Can the PM win over a foreign audience?

Top bureaucrats are going through some nail-biting moments as Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra contemplates an invitation to attend an upcoming summit, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in Qatar later next month.
People in the PM’s inner circle have apparently been telling her how good she was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, just six weeks ago, and suggested that she should take up the invitation from Supachai Panitchpakdi, the secretary-general of UNCTAD.
Perhaps Supachai and her inner circle are just being kind. Lacklustre was an understatement if one was to describe Yingluck’s performance in Davos. Some bureaucrats fluent in English went as far as describing the performance as a “disaster”.
There is a problem with Thailand’s political culture. A leader is supposed to know best and nobody can tell him or her otherwise. Remember the 15th Apec summit in Bangkok hosted by her brother Thaksin, under the theme that described the meeting as a “Force of Unity Under the World of Differences”?
We all knew he meant “diversity”, not “differences” but none of his people or the bureaucrats had the courage to correct the then prime minister because the theme had come from the horse’s mouth.
Some think the invitation from Supachai was a trap so Yingluck can give the same mediocre performance as in Davos. It was obvious, they said, that the lady is unable to think on her feet. But those who know Supachai think the former Democrat Party executive was not that kind of a man. He was just being courteous, they said.

what’s important
It doesn’t matter if Thailand has a prime minister who can speak English or not. What is important is that he or she is able to address important issues head on, if not in details then at least in policy terms.
No one in their right mind expects the prime minister to know every little detail about the activities of the government, but nevertheless, his or her opinion matters as it could very well shape national policy.. In other words, a leader must be able to think on his or her feet. If Yingluck can’t do it, then she should just stick to prepared statements and speeches.
In Davos, Yingluck mumbled her way through the question-and-answer panel about the role of women in today’s world. But to be fair, when you are sitting next to the likes of South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Sheryl Sandberg, the CEO of Facebook, it would be really hard to stand out and be noticed.
Of course, nobody, especially those in her trusted inner circle, is going to tell her their real feelings about that performance. The fact that nobody boo-ed was good enough for them.
The issue of thinking on her feet resurfaced again just recently following an article in The Wall Street Journal that criticised Yingluck’s team for not providing a simultaneous translation to a Japanese audience during her recent visit to Japan.
Wall Street Journal reporter Eleanor Warnock wrote in her recent article headlined “Some Japanese still in the dark over Thailand’s flood plan” that Yingluck made her seven-minute speech to the hundred-strong audience without any accompanying translation.
This left many of the attending business leaders wondering what she talked about and “awkwardly scanning their handouts for clues”, the report said.
“With a Japanese-language copy of her speech already handed out to an eager audience, Ms Yingluck arrived to make her big pitch – in Thai,” the report said, referring to the PM’s bid to win back the confidence of Japanese businesses hit by last year’s devastating floods.
The report also quoted a representative from a travel company who said it was “a bit weird” that Yingluck’s team did not provide a simultaneous translation.
Her recently hired personal spokesman, Suranand Vejjajiva, tried hard to repair the damage, citing a prior agreement that Yingluck would speak Thai and her counterpart speak Japanese. Suranand apparently missed the point here. When your objective is to try to convince Japanese investors to stay and not pack their bags for elsewhere, you want to make sure that they understand your message. If it means simultaneous translation, so be it. If it mean engaging them without a prepared statement, so be it.