True unity is needed to avoid flood crisis
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While both sides are concentrating on getting the upper hand on reconciliation and charter amendment bills, nature has continued with its job and brought the rainy season.
Perhaps this is a good time to call a “stalemate” and focus on preventing the country from getting inundated like last year.
The Royal Irrigation Department is confident that the 10 dams along the Chao Phraya River have enough capacity to prevent floods in downstream areas this year.
However, it is worrying when Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra says the progress of flood prevention work in the North is behind deadline. The government must ensure that all necessary preventative measures are adopted in time for the peak rainy season.
Of concern is the mutual cooperation from both sides of the parties. No one wants to see a repeat of last year’s flood crisis. It destroyed many lives and caused trillions of baht worth of damage, diverting foreign investments to neighbouring countries.
We just cannot afford the flood on the scale of last year to occur. To this end, I urge both political parties to cooperative on this issue at least.
The flooding situation will be mitigated unless political manoeuvring reoccurs such as protecting only specific zone/area to serve an MP’s constituency, sabotaging and discrediting the other party’s effort to control the flood, spreading misinformation, blaming one another when something goes wrong etc.
Let’s work together on this. And when the rainy season has left us, then both parties can go for a “second round” on the reconciliation and charter amendment bills.
Edward Kitlertsirivatana
Bangkok
