As the Bangkok gubernatorial election approaches, top candidate and ex-governor Chadchart Sittipunt is feeling the heat from his sluggish response to the city's controversial exercise equipment procurement projects, in which several items were purchased at unreasonably high cost.
This controversy summons the memory of a similar scandal involving lampposts with kinnaree-shaped tops in neighbouring Samut Prakan province. The overpriced lampposts have become a model, albeit not a good one, for several other provinces to adopt their own symbols from scratch.
