Bangkok’s Dusit district office has ordered an investigation to find out who arbitrarily changed the name of the Pibulsongkram Bridge at Kiak Kai intersection, near the parliament building, to “Tharab Bridge”.
The perpetrators used an acrylic board, bearing the name of Tharab and the year 2565 B.E. (2022), to cover the old name of the bridge, Pibulsongkram, which was built in 2514 B.E (1971) to commemorate Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram, the late leader of the 1932 revolution.
Dusit district office’s Facebook page said that district’s chief officer, Thanin Niamhom, and his assistant, Sunsern Rueangrit, rushed to the bridge at 12.54pm today (Saturday) after receiving information from people in the district that the name of the bridge had been changed.
Upon seeing the replacement name of the bridge, he ordered officials from the Department of Public Works to remove the acrylic board.
He also instructed officials to check CCTV in and around the area for clues which may lead to the perpetrators.
The name of the bridge was meant to commemorate one of the leaders of the Khana Ratsadon (People’s Party), which also included Pridi Banomyong, who staged the Siamese revolution on June 24th, 1932, to put an end to the absolute monarchy and to replace it with a constitutional democracy.
Tharab is the family name of Phraya Si Sitthisongkhram, aka “Din Tharab”, who was regarded as a royalist soldier who did not join the Khana Ratsadon in the Siamese revolution. Two coups occurred a year after, in April and June, amid infighting in the government over Pridi’s socialist economic plan and a fight against royalist solders, or the Boworadet rebels, led by Prince Boworadet in 1933.
Phraya Si Sitthisongkhram joined the royalist forces, but was shot dead in Saraburi province in 1933.
In 2017, a memorial plaque, to the Khana Ratsadon to celebrate the 1932 revolution embedded at the Royal Plaza, mysteriously went missing and was replaced with a new one.