BANGKOK – Junta spokesman Colonel Sunsern Kaewkumnerd left reporters speechless yesterday when he showed off his intellectual side after the junta officially called it quits.
Quoting Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, and TS Eliot, Sunsern became just a bit too reflective after a junior reporter on the coup beat threw him a softball question about how he felt on the last day on the job.
“You know, now I finally understand what Nietzsche meant when he said, ‘And if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.’” He added, “Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?”
Baffled reporters tried to move on to other subjects, but Sunsern gazed forward blankly, seemingly unresponsive.
When reporters began to walk away, his face tweaked to life.
“As Albert Camus said so succinctly: ‘How hard, how bitter it is to become a man!’” Sunsern said. “In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.”
The coup group has faced a great deal of criticism for its handling of the economy and general mismanagement.
Asked about his plans now that allies of deposed premier Thaksin Shinawatra have taken power, Sunsern said he would likely find a deserted island and just sit on the beach.
“I saw ‘Cast Away’ with Tom Hanks the other night on HBO,” Sunsern said. “When he was alone with Wilson, I just thought about TS Eliot: ‘And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.’”
Sunsern and the generals were known as erudite, special men whose love for a bubble bath and a good James Joyce novel was surpassed only by their love for democracy. They will be missed.
