The Department of Mental Health released new statistics this week which showed that last year was the worst year on record for suicides with some 7.37 suicides per 100,000 people. That is a marked increased from the previous years and shows the effects the pandemic is having on lives and livelihoods.

Unfortunately, according to doctors within the public health ministry, that rate has likely gone up this year.

The government’s policies and the resurgence of Covid-10 have contributed to the closing of restaurants, hotels, and other businesses without the deep pockets necessary to whether the indeterminate closures and unclear long term strategy from the current administration.

Anecdotally, stories of people burning the last of their savings and borrowing money from friends and family in the short term just to make ends meet have risen.

It is heartbreaking. We have become a nation of desperation, unable to navigate this crisis any longer.

The government claims Tha tit is doing its best but we have simply reached the point where the best is not enough. There is an old adage that one does not change captains when a ship is sailing through a storm.

I honestly believe this to be true, there is too much at stake for there to be as something as messy as a political crisis or an election in the middle of a national emergency. But we’ve reached a point where the captain must be changed because he keeps steering the ship into subsequent icebergs while the storm is raging outside.

We’ve seen the videos from last week fo Prayut and his cabinet hosting parties, having open-air lunches on the beach, and leaving his post in the middle of a crisis to go galavanting down to Phuket for a program that likely will not do much to help the national bottom line.

It is shocking. But we also know that if Prayut was back in Bangkok, nothing would have changed. We are still seeing record numbers day after day with an increasingly worrying death toll.

Lessons must be learned by all of us after disaster is over. There is much to discuss in terms of personal responsibility, household debt, and mental health care that our country has for too long ignored.

But the most immediate lesson that we must learn is that politics does matter. We cannot ignore it anymore, we cannot say that we are ambivalent or that we do not know enough about the matter at hand.

We cannot go silent when people defend tyranny or say that those with more baramee have the right to govern over us. The people must stand up for their rights to representation because it has become clear that the appointed people, the people who would take away those rights don’t care about the populace.

The leaders that once took power by force now show how little our lives mean to them. They never have to care for the voice of the people because they never had to win a fair election.

And now, people are dying, people are killing themselves. Not caring about politics and not caring about democracy is no longer an option. When the time comes, we have to defend ourselves and our democracy against those that would steal it away for their personal gain.

 

 

Thai Enquirer