Yingluck's charm goes a long way in Indonesia
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Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra earned a passing grade on the international front when she attended the Asean Summit on the Indonesian resort island of Bali. However, this might be because luck was on her side.
Before the Bali trip, Yingluck was fiercely criticised at home for her poor command of the English language. In fact, former senator Somkiat Onwimon, who is also a mass-communication guru, had said that Yingluck’s command of the Thai language was pretty bad as well, and that she would do herself a favour if she kept her mouth shut.
Obviously it is unfair to compare Yingluck’s language abilities to those of her predecessor Abhisit Vejjajiva, who is a professional politician who was born in the United Kingdom and went to prestigious schools. Yingluck is not a career diplomat or politician – she’s a business executive.
Besides, language skills can be quite useless on the diplomatic front if leaders – no matter how fluent they are – are unable to use this ability to pull their country out of conflict with other nations.
Yingluck’s language skills did not matter at this summit because she was able to communicate with other leaders and understood what they were talking about. The substance of the meetings was much more important than how things were said.
Indeed, Yingluck did not even have to speak to many people because all the leaders knew about the situation in Thailand and her planned proposal.
In fact, all our leader had to do was look pretty and keep flashing her charming smile to earn sympathy for the problems her government is facing.
Her proposal to seek regional cooperation to tackle natural disasters was welcomed and supported. Foreign Minister Surapong Towichukchaikul said Thailand had filed this initiative just one week before the summit kicked off and obtained full support. It’s very rare for Asean to give a nod to any proposal that is raised at such a short notice, he said.
Thailand has been hit by severe flooding this year, with many provinces inundated for a long time. So far, more than 560 people have been killed and millions of others affected, as well as agriculture and industrial production bases badly hit.
A senior official at the Foreign Ministry who helped prepare discussion points for Yingluck said the prime minister was totally focused on the disaster and knew that she needed to make the region understand that protecting Thailand was necessary because it is key to regional and global industry.
Yingluck was able to link the disaster to food security and climate change, which are already part of the global agenda, the official said.
She discussed this issue with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and US President Barack Obama and also brought it up at the meeting on Japan-Mekong cooperation held on the sidelines of the Asean summit.
Also, Yingluck was luckier than her predecessor Abhisit was at a previous regional forum, because her Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen did not bring up the annoying issue of the border conflict.
Though the problem between Thailand and Cambodia has not been settled yet, the Cambodian delegation did not speak a word about the subject and Yingluck did not have to hold special bilateral meetings with Hun Sen.
