OPINION

Living in the past...

Re: "A land being strangled by uniformity", (Opinion, Feb 8).

Thank you Wasant Techawongtham for a thoughtful opinion piece on a pervasive element of the forced conformity of traditional Thai society. A fantastical past glory is fancifully imagined by nationalist myth-makers in love with their vision of the past as seen in popular soap operas where all is lustrous silk.

Too many telling examples beyond the stultification embodied in school uniforms abound. As long as they wear the uniform, even heroin dealers and men who overthrew the nation's democracy are welcome in the hallowed precincts of Thailand's parliament.

Perhaps the committee being proposed by the Future Forward Party to look at overdue reforms to the latest of Thailand's many permanent constitutions might usefully insert a clause that bans the wearing of any uniform, save polite civil dress by duly elected civil politicians, along with banning the state from allowing civil servants to wear any uniform that remotely resembles a military uniform.

Polite civil attire is most appropriate for teachers, postal clerks, and others, and of course politicians, who should all look like members of the civil society they serve, not military wannabees.

It is sad to learn that the doctor at a hospital in Wuhan who first brought the coronavirus outbreak there to the attention of authorities has now died of the disease.

Immediately after reporting the outbreak, he was forced by the police to accept a reprimand for "making untrue comments that had severely disturbed the social order".

This is a typical reaction from dictatorial regimes, and occasionally democratic ones too, prompted by a self-serving instinct to suppress bad news, irrespective of any risk to the general public.

Unfortunately, this tendency has an unsettling echo here in Thailand, where the prime minister recently warned that anyone criticising his government's handling of the coronavirus threat would face legal action for "politicising" the issue.

This "mind your own business" attitude is hardly likely to give people confidence the government is in control of the situation and is doing all it can to minimise the risk of the virus spreading.

As a foreigner that has only ever worn a face mask to spray weed killer I am almost surely a target for a fear-mongering health minister.

However, I would like to point out that on my regular journeys from Tha Ton to Chiang Mai I have been complaining for several years at the lack of soap at the PTT petrol stations in Mai Ai, Fang and Chiang Dao.

In my mind, hand-washing is far more important than face masks and perhaps the minister would like to pass a message on about getting decent hand-washing facilities in these places.