Bangkok’s gubernatorial race took off just days ago, and today its roads and alleys are already jammed with those ubiquitous signs of electioneering – so many in fact they are blocking pedestrians.
In one incident that went viral online over the weekend, an unidentified woman in a wheelchair and a man pushing her were forced to ditch the footpath and travel in the street due to candidate posters blocking the way.
Footage The incident garnered criticism towards some candidate posters which become hurdles on walkways.
Footage first posted to TikTok, where it has been watched 200,000 times since yesterday, shows the man carefully lower the woman, who appears to be recovering from a broken leg, into the road after traffic passes.
@pebbiessss ตลกร้ายของประเทศแห่งหนึ่ง ทางเท้าที่แค่จะเดินยังยาก #ประเทศกูมี ♬ เสียงต้นฉบับ – pebbiesss
“I’m bored of these Bangkok candidate posters,” said Manit Intharapim, a disability rights activist familiar for campaigning for pedestrian-friendly footpaths, among other causes. “I am tired of seeing it. I don’t know why people have to be forced to see these things. Which candidate has the least posters or has a new way of campaigning, they will get my vote.”
14 candidates jump into Bangkok governor race
A cartoon by the artist Bangkok Gag on Sunday showed the couple blocked by a poster for what appears to be incumbent Gov. Aswin Kwanmuang – whose signs might be the most pervasive, with a caption reading, “You shall not pass.”
A satirist best known for lampooning Thai politics, Kai Maew, posted a comic strip of a pedestrian admiring Chadchart Sittipunt’s pedestrian-friendly narrow poster, only to be knocked down by another candidate’s poster.
Chadchart, widely seen as the front-runner to beat, has said he will focus his campaign online.
Bangkok’s first gubernatorial election in nine years will take place May 22 – which also happens to be the eighth anniversary of the 2014 coup d’etat. Sukhumbhand Paribatra was last elected to the post in 2013 before being deposed by the ruling junta, which installed Aswin, a former police general.
