In a fiery rebuke to the Asian Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and The Economist, The Nation‘s Thanong Khanthong pleads for the global media to “stop distorting the facts” about “sufficiency economy”.

According to Thanong:

…these three publications have slammed the Sufficiency Theory, as if it would turn the clock backward and lead Thailand down the drain. They tried to link the Sufficiency Theory with all the things that have gone wrong with the Surayud government, from the military coup, the capital controls to moves to revise the Foreign Business Act.

The Surayud government might not have come into being through a legitimate democratic channel, because it was appointed by the military leaders who staged the coup on September 19 last year. However, the coup took place against a backdrop that all legal channels and the system of checks and balances had failed to rein in the corrupted power of the Thaksin regime. Nobody likes the coup. But it happened because the political crisis had reached a dead-end. The coup has nothing to do with the Sufficiency Theory.

If you still have patience for the predictable anti-Thaksin, pro-junta consensus at The Nation then you should read the full version. For those who don’t bother, Thanong offers a standard rehearsal of the old arguments about “Thaksinomics”, “the grass-roots people” and Thaksin’s “regime”.

I doubt that the cacophony of critical voices that are currently attacking the King’s theory will be put off by the “facts” offered by Thanong. There is growing concern that “sufficiency” (as an economic, cultural, social and political ideology) is being trotted out – as some kind of panacea – to divert attention from other issues.

Every day now, somebody new in Thailand steps up to defend “sufficiency economy”. We can only cover a small selection of them here on New Mandala. And day-by-day the skeptics are getting a fuller voice. In the present moment, Thanong’s assertions are an in-sufficient ideological cover-all for Thailand’s political and economic maladies.