The Cabinet has passed a resolution on a code of conduct for public service vehicles.  And I am sure we all agree that such a thing is overdue, what with trains derailing by the day and minivans crashing at high speed, all the way down to more everyday problems such as having to jump from buses in the fast lane and negotiate 2 lanes of Bangkok traffic to find the safety of the pavement. 

Alas, the resolution will not deal with such life-threatening issues.  It focusses on maintaining ‘peace and social order’, which we all know to be so precarious in this country that it needs to be regulated at every turn.  It will make punishable by law the offences of littering, spitting, smoking, drinking alcoholic beverages, using obscene language, and carrying on board fruit or food with a strong smell or explosives.

I’m not sure how explosives snuck in there after the durian – seems a bit too close to safety end of the spectrum rather than public morals.  But we have to take what we get. 

So the next time the Chiang Mai express jumps the tracks somewhere near Den Chai, we can rest assured that no smelly pla ra will be spilled into the environment.  The soft core porn on the tour bus will not have to compete with bad language from the passengers.  And any corpses extricated from the latest mangled wreck of a rod tu will be mercifully untainted by cigarette butts or gobs of saliva.

In fact, Prachatai has learned that the Cabinet plans further moves along these lines and the Council of State is, as we speak, perusing a proposed Pedestrian Act B.E. 2556 (2013).  It makes for interesting reading:

    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

Preamble

1.  This Act hereby replaces and amends Sections 78, 79, 79 bis, 234, 267 and 271 (a) of the Land Traffic Act B.E. 2522.

Definitions

2.  ‘Pedestrian’ shall refer to any person of such inferior social status and/or economic standing or with such deficient intelligence that he/she attempts to move by walking from any point A to another point B such that this involves passage along, across or by means of any highway, superhighway, road, street, soi, trok, lane or other public thoroughfare.

3.  ‘Pavement’ shall refer to any section of such thoroughfare marked by a raised kerb, road markings or other signs, that is intended for the use of a pedestrian unless or except when this usage is usurped by the need to use such section for the parking of vehicles, for the passage of motorcycles (official and private), for the sale of goods (legal and counterfeit), for the installation of electricity poles, public telephone booths (in use and derelict), post boxes, telephone exchange boxes, street signs, police boxes, bus stops and other and sundry street furniture, for advertising signs and displays (illuminated and non-illuminated, temporary or permanent), for groups of young persons in silly hats waving, to the accompaniment of loud music, flags emblazoned with the name of a condominium, serviced apartment block or other residential building under construction within a distance of 5 kilometres from the flag waving, for the preparation and consumption of food and for the business of motorcycle repairs, pipe sawing, fortune telling, watch repair, tailoring and dressmaking, shoe repair, and in order to secure an area around a building under construction or demolition or of an unsafe structure, in which case the right of the pedestrian to use such section of the thoroughfare is made null and void temporarily or in perpetuity.

Responsibilities

4.  The pedestrian is responsible under pain of criminal penalties to be determined by ministerial regulation for the prevention of littering, spitting, loitering, dawdling, obstructing the passage of such vehicles which require, for reasons of urgency or convenience, the use of the pavement as well as that of the roadway, and of language and action contrary to public order and good morals and which may threaten national security.

5.  Any attempt by a pedestrian to walk on the roadway rather than the pavement is strictly forbidden and will be punished with fines and/or imprisonment to be determined by ministerial regulation.

Rights

6.  Pedestrians have no rights.

About author:  Bangkokians with long memories may remember his irreverent column in The Nation in the 1980's. During his period of enforced silence since then, he was variously reported as participating in a 999-day meditation retreat in a hill-top monastery in Mae Hong Son (he gave up after 998 days), as the Special Rapporteur for Satire of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and as understudy for the male lead in the long-running ‘Pussies -not the Musical' at the Neasden International Palladium (formerly Park Lane Empire).

And if you believe any of those stories, you might believe his columns.