It's our house but they can do what they want with it, and us

It’s our party, we can do what we want,

It’s our party, we can say what we want,

It’s our party, we can love who we want,

We can kiss who we want,

We can see who we want. 

 

So la da di da di, we like to party,

Dancing with Molley,

Doing whatever we want,

This is our house,

This is our rules,

And we can’t stop,

And we won’t stop,

Can’t you see it’s we who own the night,

Can’t you see it’s we who ’bout that life,

And we can’t stop,

And we won’t stop,

We run things, things don’t run we,

We don’t take nothing from nobody.

 

Somehow, the lyrics echo the current political mess we Thais find ourselves in. It is a situation where the “silent” minority watch in agony and helplessly, as the “we can’t stop” powers-that-be do whatever they want with our tax money, and more importantly, do whatever they want with the future of our children and our country.

More and more, we realise that what we have in Thailand is not democracy, but “majoritary-ism”, or, to borrow a term used by The Economist in its recent article on Turkey, a kind of “zombie democracy” that “has the outward shape of the real thing, but it lacks the heart”. It is what happens when popularly elected leaders are allowed to govern as they please. Ours is another case where the majority support of voters is automatically taken as equivalent of democratic legitimacy.

So far, with just one failed policy – the rice price-pledging scheme, hailed as the crown jewel of the populist platform – the government has assured us that we do not count. Regardless of the very many objective, non-partisan, non-politically motivated, fact-based criticisms of the scheme, the government continues to uphold it. The large-scale and systematic corruption associated with the scheme has been well documented in great detail, but the “we can’t stop” administration twerks on as if it is not yet done with the squandering of taxpayers’ money. 

It was more than a year ago that Thailand’s best economists called the scheme “ruinous” for the country’s economy. Yes, it has been more than a year and billions of baht in losses for the country, yet the government still can’t stop.

One day after the Central Administrative Court issued an injunction on the government’s Bt350 billion water management and flood prevention programmes, the administration went ahead anyway and signed loan agreements with banks to undertake the projects. The message to the country is clear: “We run things, things don’t run we.”

The state of our education system – the very indicator of our country’s future – is reprehensible. Our students rank the lowest among Asean countries in many competitive exams. Our universities have gone downhill consistently and alarmingly in international rankings. Students as young as nine years old start having unprotected sex, even in their classrooms. But the notion, never mind the fact, has not dawned on policy-makers to put an unconditional effort into righting these wrongs. Or could it be that they don’t really “see” the elephant in the room.

Worse and worse becomes the politicisation of our bureaucracy.  Government officials wittingly and unwittingly yield to their political “bosses” and embrace them through a complicated system of lineage and patronage. They know that if they do not comply, they are “dunzo”.  These days, they seem more preoccupied with how they can please their bosses than doing the job they were hired to do: serving the public as public servants. Many of them have to pay for their promotions in cash and in kind. Then, of course, they must recoup their “investments” through corrupt practices, facilitated by the increased authority that comes with their positions.

The political disunity and hatred has spilled over into all branches of government and onto the streets. But the administration is fooling itself that everything is still fine and dandy, that it can rule and do whatever it wants, and all the dissidents will simply disappear or be silenced.  

More insulting and absurd is the administration’s attempt to fool us, the common people, by announcing recently that it has pledged to be a government of moral righteousness, that it will fight corruption of all types and forms with all its might. It did so with a straight face. 

Adlai Stevenson, a US presidential candidate, said, when he faced the ultimate betrayal of his party, that he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh. That’s exactly how many Thais feel as they listen to such vacuous and meaningless pledges. White lies, white politics, whitewash. 

As a country, Thailand is joining a growing party of bankrupt communities. As someone wisely put it, we are culturally bankrupt, socially bankrupt, morally bankrupt, soon to be financially bankrupt, and eventually simply and totally bankrupt.

And every day we see an administration that is preoccupied with the dog-and-pony show. It can’t stop, won’t stop. All the powers-that-be genuinely believe that they can do what they want with the country, and to hell with the rest of us.

And our house.