Gerrymandering Looks Like Dogs

Saturday was the King's birthday. Everyone had off school and work on Friday and Monday. My roommate went home for the long weekend. Imagining party hats and cakes in every house around the country, I asked her what she did to celebrate. "Light a special candle" she said.

It's hard to imagine having a king, especially one like in Thailand, who has ruled for the duration of most people's lives, and who seems to be genuinely liked and widely admired. I don't know if it's even possible for me to imagine. What comes to mind is the challenge of imagining looking at the world as if you believe in God if you don't, or as you don't if you do. Having a king and having a god are very different--I would be surprised if the King figures as much as God into people's perceptions of the world, but it's a hard question to answer.

Last week I volunteered to sit on a panel organized by the Khon Kaen University School of Public Administration. The panel was part of a big event on the history of the Thai constitution, and they wanted an American student's perspective on our constitution.

Last night I had spent a couple of hours discussing politics and the constitution with Miles, one of the program facilitators. He was had printed out and highlighted wikipedia articles for me and kept saying things like, "I was lying in my bed the other night thinking about the constitution and I thought 'Oh god, they're going to ask Liz about this.'" Needless to say, it was an exciting discussion, and I learned a lot.

So this morning, instead of performing jingle bells at the Isaan Community Gathering human rights festival, my friend Jenny and I rode across campus. There were about 75 Thai students in the audience and some students and professors on the panel. The other panelists talked about corruption, how the Thai constitution is rewritten to suit the needs of politicians rather than coming from the people, and how most Thai people don't have much attachment to the constitution. Thailand has had 18 (I believe) constitutions, so when it was my turn, I tried to emphasize that although our constitution has lasted for 200 years, it is not perfect and interpreting it is usually controversial. I read the list we had devised about why the constitution hasn't been scrapped: it has broad language that leave it open to interpretation that changes over time; it has been modified a great deal since 1787; it is a symbol and a source of nationalism and pride.

By the end of the two times I talked, I had touched on many of the things I wanted to. Although I really wanted to talk more about human rights, I did get to work in the inclusion of the right to culture in the 2007 Thai constitution, something that, to my knowledge, is not really protected by the US at all. The whole experience was really fun, and I had the benefit of time to collect my thoughts while my translator was talking. Afterwards, we took pictures as they handed us a "token of appreciation," Mine was a notebook that said "I love study." I may have to write in "the Constitution."


I also learned:

* In Venezuela's constitution, all nouns are written with "o/a" endings. This contruction includes both the feminine and masculine form, even though when something includes both men and women, Spanish just uses the masculine form.

* The rights set out by the US constitution are all rights that cannot be violated; there are no rights for things that the State is required to provide (e.g. health care)

* The US has some of the freeset speech laws in the world. Canada's right to the freedom of speech comes with a long list of exceptions, things like hate speech and pornography.