Today, Thailand had its first nation-wide referendum, on whether or not to accept the newly drafted constitution. Preliminary results seems to indicate that the acceptance rate is about 60 %. It 's not surprising that most people would vote yes. Although the Constitution of B.E. 2540 (or 1997) was claimed to be the best Thai Constitution a decade ago, the quality of the newly drafted one for B.E. 2550 (2007) is much better. Some foreign news media called it a military supported constitution, but they have no clue: majority of middle-level people support it. It 's actually much better than all that preceded it. So a large fraction of educated Thai who have read the draft sent to their homes have no problem accept it, except for two groups, first group is, no doubt, the supporters of former Prime Minister, and second group comprises of either political science idealists or those who are opposed to the coup, regardless of reasons.
But I try to rationalize as to why a number of people voted no, esp. those in the North and North eastern. Some reasons popped up in my mind.
Those people in the remote counstry-side might not have read the draft sent to their homes. (Well, I am a Bangkokian, but I did not have time to read it either. I relied on summary documents e-mailed to me by some friend and earlier commentaries from Thai news media about its superior quality.)
Alternatively, they are either told by political canvassers or their headmen to vote no, or paid to vote no, or all of those.
Thirdly, they support former Thai Rak Thai Party and no matter about the quality of the new consitution draft, they 'd vote no.
(Smile) I think, some ethical / moral reasoning needs to be more emphasized in Thai primary education, in order to program some better logics into the heads of younger generations of Thai in the future. (Smile)
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