Governing through Skype

Government by Skype? This morning's headlines say that former Premier Thaksin Shinawatra was on Skype again yesterday to members of his Pheu Thai Party ordering them to make a strong push for an amnesty law to prevent the red shirts abandoning their support for the ruling party.

He was also said to have criticized the party members for having reacted too slowly to the Democrats' attack on Police Gen Pongspat Pongcharoen during the campaigns leading up to the March 3 gubernatorial election. He said that was the main reason why Pongspat lost to M.R. Sukhumbhand Paribatra.

One Thai newspaper's headline said the former premier also advised the Pheu Thai Party's MPs to proceed with the constitutional amendments with an article-by-article approach instead of an original plan to ram it through in one go.

As far as anyone could ascertain, Premier Yingluck wasn't in attendance when the Skype exchange took place . That means she can still insists that although she had grown up with her brother and might share a lot of ideas but "I am not under his shadow" -- as she reportedly told reporters during her recent trip to Belgium and Sweden.

Lessons learned for all concerned in today's Bangkok Election

So, he made it, with a big bang too! M.R. Sukhumbhand Patribatra won the Bangkok's gubernatorial election with more than 1.2 million votes, beating his rival from the ruling Pheu Thai Party, Police Gen Pongspat Pongcharoen who got slightly more than 1 million votes. Premier Yingluck was prompt to accept defeat, extending her hand of cooperation for a "seamless" working relations with the Bangkok governor who belongs to the opposition Democrat Party.

Today's election provided a range of "lessons learned" for all parties concerned. The Pheu Thai Party now realizes that the majority of Bangkokians have yet to put their trust in a party that was involved in violent acts in the capital a few years back. Thaksin Shinawatra's confidence to "easily beating" the Democrats in Bangkok was flawed. The misplaced polls that had Pongspat leading the way before the ballot-casting must have stirred some "silent voters" to come out to cast their votes for fear that the polls might be proved right.

The Democrats, too, must have come to the realization that its dominance of the Bangkok constituencies wasn't always guaranteed. In fact, the fact that Pongspat obtained more than one million votes must have been awake-up call for those who thought Bangkokians would always vote against the powers-that-be.

Various polling agencies must now conduct some serious soul-searching and to revise their polling techniques which have now been proven seriously flawed. It would take quite a while before any trust in all those well-known polls could be restored. And they must admit that it's unfair and unprofessional to blame it all on the respondents who have been accused of the pollsters of having "lied" to the volunteers seeking their views.

Bangkokians have spoken, and loudly so...with almost 64% voter turnout, much higher than the last election despite the downpours in certain constituencies this afternoon.

Kotler to be in town

Marketing guru Philip Kotler will be in Bangkok March 6 to hold a day-long training session on "Value-Driven Marketing". I wll be anchoring the afternoon session to field questions from participants.

Visionary strategies and short-sighted politicians don't go together

Not surprisingly, Premier Yingluck Shinnawatra's 4 main national "strategies" announced last week have not evoked a national sensation. It's no rocket science to declare that the country badly needs to find ways to become more competitive against other countries. Nor is it an earthshaking pronouncement to say that bridging the rich-poor gap is one of the government's top priorities. And to put stress on environment-friendly initiatives won't excite anybody these days. To be quite frank about it, I can recall the fourth major plank of the "national platform" myself. If it was a call for a serious anti-corruption effort, it wouldn't be taken seriously unless the premier could convince the rest of the country that things are going to be for real this time around. The event was meant to be a launching pad for a renewal of a genuine National Agenda but most critics took the government to task for the announcement that it would triple the per capital income in ten years. The plan to borrow Bt2 trillion to lay the country's infrastructure was also challenged for the lack of any real action plans. The blueprint was immediately questioned by Nibhond Puapongsakorn of the TDRI "think tank" for being ambiguous and unrealistic. He said such a major exercise to map out the country's future should be the joint effort of professional engineers, economists, legal experts, technocrats and politicians, perhaps in that order. But the Big Plan announced with fanfare by the government last week was seen as no more than the exclusive work of politicians bent on spending huge sums of national budget without much consideration for effective implementation and, most importantly, without any suggestion how the progress of each project could be monitored and measured. What Thailand badly needs, regardless of who's in power, is well-known but politicians in charge don't seem to have come up with any satisfactory plans. What a real "National Agenda for the Future of Thailand" should incorporate must include: 1. Overhaul of the education policy. 2. Put the country on the path of innovation. 3. A credible action plan to reduce the gap between the haves and have-nots -- a gulf that has so far defied any pledge by all the past governments. 4. An anti-corruption campaign that works. 5. A genuine plan to decentralize power from the Cabinet to the provinces. 6. A serious action plan to revamp the bureaucratic system. The main paradox is that while the citizens of this country demand that politicians who are granted the mandate to rule must get all these actions in order, it's precisely these people in power who constitute the main obstacles to the fulfillment of these crucial aims. All these national objectives, without which Thailand won't be able to move forwards in any significant way, are necessarily tough nuts to crack, requiring vision, sacrifice and accountability from the powers-that-be. These qualities, unfortunately, are exactly what are lacking among those seeking high offices in this country. Premier Yingluck insists that she is in charge of the government – and her brother Thaksin hasn’t been running her Cabinet through Skype – as suggested by an article published in the New York Times last week. Her statement would be made more credible if she undertook to draw up a genuine National Agenda that really spells out her own vision of where the country should be headed – and , more important, how those action plans will be implemented under her direction. Nobody expects her to follow her critics’ suggestion that the premier should show her independence and real power by ordering police to have Thaksin arrested – as was the case with Somchai Kunpluem, better known as “Kamnan Poh” who had fled court verdicts for several years before being cornered. But she can demonstrate her leadership by coming up with a plan to build the nation that she can really call her own. A large number of people in the country are waiting anxiously for that master stroke.

Chavalit on comeback trail?

Is he really making a comeback? Rumours started to circulate yesterday that former Premier Gen Chavalit Yongchaiyudh had been approached by Thaksin Shinawatra to return to politics by taking up a Cabinet portfolio related to security affairs. The surprise twist didn't appear to have stunned Premier Yingluck who didn't confirm or deny the story. That probably means there was something to the story. She told reporters that nothing of that sort of taking place now. But then she went on to say that Gen Chavalit was an experienced man and could be helpful although she didn't say how or when or why. Gen Chavalit hasn't been seen in public for a while. Now you see him, now you don't. Obviously, he wasn't going to disappear completely from the political scene. It doesn't really matter whether he was once a prime minister and that if he takes up any post in the Yingluck Cabinet, it would be a big come-down. Once you have decided to serve the country as a politician, you would have to check your ego at the door. I know what you are probably thinking. But I won't bet on it!

Yingluck insists "I am in charge."

Premier Yingluck Shinawatra posted this picture on her Facebook yesterday, saying she had just been able to squeeze some time into signing papers at her desk. The picture shows her with 6 mobile phones -- and Thai Post was quick to point out that the Facebook post was obviously aimed at confirming her statement one day earlier that she was really the prime minister of this country -- and that her brother, Thaksin, was not running her government. The premier was obviously upset over the New York Times' article about Thaksin running the governemnt through Skype and that Yingluck was only cutting ribbons and attending ceremonies. "I am in charge. I am the prime minister," she declared. Some of her critics suggested that the premier could prove beyond all doubts that she was really in charge by ordering police to arrest Thaksin, who is legally still a fugitive on the run. This was an apparent reference to the surprise arrest of Somchai Kunpluem, better known as "Kamnan Poh" in Bangkok after he had fled a court verdict of a jail term for nearly ten years. Premier Yingluck has yet to respond to that challenge.

A little blunder that explains the country's terrible bureaucracy

This isn’t one of the “quirky” news tit-bits on the inside pages of a newspaper. It’s a real-life “dark secret” for this villager of Prachinburi who has finally decided to go public with his unusual ID “phenomenon.” Buarai Paosaeng of House No 9, Village No 11 of Tambon Nonsri, Amphoe Kabinburi, in the eastern border province of Prachinburi has carried this ID card for over ten years, under a cloud of uncertainty and perhaps a deep-rooted sense of anxiety. What if people found out that he was born on “Feb 31, 1961”? And how does he explain to anyone who asks him when his ID will expire? It’s clearly printed on the card that the document will remain valid until “Feb 30, 2563” with the signature of the local authorized official, no less. Of course, the ID is an authentic one, issued by the Local Administration Department of the Interior Ministry. Buarai has no doubt that he could produce it anywhere and it would be taken seriously. In fact, he has had no problems so far using it for all practical purposes. But what if someone finds fault with his birth date? What if he decides one day to exercise a Thai citizen’s right to apply for a passport? What if the passport was issued accordingly showing him with his “official date of birth” and an immigration official in one of the foreign countries raises a storm about “falsification” of an official document of international significance? That could spark an international incident and will the Interior and Foreign Ministries of Thailand come to his rescue? Probably not. The last time a similar incident took place only a few weeks earlier, as assistant headman of Aranyaprathet District of Srakaew province, also in the eastern part of the country, some serious consequences fell upon the ID card owner, not the officials concerned with issuing the weird ID with a strange birth date. The misfortune came upon Sangwian Kooncharoen, one of the local assistant village headmen, who reported that his ID card showed him born on Feb 30. The burden of proof didn’t fall on the officials concerned. Instead, he was told to show documents to prove that he had not been born on Feb 30. And when the controversy was widely reported in the local press, Interior Minister Charupong Ruangsuwan was miffed – not at his own officials who had issued the card but at the card-holder himself for making such a fool of the people involved. “He deserves to die,” the minister told reporters. It was widely understood that the person the minister considered to be at fault was the person who made the issue public. The minister was simply trying to show the public that he was simply performing his duty to protect his subordinates to the best of his ability. The assistant headman, who officially was supposed to be under the minister’s jurisdiction as well, was left to defend for himself. He subsequently decided to do what a good, honest and responsible official was supposed to do: He quit. It’s not clear whether that would make it easier for him to get his ID card revised to confirm that he had not been born on a non-existent date on this planet. Now, Buarai of Prachinburi has a more serious problem. The birth date on his ID was even more challenging. Sangwian’s Feb 30 date was bad enough. But Feb 31 could prove to be even more “out of this world.” He just had to get the word out before people thought he was living in his own little surreal world. Buarai has a full history of his own to tell the world to prove that he hadn’t made up the information on his own ID card. He told reporters: “I am the son of Mr Ma and Mrs Kham. My birth certificate (a document to produce to get an ID) says I was born on a Wednesday, January 31, 2503 (1960). When I turned 17, I went to Kabinburi District to apply for my ID card. The card expired three times and has been renewed every time. When I turned 27, I was married and had our marriage registered with my wife at the same district office. That’s when I discovered that my birthday was Feb 31, 2504 (1961). I then went to the local officials to have the information on my ID and domicile document corrected. I was told to continue to use my ID and related document…until I heard that a similar case had taken place in Srakaew. That’s why I am making my case public as well so that I could probably get my real life back…” Buarai says he has never really been able to mark his birthday with the traditional “merit-making” ritual like most Thai Buddhists “because I don’t have a real birthday.” Perhaps, the national human rights movement could lend a helping hand. The consumer protect group should launch an investigation into this case before the next victim surfaces. To blame it on bureaucratic inefficiency would be blasé and counter-productive – and quite frankly, extremely boring. And to demand an explanation from the Interior Ministry and seek out the responsible parties would be tantamount to banging your head against a wall. You could get seriously injured and nothing will change