July
4, 2557/2014
H.E.
Ambassador, from all EU countries, and
Señor
Don Jesus Miguel Sanz Escorihuela,
Head of EU Delegation to Thailand
Head of EU Delegation to Thailand
Estimados
Señores:
Following the change of governance in my
country, you issued sanctions. I wonder: What harm had we done to you, friends
from far-away lands?
Taking a deep breath, three times; we have
known you for some five hundred years. The Persians had taught us to call you farang.
In the early sixteenth century, you first
came here to the court of Ayudhya. Some of you told a king of Siam about your
Sacred Tale of World Creation, while your monks were tagging along with you. The King thought out loud that
your story was stupid, but your behavior was good, so let you stay among
us. Since that time, you have preached your stupidity all along -- the activity that you cannot do
even nowadays in Saudi Arabia, or not as freely in Malaysia; they have good reasons
for not allowing you to waste their time and yours.
Then came the enchanted eighteenth century
when you changed your mind. You also changed your story. You came here, no
monks tagging along with you this time, in the nineteenth and twentieth century
preaching a pagan belief called “Democracy”, a no-priest religion. The new
currency did not fare much better than the one you told us three hundred years
before. However, it bore some signs as an enlightened estupidez.
To our sense, there were some entertaining
elements in it. It had an egalitarian consideration which resonated with our
tradition of renouncing worldly possession to become one among the equal
members in the Sangha community. Freedom and liberty were also most welcomed. To
us they have been, and always are, things for to live by, and not things for to
shout for.
Your new currency, therefore, enjoyed a
better rate of conversion, the downtown rate not the airport rate.
Now, I challenge that during the past five centuries
up to the present twenty first century, you have been unaware of three
fundamental differences between you and me, which you should have known as an Ambassador
to here.
First, we don’t sin the same way. Your
Excellency, when Your Excellency touches
Your Excellency’s genitalia you sin, but that is not my case. I sin most when I
end a life, killing a fly, for example, not to say chicken. On the contrary, fondling
my private parts gives me pure pleasure.
Second, your system of logics, the
foundation of your l’esprit critique, is too complicated and confusing. In
the deepest of thought, it respects forms rather than contents, as clearly
illustrated by the enlightened estupidez (of yours).
Third, we believe in taking संन्यास
that in your life you should take a vow of poverty in pursuit of
spirituality. But you are alien to संन्यास because you always desire more.
For example, our fundamental differences,
mysteriously enough, might have caused the BBC Regional Office to stay in dictatorial
Bangkok, and not to flee to democratic Singapore or democratic Kuala Lumpur or,
even better, to Rangoon since Burma is now a democratic state. Those cities
have people who speak English better than us. Be careful, mind you, I didn’t
say they speak better English; you know we don’t lie about our neighbors.
By sticking to here, could it probably be a way of expressing gratitude toward
us by Señor Jonathan Head, chief BBC agent? Vous n’êtes pas tous des
ingrats, non? Ah, Oui?
Read this mini-story, please:
“You French fight for money, while we
British fight for honor,”
“A man fight for what he lacks the
most”. – French Corsair Robert Surcouf to the British Officer.
Heureusement, in Thailand, we
don’t have to fight for democracy. We have lived it from time immemorial.
However, your hysterical, banal, ordinary, unimaginative, childish, synthetic, unabashfully
nosy, and sloth response to the way we have gone about our governance, how we
fart, is appalling. You brittled and you ranted. You have demonstrated to us how
vulnerable your brand of democracy is. Democratic republics like Laos and
Vietnam, which have their own brand of democracy, would have made a hearty joke
out of your psychological disorder reaction: “C’est du guignol,” -- no translation is needed because they
speak French better than I do.
Calme-toi, amigo, calme-toi.
I don’t respond to guignol or comic strip, but this time it’s an
exception. Your insecurity does reveal to us that your brand of democracy
needs us more than we need it.
This letter is an appeal to you, as an
individual human person capable of thinking for yourself, to reason independently
from your government’s politics. I have no intention to convince you to
frustrate your job in any way because treason of any kind is not to my liking.
I would like to ask you, amigo, a
question: as l’Ambassadeur de la mauvaise conscience, t’as pas honte?
For a clear and good conscience, you
might have rightly guessed that if we were ever allowed to make an amendment to
the renown derecho humano of yours, we would add an article on the art
of meditation. We
would also propose its forgotten flip side – la declaraciòn universal de respecto
al derecho ajeno. Derecho ajeno, tu connais pas ça? Quelle honte!
Meditez-ça:
please graduate from your eighteenth century
enlightenment, and wake up from it’s spell. C’est tout-à-fait démodé. How had
it been possible that during the past ten some years you could not use your
head to distinguish, or judge, a pathological, filthy rich, ex-police despot, national
assets grabber, alienated, ungrateful, disloyal, treacherous Hakka guy and
closet gay from a natural democracy loving people like us?
Biensûr que je vous emmerde, amigo, mais
je vous emmerde amicalement. Même si, au fait, vous n’êtes pas tous mes amis, je
vous emmerde cordialement quand même. Et c’est pour votre bien-être spirituel
car vous, amigos, vivez en ce moment parmi nous.
Veuillez agréer, Messieurs, l’expression de
mes sentiments les plus respectueux.
Un fuerte abrazo de tu amigo,
Dan Bailé,
(ปรีชา ทิวะหุค)
a thai writer,
Chumphon Province,
July
4, 2557.
N.B.
I refrained from responding to the US Ambassador because she is such a nice
girl; L’amour de loin oblige – obliged by the long distance love. This
is not a sexist, but romantic remark.
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