Thai Style Marshall Law and other matters..

by Tom Lloyd⁽²⁾

One can accuse Thailand of many things, but being boring is not one of them. Following the report of the Military Coup last month; the Junta moved quickly to appoint an interim Prime Minister, retired General Sarayund Chulalont, a well respected man who is a member of the Privy Council. Within a week he organized an interim cabinet made up of technocrats and former public servants, whose task is to appoint an assembly of 2000 people broadly representing Thai society for the purpose of drawing up a new constitution.

While an internal calm seems to be the order of the day, the Junta decided to keep Marshall Law in effect for now, to make sure that remnants of the Thaksin regime are totally suppressed.

In fact, the Government refuses to allow Thaksin back into the country until Marshall Law is lifted. It must be said that life goes on as normal in the Capital and in most of the tourist spots frequented by western tourists, so as far as Australians are concerned, they should not alter their holiday and travel plans to Thailand.

At the moment with the high season quickly approaching, Thailand badly needs the influx of holiday makers, especially Aussies with the school holidays, and the Xmas/New Year festive season to look ahead to. As always, holidays in Thailand are very reasonable, great value with our dollars and their resorts and service are second to none.

Incidentally, while we’re on the subject of travel to Thailand the new Suvarnhabumi Airport was opened on the 28th September. As expected, there are numerous teething problems with the new facility. Lack of signage, overcrowding in the arrival area, luggage handling, lack of toilet facilities are just a few to mention.

The transportation of arriving passengers need urgent attention, especially finding metered taxis.

Some of these concerns are being addressed now and the problems are not insurmountable, I’m sure they’ll be rectified soon. However, there are more serious problems which actually were evident already at least 8 months ago, but seems to have been “swept under the carpet", so to speak, at the time. I’m talking about the concrete cracking on the parking bays and tarmacs and the same concerns about the runways. Experts had warned about this during inspections prior to certifying the Airport, but under the previous administration they fell on deaf ears. The best we can hope for at present is an ongoing program of high maintenance regime, until permanent repairs are made.

There have been some changes to the Immigration Regulations too, some of which will impact on some western quasi residents, who had been living/working in the Kingdom indefinitely while making monthly visa runs. These people were avoiding obtaining the proper visas and work permits, and managed to live in Thailand, work and not pay taxes.

The Authorities put a stop to this and rightly so. Anyone arriving to Thailand now on a 30 day tourist visa will only be able to reenter the country on 2 more occasions and on completing a maximum of 90 days in the country will not be able to reenter for another 3 months. In other words it’s 3 months in, 3 months out. Well this is the theory anyway, we’ll see how it pans out in practice!

Another change in the law due to come into effect this month is the raising of the drinking age from 18 to 20 years and the restrictions of alcohol advertising. This is a compromise from an earlier suggestion to raise the age limit to 25 years. The carnage on the roads in Thailanddue to drink driving and underage drunken driving is absolutely horrendous. A lot of parents are screaming blue murder at the lives lost of young people in the prime of their lives and this law is to address the problem. One can argue that prohibition is not the way to go, it does not work, education and strict law enforcement would be a better alternative. This better method of reducing the road toll may have to wait until after the elections, for now we have a band aid solution. In any case, a lot of the carnage in upcountry areas are due to people drinking home brew, "moonshine" alcohol, which is the way of life of the country folk, and in many cases turns out to be their way of death.

During the month of October heavy flooding inundated many parts of the country, causing loss of life and billions of baht losses. The floods this year were much more widespread and more damaging than previously, some areas had land and mudslides and in order to save the Capital from general flooding, thousands of acres of land belonging to the Royal family in the Central Plains were opened up to divert the floodwaters there, an unselfish sacrifice of His Majesty, the King. As of now the flood waters are receding and the people can look forward to the dry season respite and reconstruction.

So there you have it, Thailandunder Marshall Law but things are pretty much the same as always, in fact if this is what it feels like being under Marshall Law, maybe it should continue ad infinitum! Of course I’m being facetious here, but the fact is that Thai people take everything in their stride and try to make the best of it. The happy go lucky, "sanuk" (fun loving) traits of the Thais are an endearing quality that we westerners could learn from.

The reason Thailand is such a popular tourist destination is not only their delicious food, sea and sand, mountains and elephants, culture, Buddhism, but most importantly the welcoming and smiling Thai people who are keen to show you their hospitality. Actually the Military Coup is just a bit of a pantomime, to show us how to effect political change without any bloodshed. One of the slogans of a past tourism campaign was; “Amazing Thailand", how true it is!

Article submitted Friday, November 10, 2006 & read 270 times.

Leave your comments through Blogz:

No comments yet.

135-0-0-0-4-ADSO

Most Recent