is using to divert society’s attention from public demands for the government to find the facts about the recent killings and suppression, and to show responsibility for the deaths and injuries resulting from its operations to ‘secure parameters’ to quash the red-shirt movement.  They say that the Reform Thailand proposal is just an attempt by the government to buy time so that they do not have to return power to the people through general elections.

To participate in the Reform Thailand process is equal to justifying the government’s refusal to show responsibility for the violence and the brutal abuse of state power.  Indifference to the deaths and injuries is a cruelty, and goes against the wishes of civil society to work to achieve a fair and sustainable society, the letter says.

They are glad to hear that several NGOs and grassroots organizations have decided not to join the reform process.

However, they think that civil society members need to stand up and criticize the suspicious and illegitimate Reform Thailand programme, as true reform can never happen so long as the country is under the spell of a silent coup and an authoritarian regime enforcing the emergency decree.

They urge civil society members to seriously review and scrutinize their own ideologies and approaches, in order to keep up with changes in Thai society, and to understand the interconnection between the problems and demands of the poor and the structural problems of economic and political inequity—particularly when financial resources for civil society often come from the very structure that is part of the ammat, which goes against the fundamental principles of democracy.  The review and scrutiny will eventually lead civil society to come up with a proper attitude towards Reform Thailand.

They believe that their fellows with crucial roles in the people’s sector movement will kindly listen to their opinions, and that Thai civil society will always be a movement that is keen on social change, useful for the poor, and instrumental in bringing about true democracy in Thai society.