The surreal world we live in

As the festive time draws near, with Christmas and the New Year, it’s not only a time for celebrating and looking ahead, but looking at where we have been and where we are right now. But while the future is all imagination — all your New Year’s resolutions are possibly delusional and bogus — what’s real and inarguable is the past and the now, as we breathe and try to get through the day. Let’s not get personal about this as there are plenty of other occasions to talk about your plans to do yoga more regularly, cut down on cigarettes or be nicer to other people.

Let’s talk about this as a society, as a nation. And the question for us now is not whether Channel 3 actor Thrisdee “Por” Sahawong will get better, it’s what’s going on right now? What has happened in this country over the past year?

For those who have chosen not to see, it’s a state of normalcy, or happiness even. For others, it can only be described as surreal. The ill-fated case of actor Por is not the question but it’s the starting point for a discussion.

For over a month now since he was taken in with severe dengue haemorrhagic fever, entertainment news reporters have camped out at Ramathibodi Hospital, and people are devouring news, through TV and social media, of every slight change in the story — he was able to open his eyes yesterday, his daughter did this today and why that pale look on his wife’s face that afternoon?

All this is very well and commendable until we place another similar event side by side. Accused of sharing a “corruption diagram” depicting the Rajabhakti Park scandal, Thanet Anantawong was taken away by military officers while he was awaiting surgery for an intestinal infection at Sirindhorn Hospital. Later, while in detention, Thanet’s family was informed by the military through telephone that his condition had worsened and that they had brought him medicine. However, neither the family nor his lawyer were allowed to see him in person.

Although the two incidents are of a different context, it does bring us to think about our society’s collective sense of sympathy that we pride ourselves on and have often expressed. What’s sadder is the fact that a lot of people haven’t even heard about Thanet and what happened to him.

Yes, there has been a few cases which seem unbelievable but are of a lighter note, like Prime Minister Prayut’s plan that by 2017, all ID cards should include owners’ occupations and incomes, saying that people should not be shy about this because “we’re all Thais”. But unfortunately, there are comparatively more incidents of a graver tone.

There was the arrest of anti-coup activists Prachathipatai Sueksa (Democracy Studies) at a railway station in Ban Pong district of Ratchaburi province while they were on a train bound for Rajabhakti Park in Prachuap Khiri Khan. And the British ambassador to Thailand, Mark Kent, has summed it all up quite nicely with a poignant look at the government’s double standards in a Twitter post.

“I had hoped the fact 200 people [were] allowed to demonstrate at the US Embassy might be relaxation of freedom of assembly.” It was a reference to a rally in November in front of the US Embassy.

The best part of the train to Rajabhakti Park saga was how the Democracy Studies’ leader Sirawith Seritiwat’s mother was invited in for talks with the military the day before.

The process for this “invitation” included a visit to her home, taking photos of her ID card and looking over family photos. Thugs could not have been more gentlemanly.

The most recent case is how the Supreme Court gave a life sentence to 60-year-old Pichet Thabutda, a core leader of the Chak Thong Rop (Warrior Flag Group), who led red-shirt protesters in torching Ubon Ratchathani provincial hall in 2010, overruling a lower court’s previous sentence of only one year.

I know full well that I’m not a legal expert, but a 99-year sentence increase in one single step does seem a bit odd.

Whether in art, film or writing, surrealism to me is about portraying the unreal in order to talk about the absolute real.

In recent Thai politics, there has been quite a few examples of such but I think in our country’s case, it’s just about the use of the unreal to distract and cover up the truth.

“A 99-year sentence increase in one single step does seem a bit odd.”

Kaona Pongpipat is a writer of the Life section of the BangkokPost.