The 2000s: Death of a Big Man
On November 24th, 2009, a man named Samak died at the age of 74. He had been suffering from liver cancer for a long time and his death did not come as a surprise.
He had been the 25th prime minister of Thailand. He had been the governor of Bangkok from 2000 to 2004. He had been a member of the Thai parliament for many years. Many obituaries will say that he served his country. Did he serve his country well? Historians and other people will be the determination of that.
What can definitely be said that one word that would be used to describe was big. He had a big nose, big eyes, a big nose, and a big belly. It was as if he had been a giant once and had been shrunk down to the size of z human, keeping the big features of his giant race.
He was not exactly a shy person and was not afraid to use his big mouth to express his views. It is his mouth that some people will remember him for.
In 1976, it was probably when he used his mouth the most destructively. He went on the radio and said that students were gathering at a local university. He said that the students were communists. Some extreme right-wing people took him seriously and went to the university, They lynched some of the students. Other students were able to get safely away. Some people think he is responsible for the massacre. When he was prime minister, he insisted to a CNN reporter that there was no massacre, even though there are many pictures of dead bodies at the university. This reopened old wounds and upset many people. His mouth had insulted the people who had been there or the ones who had lost their loved ones in the massacre.
As governor of Bangkok, his mouth was most active, but it did not seem interested in making Bangkok a better city. His mouth mostly talked about the cooking show that he hosted on a weekly basis and the celebrities that he met being the governor of Bangkok. He had a website devoted not to his main job of being the governor of one of the biggest cities on the planet, but to his cooking show. His main job just seemed a means to promote his cooking show and the city did not improve because of his stewardship.
One inspired idea that he had was to remove all the trash bins during a major summit of world leaders that was being held in Bangkok. He felt that the trash bins made the city look ugly. He put no thought into what would happen to the trash that would have to dump on the street by people because there were no trash bins to put them in. A city would truly be ugly with trash everywhere. Thankfully, his idea was never put into reality.
As governor, he said that mother nature was responsible for the flooding in the city of Bangkok. This would only be true if you consider mother nature to include buildings, streets, and pipes. His mouth got him into trouble again.
As prime minister, his mouth seemed almost obsessed with what he called the Invisible Hand. The protesters that had partly driven Thaksin out of power had plagued him as well for most people had seen him as Thaksin’s nominee. Some viewed him as being chosen by Thaksin to be prime minister to protect Thaksin and to make sure that Thaksin was not punished for the misdeeds that he had done during his time as prime minister. Samak felt that the protesters were being controlled by an Invisible Hand that was keeping him from ruling the country properly.
Ironically, in the end, his downfall came from the cooking show that he was so concerned about when he was governor. As a prime minister of Thailand, you are not allowed to have any other job than being prime minister. He claimed that doing the cooking show was not really a job. A Thai court ruled that it was indeed a job and he had to step down as being prime minister. Some would see it as justice for ignoring his responsibilities of being a governor.
A few weeks after his downfall, he was found guilty of libel. He had repeatedly insulted another important person during a political show that he used to have. He was sentenced to two years of jail because libel in Thailand is a criminal as well as a civil offense. Cancer that killed him helped him not serve a day in jail for he used the illness as an excuse not to serve time in jail.
His mouth was silenced on a day in November. Some people might be happy that it was silenced. Some people think that his unique voice will be missed. Again, people in the future will have to make that judgment.