Changing horses in ferocious midstream

Like her big brother, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra is a Cabinet musical chairs advocate. While this mentality can keep everybody on their toes, it’s questionable whether it’s effective management. People can simply get very nervous, because if you can be at the Science Ministry one day and the Commerce Ministry the next, it means either you are extremely versatile or just useless.

Chalerm Yoobamrung, surely, does not see himself as useless. But he apparently does not consider himself to be very versatile, either. In a characteristic outburst before the Cabinet reshuffle became official, he confessed that he sometimes had no idea why he ended up at certain ministries. Once, he said, he was given the post of public health minister, a job he had no clue about whatsoever. “I didn’t know why [then PM Somchai Wongsawat] put me there, because all I saw was syringes and needles,” he deadpanned.

You can only thank God we aren’t living in a world where the public health minister is required to perform surgeries. But then again, it’s disturbing to know we have had guys like him lay down ideas, approve projects and sign off budgets for things they have no knowledge of.

And talk about disturbing, Pongthep Thepkanchana has become the latest victim to be thrown off the Education Ministry merry-go-round. He seemed like a decent, sincere politician, and in an article eight months ago, when he was appointed education minister, I vowed to demand dissolution of the Education Ministry if he was to lose the job in the next reshuffle. So, here it is: DISSOLVE THE MINISTRY FOR GOD’S SAKE!

The point is not that Pongthep appeared to be a capable guy. The point is that he was the 12th education minister since 2001 and every education reporter will tell you that the phenomenal frequency of changes have made everyone at the ministry lazy from top to bottom. That Pongthep’s successor, Chaturon Chaisang, is another “good” appointee offers little comfort, and neither does the argument that if the policy is great, it doesn’t matter who implements it.

Thailand’s education is next to backwater. Therefore, either the policy is not great, or those chosen to implement it aren’t, or simply haven’t had time to carry out anything. Or it could be everything combined. It could be that the policy is shortsighted and fouled by politics, a situation made worse by the frequent changes at the top.

To be fair to Chaturon, who was education minister before the 2006 coup, he should be comfortable when signing off projects. Can the same be said about Yingluck as defence minister? Of course, background in a related field is not a prerequisite when naming ministers these days, but isn’t putting Bridget Jones there stretching it a bit too much? Geena Davis could chair meetings of top American generals, but she was only playing a US president in a TV series.

Some analysts believe that Yingluck doubling as defence minister is a political strategy to increase Pheu Thai’s leverage on the military council responsible for making top-level reshuffles. Noted. But, again, did it really have to be her? 

People say we have to change things when things aren’t good. If that’s the case, things have been bad too regularly for comfort. One may argue that we change things not necessarily because they are bad, but because there is room for improvement. Well, define “improvement”, especially in the contexts of Chalerm getting jobs he doesn’t want, the revolving door at Education, and of Yingluck contemplating helicopter gunships and surface-to-air missiles.

There must be something good, some might think. All government changes, even ones effected by the world’s worst rulers, must contain at least some positives, mustn’t they? How about this Cabinet reshuffle?

There is something positive, actually, although it doesn’t concern what was “put into” the Cabinet line-up, but rather what was kept out of it. Jatuporn Promphan has missed out again and his loss, no offence, is many people’s gain.

For the rest of the changes, one has to be of a very optimistic mind to be remotely hopeful. Maybe Paveena Hongsakul as social development and human security minister can bring some confidence, but experts checking the facelift at the Commerce Ministry are still searching for promising signs. New Commerce Minister Niwatthamrong Boonsongpaisarn has vowed to restore faith in the scandalous rice price-pledging scheme, but the fact that he was already in the Cabinet begs a troubling question: If he’s really qualified to oversee this important government policy, why wasn’t he picked from the beginning?

When the sea is calm, it is all right to have sailors switch jobs on a ship. Cooks can play engineer and entertainers can play navigator. If they do so when the vessel is battling a big storm, it’s likely that the one giving the orders is drunk and wearing a life jacket.