Yet again the bars will be closed today and tomorrow for elections. This time for the Pattaya Mayoral elections.

Alcohol sales and public celebrations are prohibited from 6 p.m. Saturday, May 3, until midnight Sunday, May 4.

Its crazy enough Thailand closing down for general elections but for Pattaya to elect to follow suit it madness itself. Given that the city would not even exist were it not for the holiday makers this repeated closing of bars etc is little better than professional suicide.

Don’t they understand that a tourist coming here only to find the city at a standstill on a weekend is likely to simply never return? OK that might be a little extreme but they will be miffed to say the very least.

The mayors office, and the other powers that be, should be doing everything possible to ENCOURAGE tourism not to put them off. If that means fighting the bureaucrats in Bangkok then so be it.

Just ask any small business owner and they will tell you that Pattaya is already in serious decline and ludicrous acts like this are just making matters worse.

I assume that the “logic” behind all this is to prevent Thais from drinking in the hope that they will go to vote instead!?

Well hold on Mr Mayor - tourists pay your wages and tourists pay for your nice Sukhumvit central flower reserves (have you ever seen such a waste of money when schools need cash and the drains still don’t work). However tourists cannot vote in your elections so why ruin THEIR holidays?

Sometimes the logic here defies logic itself!