The Junta Crushes the Right of Free Expression forTaxi Drivers

Taxi drivers warned over anti-charter stickers

Wattana Kamchoo, Sucheera Pinijparakarn

The Nation

Interior Minister Aree Wongsearaya yesterday said he had ordered the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration and the Metropolitan Police to investigate taxis that display stickers against the draft constitution.

He said the Interior Ministry was checking the stickers.

He also called on people to inform the ministry, the BMA and police if they knew of vote-buying by groups opposed to the draft constitution ahead of the national referendum on August 19.

Notice all the Gestapo tactics. If this was happening in a European country, there would be international condemnation. In Thailand, business as usual.

"It is not against the law to display stickers, as long as drivers have not been hired to do so by groups who want to reject the draft charter," Aree said.

I don't get this logic. How else are groups supposed to organize politically? Through message osmosis?

However, Prime Minister's Office Minister Thirapat Serirangsan warned that taxi drivers who display the stickers on their cars might be breaking the Motor Vehicle Act. Thirapat said the Motor Vehicle Act stipulated that a taxi driver cannot display a sticker which may be considered as advertising.

Advertising?

Taxi drivers have been displaying stickers saying, "We take passengers but not the draft constitution", while the government has warned the stickers might be against the referendum law.

Doesn't look like advertising to me.

Cab driver Supong Chanthasane, 33, said he had seen some of his fellow drivers put the stickers in their vehicles and was interested in the wording. "I asked my friend to get one for my car to show that I will reject the draft," he said.

I love Bangkok taxi drivers-- except the ones that have taxis that smell like dirty socks.

He said he did not know it was against the law and, if the police asked him to remove the sticker, he would ask why. "It is my right to show that I will not support the draft. I am not persuading anyone to do the same, I just want to express my view," he said.

Good for him.

However, some taxi drivers said the police had warned them to remove the stickers.

More Gestapo tactics.

I like taxi drivers. They are not idiots, at least many of them. They know a lot about politics, because that is what they hear all day on the radio as they sit in horrible traffic. And, quite frankly, I have heard them make more original and insightful arguments over the years than what I have heard from the high and mighty usual suspects that pontificate on TV.