Paying lip service in Thailand seems to be an art form perfected by those in charge of running the important departments that help the country function. Whether its silky smooth politicians or civil servants charged with a specific task Thais can at times seem to be masters of insincerity when expressing loyalty, support or respect for something or somebody.
This is particularly so with things relating to the use of alcohol and drink driving.
Take the last seven days(29 December-4th January) for example. The Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department reports on Monday that 281 people have died on the countries roads during the first five days of the holiday period with over 3000 other casualties associated with road traffic accidents. Drink/driving is attributed as the cause of most of these fatal accidents many of which involve motorcycles.
Now of course to those of us who live here its not surprising since the annual carnage on the countries roads usually tops 12,000 killed. That’s the official figures that do not take into account unreported accidents. However what might be surprising is the fact that there is a huge amount of lip service paid to this problem at every holiday period. While the rest of the year no one mentions anything.
In fact if you do a bit of simple maths it works out that on the average holiday day less people are killed than on a none-holiday day. Now no doubt the powers that be would point out that this is because of the campaigns they run and the fact that there are dedicated vehicle check-points set up to catch drunk drivers.
The recent ban on alcohol in National Parks announced by the government is another fine example of paying lip service since it also corresponds with the holiday period. Apparently its to stop rowdy behaviour that might upset other guests or the wildlife but I fancy that once again the lip servants haven’t really thought it through that well. I mean for example its not a lot of use if you end up getting killed on your way to the park by a drunk driver is it?
Of course its easy to blame the authorities for just paying lip service to these problems but in all honesty the problem is a lot deeper than that, you could say its ingrained in Thai culture, where the Thai interpretation of karma, or as I prefer to call it, “bugger the consequences,” is just as much to blame for the state of affairs when it comes to alcohol use and driving.
Finally lest you think I have taken a nasty pill this morning let me give you a small example of lip service in Thailand at a local level. On Sunday against my better judgement we went to a nearby local National Park. On the way we were stopped at a police checkpoint. The officers were polite, but checked my licence. As we sat waiting several motorcycles drove by in the wrong direction on the dual carriageway(a common practice here), none were stopped.
I went on my way to the park and took a very pleasant lunch during which the waiter asked me if I would like a beer, when I queried the alcohol ban he simply smiled and said “no problem.”
Update on road casualties from MCOT:
325 deaths & 3,453 injured in 3,227 road accidents in first 6 of “7 Dangerous Days” over long New Year’s holiday
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