Re: "Pita 'most favoured' to be next PM: poll", (BP, March 25).
Ironically, for all progressively minded and liberal Thais, the National Institute of Development Administration poll showing Pita Limjaroenrat as the country's preferred prime minister, is bad news. It will only spur on the entrenched conservative establishment to intensify their efforts to have Pita banned from politics and possibly have the Move Forward Party banned.
Re: "Revving up change", (PostBag, March 24).
After 12 years living and working in North London I moved to Thailand. Since then, I worked in Bangkok for many years and am now retired here. The change over the years has been quite dramatic, but the benefits should soon be realised.
It is not so long ago in my memory that all small motorbikes and scooters were "screaming" 2-strokes, all the busses and lorries belched diesel particulates, and the mass construction of malls, hotels, the BTS, and MRT caused unbelievable amounts of smog and dust.
Back then and now, the RTP "random inspection points" were more about topping up their salary at the end of the month than enforcing laws, and I would add there are not any more "loud" exhausts on bikes these days than there are on cars and pickup trucks.
Living in a city, you should expect noise: people have to work, things need to be delivered, emergency vehicles have to get through the jams, and, of course, people like to enjoy themselves, and politicians like to be heard.
Where I live now in the Bangkok suburbs, the most noise is made by the birds in the trees, and it is as quiet at night as it was in the tiny village I stayed in near the Laos border during the epidemic.
Electric vehicles are a menace because you cannot hear them coming and they have their own serious pollutant problem we really should be worried about.
Re: "Don't shift the blame", (BP, PostBag, March 23).
Vint Chavala is mistaken to say I wrote "in a way to proclaim that the Move Forward Party and Pita Limjaroenrat's popularity comes 100% from their election campaign to amend the lese majeste law". That is only one of their popular policies for long-overdue reform, but I suspect Mr Chavala knows that.
More disturbing is his demeaning view of the Thai electorate as childishly voting for whatever party is new. That is insulting and false. Were it true, even Prayut Chan-o-cha and his party would once have been popular. He never was. It never was. In 2001, in contrast, Thaksin Shinawatra's Thai Rak Thai won a landslide not because it was new and Thaksin was an unknown face (he was not) but because it offered policies that appealed to people. Thaksin was re-elected in 2005 because the Thai people were happy with his first term in office. The popularity of Thaksin and his parties continued and has only been dimming since the arrival of Future Forward and now Move Forward.
The root problem with the lese majeste law is it does not align with democratic principles. That is why people seek to amend it and support the MFP.
25 Mar 2024
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