re: "A land being strangled by uniformity" (BP, Opinion, February 8, 2020)
Dear editor,
Thank you Wasant Techawongtham for your thoughtful opinion piece on a too pervasive element of the forced conformity of traditional Thai society, at least as that 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 actual men who overthrew the nation's democracy with a constitutional monarchy are welcome in the hallowed precincts of Thailand's parliament. But a kiss that symbolizes love and progress is abhorred by the traditionalists intent on Thailand remaining as socially, politically, economically and morally stuck in a past as fake today as when it was made up to oppose democracy by the uniformly uniformed who initiated the seven-decades dark age of coup-installed dictators back in the 1950s. Their abiding fear of reform, of progress, of the good still stalks the Thai nation, their expensively tailored uniforms gaudily hiding the intrinsic corruption.
Perhaps the committee being proposed by Future Forward to look at long overdue reforms to the latest of Thailand's many permanent constitutions might usefully insert a clause that bans absolutely the wearing of any uniform, save civilly polite dress, by duly elected civil politicians along with banning the state from allowing civil servants to wear any uniform that remotely, and most inappropriately, in any way resembles a military uniform. Politely 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.
Felix Qui
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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.
The text as edited was published in PostBag on February 10, 2020, under the title "Living in the past..." at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1854084/living-in-the-past-
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