One of the little miracles of Thailand is the efficiency with which messes are tidied up. The Songkran war results in mountains of rubbish, all of which is cleared away overnight by an unseen army of no doubt underpaid and exploited cleaners.
But just as things are looking tidy, or at least as tidy as it ever gets, along comes the next polluter of the landscape, the election campaigns for a local major. This is a very popular position as it comes with the responsibility for pitching large, ludicrous and impossibly expensive projects to central government. The resulting funds are then spent partially on the proposed projects, with most of the money then disappearing into the pockets of the major and his cronies. Allegedly.
In the run up to the elections, which take place early next month, we are treated to thousands of advertising billboards showing the faces of the hopeful candidates and their number on the voting sheet; never mind the policies, just remember the number. Actually I don’t think there are any actual policies, and whatever is promised is never delivered anyway, so in that respect they are the same as politicians worldwide.
The photographs are always heavily Photoshopped, so each candidate appears partially mummified, only the avarice gleaming in the eyes provides an indication that we are not viewing a well-presented corpse.
The current major laid much emphasis on road improvement, presumably these represent creatively lucrative contracting possibilities. One of his excellent initiatives can be seen in the photo, the widening of a fairly major road near my abode. They started the widening a couple of years ago by digging holes on either side of the road. Last year they filled them in with mud. This year they have done nothing, the mud is washing away, the road edge is crumbling, and we are left with a road which is not as wide as it was when the major came to power.
Still, the excellent new mud road provides an ideal location for planting billboards for the next major who will solve the problem by building a flyover which won’t be completed either.
Infrastructure; we have it but it ain’t quite finished yet.