27th Lecture - Democracy: Personal Experience & Outlook with H.E. Kasit Piromya

Date: Tuesday, 1 July 2025

Time: 13.00 - 14.30 (GMT +7)

Platform: Hybrid (In-person at Chulalongkorn University and online on Zoom Meeting and Youtube Livestream)

Speaker: H.E. Kasit Piromya,  Foreign Minister of Thailand (2008-2011); Former Ambassador of Thailand to Soviet-Russia, Indonesia, Germany, Japan, and the United States of America

Moderator: Dr. Sineenat Sermcheep, Director of ASEAN Studies Center at Chulalongkorn University

Personal Experience on Democratic and Non-Democratic Regimes

One is my experience. With democratic and non-democratic regimes. I have been around more or less, have seen a lot, have heard a lot, have seen a lot, had experienced a lot on the goings-on of the world at large. Living in a totalitarian regime, firsthand experience, a military regime led by General Suharto, the Democratic Kingdom of Japan, the United States as a student and as ambassador. So I have seen, I have experienced a sort of religious authoritarianism and for the past 80 years, I have also been living mostly in Thailand, which was interspersed between some form of liberal democracy and military government. We are still struggling with the word democracy. We still occasionally have the appearances of generals to the mantle of political power. So much talk, rumors, guessing, gossips and so on at this very moment in Thailand. 

Hopes for Democracy

In all of this, having seen a lot inside Thailand, in the ASEAN countries, in the world at large, then there's a question: what is my tech? What is my choice? And for that, my definite answer. Any day, Any time is that I would continue to opt for and to hope for democracy. Not only in Thailand, but in the world at large and especially in the global south. Because democracy ensures a sense of freedom, being liberated, the ability to express, the ability to travel anywhere in the country, the ability to live without fear and sense of burden and caution, coercion, suppression and repression forthcoming from the authorities. I have been determined, I am determined to continue to fight, to struggle for the realization of full democracy in the Kingdom of Thailand. We have come quite a way but there's a long way to go. And that applies also to the rest of the world, especially in the global countries in the global South, that practically we have only two choices: authoritarianism or liberalism through democracy.

Democracy and its deficiency

Democracy has shortcomings. It has deficiency, it has defects. Elitism, tribalism, cronyism, money politics, political dynasties. Yet one cannot replace democracy with all its shortcomings, with any type of authoritarian regime, it is incumbent upon all of us to work together to overcome the deficiencies in order that we can continue to live as free human beings. We need to take the morality back into the consciousness of democracy, the law of dhamma or morality. Because with the lack or the neglect of morality politicians can lie, distort facts, misinformation,. We have to have within ourselves, the basic knowledge and awareness to make a distinction between what is right and what is wrong.