Most Thai's unaware of Pridi's work

07 may 2000

FEW people understand Pridi Banomyong's contribution to the country's democratisation process, and more of his works should be included in school textbooks, a Thai academic says.

According to Yutthana Poonthong, who recently completed a survey on how aware Thai people are of Pridi's contributions, even people from his home town of Ayutthaya know little about his work.

Yutthana, who is head of the department of political science and law at the Ayutthaya Rajabhat Institute, distributed questionnaires to 1,118 people from various professions and ages in the province. The findings showed that only 22.22 per cent, or 448 out of all respondents, knew the late statesman had been head of People's Party and only 21.48 per cent knew him as the leader of the Free Thai movement.

An even smallerlightly number of the correspondentsknew Pridi was the founder of Thammasat University.

Of those who had heard of him, only 8.49 per cent or 118 were aware of him from textbooks while the majority, 41.04 per cent, knew of him from their teachers or lecturers.

To the question How can we best commemorate Pridi's good deeds?? 35.71 per cent said a memorial should be built in honour of himby the government.

Twentyfive per cent said a museum would be most appropriate, while 12.77 per cent said his enormous contribution to the country should be recorded in school textbooks.

Yutthana said his intention in conducting the surveys had been to discover whatfind outabout how much people in Ayutthaya knew about Pridi. The law lecturer said it was clear from his findings that Thai school textbooks still failed to neglect recognise Pridi.

We must honour him as a great man, and textbooks should catalogue his contributions comprehensively in order to inform people of what he did during his lifetime.?

At the end of the questionnaire, the researcher asked the respondents to write down their impressions of Pridi. The answers ranged from He did good but did not let the public know?, He was gentle?, Somebody made accusations against him?, W he really a good guy?? to ?He was very bad?.

Yutthana's survey and several essays on Pridi will be published by the institute next week.

BY Pravit Rojanaphruk

The Nation / Headlines