The Bangkok Post has eventually got round to deciding, in its editorial of 31 October, that it cannot support the call for a coup by Gen Boonlert Kaewprasit, the retired but ever-so-busy leader of the Pitak Siam group.  

It doesn’t go as far as thinking that calling for the violent overthrow of an elected government is a violation of the constitution and the law.  It merely notes that a coup is ‘not needed’.  

It also manages to praise Army chief Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha for putting down ‘this mad proposal’.  The Bangkok Post finds this ‘encouraging’.  As it did Gen Prayuth’s statement that ‘Any government of this country is a legal entity.’  This, says the Post’s editorial writer, ‘is the correct answer and the only legitimate one.’

Well no, it’s neither correct nor legitimate.  This country’s recent history has produced plenty of illegal governments, most engineered by former incumbents of Gen Prayuth’s office.

The Post also fails to discuss Gen Prayuth’s further comments about Pitak Siam’s call for a coup.  The Post itself reported him as saying: ‘Without a reason, it [a coup] can't be done. It depends on the situation.’

In other words Gen Prayuth is nowhere near the Bangkok Post’s own position – that the country has ‘no need of a military coup – ever’.  He is saying something quite different – that a coup is OK if the conditions are right.  If there is ‘a reason’ and if ‘the situation’ is favourable, then let the tanks roll.  

I don’t think I have perused a Constitution as much as I have had to look at the Thai Constitution in the past few weeks, but I’ve been through it from front to back looking for the provisions that set out the proper ‘reasons’ for a coup or spell out what ‘situation’ would warrant the armed overthrow of the government.

And I’m blowed if I can find any.

The Constitution in fact is quite clear.  Coups are not allowed.  Never.  Under any ‘situation’.  For whatever ‘reason’.

Mind you, if the only excuse you needed for breaking the law or violating the Constitution was the existence of a ‘reason’ or a ‘situation’, we could be in for some interesting times.

I could, for example, say (and I stress most emphatically that I am speaking entirely hypothetically here) that the editorial writers of the Bangkok Post were a bunch of weak-minded, anti-democratic apologists who don’t have the logic to argue their way out of a paper bag and who deserve to be publicly tarred and feathered (white feathers only) before being made to write out 500 times ‘I must stop being such a silly wanker’.  

And I could further argue that this statement (purely putative, I again stress) is no breach of the law on defamation because I have a ‘reason’ for saying it (it makes me feel just so much better to get it off my chest) and the ‘situation’ is appropriate (there is a 50-word gap in this article that needs to be filled.)

Let me again point out that the preceding 2 paragraphs are offered merely by way of an academic supposition, a speculative conjecture, and that I would never in real life dream of making such unfounded and spurious allegations about the upstanding and unimpeachable editorialists of the Bangkok Post.  Well, except maybe the bit about ‘apologists’.  And perhaps a few others.

But if we move into a world where unspecified ‘reasons’ and undefined ‘situations’ can justify what would otherwise constitute the crime of rebellion (a crime that carries the death penalty, by the way) then I think we are perhaps moving into a dangerous anarchy where more or less anything goes, just as long as the perpetrators can think of a ‘reason’ and a ‘situation’ to justify their misdeeds.

In fact, I am beginning to suspect that the good General may have been misquoted.  Or perhaps he did not express himself with the forthright clarity we have come to expect of him.  

I would therefore suggest to the Bangkok Post that they go back and question the General further on his thoughts about the ‘reasons’ and ‘situations’ that would condone a coup.  

Ah, no.  They can’t, can they?

If you look at the report of the General’s statement, it ends with ‘Don’t ask me about this again.’

And if you did ask, that itself could create a ‘situation’ and be a ‘reason’.