Arroyo gets plaudits where elephants create more traffic jams

BANGKOK – If you were among the few who wondered where this writer "disappeared to" the past few days, let me say that I’ve just flown into Bangkok from the "Wilds" of Northern Thailand. The other night, we were chilling in five degrees Centigrade mountain air (at 1,400 meters, or more than 5,000 feet above sea level). Today, it’s hot, hot, hot,

But Bangkok sparkles, just as ever. The shopping plazas and markets are crowded. Here you can buy anything, from fakes to genuine, terrifically woven silks, fine silverwork, carvings as intricate and dramatic as anything to be found in Ubud, Bali. Thai handiwork is superb. Under the "royal projects" of the king or the queen, every village produces something unique.

On the other hand, great metropolis that it is, with flyovers, soaring expressways, a sleek BTS "skytrain", one of the most modern airports in the world, Bangkok has a problem that can be described also as unique. According to The Nation daily, the police and government authorities are faced with a "situation (which) has reached a critical point". What is it? Said the newspaper: "The problem of the hundreds of elephants on Bangkok’s streets!"

Last Friday night, for instance, police arrested the mahouts (elephant trainers and handlers) of two elephants, one at the Lotus Supercentre Rama III, and the other on Sathupradit Road. Both men were charged at the Bang Pongpang police station with "obstructing traffic". What’s interesting is that after the mahouts were nabbed, the cops had to contact the National Elephant Institute and Friends of the Asian Elephant Foundation, and arrange for the two detained elephants to be brought to the Institute’s "shelter" in Lampang.

Traffic Police Chief Thanawatra Wattanakul explained that police did not have "enough space" to keep the huge pachyderms after their mahouts are arrested, and, besides, the police department didn’t have any expert elephant handlers on its roster.

So, if you think we’ve got traffic problems back home, think again. Let’s count our blessings! The only elephants we have to contend with are the "white elephants" of failed businesses.

Incidentally, calling a losing business proposition a "white elephant" sounds ridiculous in Thailand, where the white elephant is a symbol of good luck. Every time a white or albino elephant is born is cause of rejoicing. (A dispute over such white elephants once provoked a war between Burma – now called Myanmar – and Thailand, would you believe?) Automatically, all such white pachyderms belong to His Majesty the King, and the "Elephant Maintenance Act" of 1921 requires that any finder or owner of such a white beast must present it to the monarch.

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Thailand, incidentally, is indignant that a video widely-publicized by the United States-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has brought condemnation on the Thais for "inhumane treatment" of elephants – their national animal. The video, exhibited internationally two months ago, depicted a baby elephant being abused and tortured during a training ceremony in Northern Thailand. PETA called for "an international tourist boycott of Thailand", which obviously has been ignored since I’ve been seeing tourists everywhere from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai, and all over Mae Sai (on the Myanmar border) in the Golden Triangle, where I went the other day.

The fact is that there used to be 10,000 elephants in Thailand – now the official figure is about 4,000. PETA insists that all elephants must be set free into the wild. But how can this be done, as Thai veterinarians ask plaintively. There are already laws "protecting" elephants, they point out.

For example, laws now ban the use of elephants in the logging industry. (Remember those popular images of elephants – enshrined in postcards, brochures, and carved tourist-stuff – dragging immense teakwood logs by chains through the forest?). The law also prohibits their employment in Bangkok’s tourist areas to beg for food or money. The police claim that most of the elephants roaming around Bangkok come from Surin, and belong to better-off individuals who buy them from villagers, then hire the same villagers to take them into the city to "earn" money by "begging", or entertaining the tourists.

I’ve just returned from the beautiful "Rose Garden" –a prime hotel and resort, very popular for wedding receptions and parties – where elephants are legitimately employed as part of that stellar resort’s "cultural show". For 40 baht (about P46 or P48) a "ride", tourists can experience the thrill of riding an elephant. The mahout-guided pachyderm actually does only a circle of about 3,000 yards before depositing the delighted but near "sea-sick" farang (foreigner) back at the starting point, but everybody’s happy. The tourists’ friends or companions have clicked away with their cameras, and the travelers can return home with "proof", eager to regale the folks with their elephant tales.

If elephants were to be set free to roam, knowledgeable Thai experts argue, they would soon run afoul of farmers when they ravaged the crop fields. (Angry farmers would get a gun and proceed to shoot down the elephants, the reasoning goes.) Richard Lair, an American adviser to the National Elephant Institute, admitted that a single elephant in the bush would need 8,000 acres (3,200 hectares) to graze in to survive. He or she would have an elephant-sized appetite! Veterinarian Preecha Puangkham, director of the institute, instead suggests the government should give mahouts and trainers a monthly "subsidy" of 4,000 baht to enable them to take good care of their elephants.

If you’ve ever stepped into a wet, sticky, and smelly mound of elephant dung, you’d disagree, of course. I did so once, when dismouning after we went hunting for tigers (unfairly) in Vietnam, on elephant-back. But I still think they’re cute.

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Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who’s playing host these days to Singapore’s Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, has been getting a great deal of flak lately from the outspoken Thai media, particularly when he tried to pressure the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) to raise its growth projections for this year from 3.5 percent or 4.5 percent to a higher six percent. No, sir, said the NESDB, stating it could only deal on its own statistics. Commented the Bangkok Post in an editorial headlined "Undermining Faith Flirts with Danger", that "if the NESDB bows to Mr. Thaksin, its credibility is shot to pieces; if it stands firm, which it did so admirably, the future of the head of the agency is placed in serious doubt."

Politicians, I guess, are the same everywhere.

However, what's this?

In its lead editorial, The Nation daily wrote of our President GMA: Hail to a True Philippine Leader.

The subhead said: In declining to bid for re-election, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo adds to her moral stature to push through reforms.

The newspaper called GMA’s move "a display of political courage that other leaders in the region should emulate".

"Hopefully Arroyo can make productive use of her remaining months in office to implement some vital but tough reforms. However, in the Philippines the laws are one thing, their practice another. The elite of that country should at least rally behind Arroyo and give her support in laying the foundation for the next leader. The next leader of the Philippines should not be another Estrada, who combined the worst of both worlds – incompetence and excessive political spin for the sake of popularity and the masses," that’s what the Thai editors wrote.

"The Filipinos themselves," the editorial concluded, "will determine how the next leader will fare. Don’t expect miracles, but the reality of practical politics."