Friday, March 23, 2012

Good questions that produce no answers


It's the hottest story of the week, perhaps, when Maj Gen Sanan Kachornprasart rose to ask Gen Sonthi Bunyaratakalin on Wednesday in a "national reconciliation" seminar: Who's really behind the 2006 coup?

Sanan said he had posed the three main questions about the coup "so that truth can emerge to enhance national reconciliation."

He wanted the coup leader to tell the public once and for all whether Gen Prem Tinsulnaonda, the privy council president, was behind the coup as had been rumoured or not?

Gen Sonthi was probably caught off-guard. He is the chairman of the House committee on national reconciliation. He has been insisting that he won't talk about the past and will only look to the future.

But when Sanan posed the questions publicly, raising quite a political stir, Sonthi evaded the issue by saying that there won't be any positive outcome from his answering those questions.

"I will probably carry some of the secrets to my grave," he said.

Sanan later told reporters had according to his intelligence, Gen Prem wasn't involved in the coup. "That's why I want Gen Sonthi to make it clear once and for all," he said.

Sonthi has since hit back with his own question for Sanan: "I would like to know who had told him to raise those questions to me..."

Good questions don't necessarily promot good answers. That's politics.

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