OPINION

High-handed control

Re: "Foreign poll monitors can build trust", (Opinion, Dec 24).

It is quite evident that the use of Section 44 which is often used to override the role of organisations including the Election Commission is indicative of the kind of democracy Thailand will have.

The high-handed control of elections by the regime amounts to deception and deceit.

The upcoming election is clearly rigged in favour of the military-led coalition of cronies and crackpots, such as the Palang Pracharath Party and many others. Hence, international organisations should closely monitor the election for the simple reason that the coup-makers in Thailand cannot be trusted.

It is naive to believe that in any country a military-led regime will ever be able to conduct fair elections, cultivate democratic institutions or create a civil society.

We need not go to Africa, the Middle East, China, North Korea or any other region to learn this lesson. There is enough evidence of the kind of democratic governance we have right here in Asean.

The current haze situation is a revelation of how bad Bangkok air quality is. The culprit, as in most metropolitan cities around the world, is obviously diesel engines. Half of Bangkok buses, trucks, as well as 30% of pickups fume our streets day and night. It's time to let the polluters pay.

Firstly, the government should send a strong message by ending diesel petrol price subsidies and add the pollution clean-up cost to it.

Secondly, limit the use of diesel engines to commercial purposes. Diesel passenger cars should be banned. Thailand is now a dumping ground for diesel passenger cars from Europe as they will be banned in most countries in a few years.

Thirdly, impose strict conditions for annual registration. Pollutants should not be allowed to roam the streets.

And finally, impose age limits. Trucks aged more than 20 years are everywhere on Bangkok streets. Even brand new diesel engines pollute, as evidenced by the diesel-gate incidents.

Recently, a Thai colleague of mine, a trained linguist teaching at one of the premier universities in Bangkok, was invited to run a workshop in a northeastern school. The workshop focused on English teaching approaches and methods.

While he realised that the workshop participants, local Thai and non-Thai English teachers must have been working hard to impart English knowledge to young minds, he found the English proficiency of most of the Thai participants left a lot to be desired.

This must be an eye-opening experience for him because he had been thinking that those teachers would need to be trained about teaching techniques based on time-honoured teaching approaches.

But the stark reality was that they lacked English proficiency and were unable to speak and write English correctly.

Therefore, an urgent problem to solve as far as those teachers are concerned is not the issue of inappropriate teaching strategies but about the paucity of solid knowledge of English on the part of the Thai teachers.

Perhaps, teacher-training colleges across the country should re-think their curricula to better prepare those future teachers.

Re: "Rural Thai exemplar", (PostBag, Dec 24).

Michael Setter outrageously suggests that this newspaper is racist because he doesn't think they have any black people on their editorial staff. Before making such wild accusations we need to know how many black people applied for such jobs and if they were rejected because they were black.

Certainly there are many black people who would be qualified.

But how many of those blacks live in Thailand or even want to work at the Bangkok Post?

Years ago I tried to get an editorial job at the Post and was told they weren't hiring.

But of course the real reason they didn't hire me was either they found out I was Jewish or they were just jealous of the fact that I'm so good looking!