Yours Toothfully by Dr Chan Joon Yee

“I’m sorry, Mr Ang Luck Kee, but no amount of dentistry will restore your masticatory function. Be prepared to eat porridge and tofu for the rest of your life.”

How would Mr Ang Luck Kee feel? Fortunately, I’ve never needed to tell anyone that. Most of the time, patients can be helped as long as there are no serious health or financial issues. Even if the patient is somehow really beyond help, I would try my best to sound optimistic and reassuring. Telling the patient that he/she must accept his/her misfortune is demoralising. Hope keeps us going.

Flooding is not something new to Orchard Road. It happens every year. It’s just that such incidents never made the news because they were not serious enough to make shopkeepers cry. Finally, things got serious last month. Goods were destroyed. Shops were damaged. Shopkeepers cried. Singapore was shocked.

Orchard Road is the last place in Singapore that should be flooded. In a land of glitzy malls, 2 integrated resorts and extravagant, state of the art NDP displays, submerged cars in a prime shopping district is an utter embarrassment. Still, we were told that we had to accept it. Just once. Never mind.

When flooding hit the basement of Lucky Plaza again last Saturday, I didn’t hear anyone cursing or swearing. Many of the victims must have thought that aggressive action would soon be taken. It may not be worthwhile to improve the drainage system if flooding at Orchard Road happens only when the rainfall is extraordinary. But what if the extraordinary happens several times over these couple of months?

The last word is out. Everyone’s heart sank. We were told that no amount of engineering will stop some places in Singapore (that includes Orchard Road) from flooding and when there’s an extraordinary amount of rain, we’ve got to be prepared.

Prepared for what? Prepared with what? Prepared for a cheap sale of soaked goods? Prepared to cry? Prepared to flee from creditors? Prepared with sandbags issued by the army? Prepared to build our own dykes? Prepared to dig our own drains? We can’t even plant a tree without permission from the relevant authorities. If the relevant authorities are not doing anything about the flooding problem even when Orchard Road (not Pulau Ubin) is affected, what does it mean for the average, powerless Singaporean?

What’s the message here? That someone who has done some good in the past is licenced to be difficult and unreasonable? What’s wrong with our MCYS these days? Instead of portraying our elders in a positive light, deserving our care and respect, they choose to tell us that no matter how difficult and unreasonable they are, we must still care for them because we would not be here without them.

A friend once commended me for being a caring father. I casually said: “Which parent wouldn’t be.”

Then, I remembered something about this friend. Her parents were separated when she was born. She had no idea who her biological father was. When she was in primary school, her mother decided to give her away. She lived with her adoptive parents, “married” to their son.

She hated her mother from that moment. Her adoptive parents treated her well, but the pain of abandonment by one’s own mother must have been devastating. Her bitterness is not difficult to understand. But what if her mother had once rushed her to the hospital when it was pouring? Would this pain and hatred have been unjustifiable? Would the mother then have the licence to be demanding, unreasonable and willfully destructive?

Times have changed. The cane wielding teachers of yester-years are now extinct. The barking drill sergeants of yester-years who made recruits do push ups on the hot parade square are now smiling security guards at your neighbourhood mall. Shouldn’t authoritarian parents take a cue from these folks? Shouldn’t they also bear some consequences if they refuse to change?

Once again, what is MCYS’ message? That our government will not be responsible for any selfish, misbehaving, irresponsible elderly citizen who has earned his/her children’s disrespect? Good or bad, contributing or destructive, they are still the children’s responsibility? Whatever costs and emotional burden there is

The homemade, improvised barricades have finally been breached by armoured vehicles. Soldiers open fire at Red Shirt protestors, numbers unknown. Seeing their comrades fall, the Red Shirt leaders surrender. The government declares victory over the rebels, but instead of restoring peace, almost 30 buildings in Bangkok are set on fire. Similar acts of arson and sabotage hit the Northeast. The rally has been busted, leaders are in custody, but the war goes on. The bloodhounds are out - hunting for scapgoats.

Those were the shocking words and images that came through to me “live” yesterday. Many friends who are frequent visitors to Bangkok or Thailand were shocked. One shopaholic was almost in tears when she heard that Central World is no more. Others were totally puzzled that no stern voice came from the palace to stop the violence. They could never imagine that things would spiral out of control. They thought this was the Land of Smiles. They thought there were stabilising forces in the country. How could all this happen?

People are shocked because as tourists enjoying the good food, good shopping and nightlife, it’s so easy to visualise a simplistic and romantic mechanism which holds this complex, highly diverse society together.

As far back as 2006 when Thaksin was ousted, I took a decidedly pessimistic view of Thailand, in sharp contrast with the majority of opinion leaders who apparently didn’t like Thaksin’s face. I assured them that Thaksin will be missed and barely 6 months into the coup, people were already protesting against the military government. Elections were called and some people were again surprised. Thaksin’s party won. Thaksin returned to Thailand. His enemies were jumping. They dissolved his party, they tried to put him in jail and Thaksin fled once more. Another round of elections. Thaksin’s party won again.

What to do? Bring in the Yellow Shirts. Give it instant legitimacy by associating the movement with His Majesty. Occupy Government House. Occupy the airport. Dissolve the ruling party. Buy over their MPs. Bring in the Democrats who are supposed to have boycott the elections. Doesn’t matter how ridiculous and illegitimate it is. Thaksin doesn’t have a face that people like. It’s hip to hate him. Abhisit will keep the people happy. Peace and stability at last. Thailand does not need a democracy to progress and prosper.

Wait a minute. You mean another movement is taking shape? And it’s a far larger and more determined group called the Red Shirts and they want Thaksin back at the helm? How can this be? They must be pretty simple folks bought and manipulated by Thaksin. Or are they?

About 2 years ago, at the height of the Yellow Shirts protest, I was telling some people that these folks do not represent the concerns of the average Thai citizen. Many of them probably just didn’t like Thaksin’s face. I was predicting the rise of an opposing movement with far deeper convictions which will lead Thailand to a civil war. I didn’t mince my words. I said “civil war”. The last phrase shocked everyone in the discussion. They thought I was paranoid and nobody believed that Bangkok would be burned by its own citizens today.

To be honest, I did not arrive at these opinions/predictions on my own. I was reading Thai author Pira Sudham’s novel The Force of Karma, published in 2002. Pira is perhaps the only writer who writes Thai literature in English and given that the vast majority of Thais don’t read English and those who do can’t be bothered, Pira can perhaps afford to be a bit more daring. Most of his readers are foreigners like me. Even though I find his portrayal of the elite in Thailand a bit hollow, the book paints a very vivid picture of class struggle, social injustice, exploitation and ignorance. The most absorbing part of the novel is Pira’s description of the military coup, protests and crackdown of 1992. It’s as if the author was there among the protestors. Interestingly, the author wrote about Farangs in the midst who were not journalists but genuine protestors.

Pira projected: “A tree, rotten at the core, falls of its own accord. The crash of July 1997 is merely a rash. The fall is yet to come.” Thailand’s superficial harmony is easy to see but not easy to maintain. At any moment when there is stress in the crust, all hell will break loose. All the ingredients for that recipe for disaster were there and the optimists just refuse to see them. My hopes for Thailand were raised when Thaksin came to power. They were dashed when he was ousted.

Pira was born in the village of Napo in Northeast Thailand. He wrote that before he went to Bangkok at the age of 14, he couldn’t believe that this glitzy city was a part of his country. His short stories revealed the ugly side of temple politics, the lives of taxi drivers, prostitutes, narrow-minded and ignorant Thais who don’t even realise that they have been short-changed and never given a share of national funds which the elites continue to plunder. Thailand is a land of knights, lords, barons and peasants. The more ignorant the peasants, the better it is for the lords and barons. But the barons’ party can’t go on forever. There is a price to pay for keeping people ignorant for one’s own benefit. The force of karma.

At the beginning of this current Red Shirt initiated crisis, we often hear “experts” and other “educated” people dismissing the Red Shirt movement as a bunch of ignorant peasants manipulated and sponsored by Thaksin whom the government and the media has conveniently “hitlerised”. And it’s quite laughable that the government still wants people to believe that it’s still Thaksin’s political game. They have even branded him as a terrorist. We now have evidence that there were more than a few angry Farang Red Shirt protestors - just as Pira Sudham “reported” in his novel. Not that much a work of fiction after all.

Would it sound surprising to you that ignorance is not confined to the uneducated? Aside from the folks who can afford to buy entire stores in Sukumvit, there are many other folks who are angry and constantly unable to make ends meet. The government is right. This is not a fight for democracy. But we should realise that this is also not a fight for Thaksin anymore. The ongoing battle will be one between the authorities and all the unhappy and seriously disturbed people in Thailand. They realise now that the country can afford to finance projects in their hometowns but is just not doing it.

Since a certain general took over after ousting his boss some 60 years ago, Thai education and media have taken a form which would keep the knights (not the renegade ones), lords and barons in their “rightful” positions. The peasants, on the other hand, were supposed to be loyal, obedient, subservient and be thankful for the occasional gift and blessing from the palace. Thaksin or no Thaksin, karma will eventually balance things out.