Where have all the leaders gone?

I am walking down my local main street this week and I come across this sight - an army bunker with two armed soldiers.  In the same street is a major protest site as well as my local shops and a now new, thriving street market, thanks to the coming of the protestors.  What is strange about coming across this bunker is that it is so small and so far away from the site of action.  It looks so ineffective.  I just ask myself what good it serves. 

I would ask the same question about the protests and the political game plans of both sides in this present ongoing political turmoil in Thailand.  What good is it serving?  I would suspect that the real question to be asked is another.  Whose good is this serving? 

After all, everyone here seems to be corrupt and no one is offering up front and needed leadership.  I can't see how this is about democracy when one side wants to install an appointed elite to govern the ungovernable, as they would name the masses.  I can't see how this is about leading to good governance when neither political side has acted responsibly in the past when in the last parliament to produce good and strong reform.  Their very institutions of government are weak and open to huge corruption.  So where is all this political upheaval leading?  Like the military bunker in my main street, it all seems so ineffective. 

A good and respected friend here communicated with me this week in an email on this topic when we conversing about another issue. He is in his early 60s and in development work here from the USA.  I just share what he sent me.  It is just worth sharing as it is and I make no comment, except that, yes, leadership is ours. 
"Global leadership has been bankrupt my whole life.  So much war and suffering.  So much invested in the sciences of destruction.  So little effort to improve humankind.
I shall continue to be God's tool for as long as God shall have me.  That is all I can do.  Forget the leadership.  You and I are the leaders.  The rest is ego trips."

You might question in part what my friend shares but take what you may question as a sharing that comes out of the lived experience of a Thailand and a Southeast Asia full of mystery and questions, anomalies and contradictions, a part of the world that is alive and vibrant and so seductive.