The Faustian promise in a blaming game
Through a tangled web of pride, vanity, moral superiority, Nietzschean negativity, Faustian promises and pseudo-Jedi cool, the junta keeps to its playbook by blaming everyone except themselves. On Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon’s bling-ring scandal: Lay off him, said PM Prayut Chan-o-cha, metaphorically patting his deputy’s back and shooing nosy reporters away. It’s the media’s fault for digging and hounding, instead of just experiencing the bedazzlements of the four-million-baht watch and retina-piercing diamond gleam on the deputy’s elegant wrist and finger. The media are trying to drive a wedge between the two Ps, the PM said. “If nobody is beside me, I will tell you, I will be fiercer,” he stressed. “I will fully exercise my power.”
Fancying himself as The Last Jedi, the PM spoke like someone who has heard the call from the Dark Side coming out of the abyss — and responded.
On the election, which may or may not happen next year, or ever: It’s the politicians’ fault for revving up their engine even though the key hasn’t been stuck in the ignition. “Any of you here want me to lift the ban? The politicians keep asking for it.” said the PM on his Kalasin trip. During that northeastern expedition, the PM spoke from the back of a truck, donned ethnic clothes, danced with locals, promised a shower of money. In short, ticking all the boxes of political tricks favoured by the politicians he detests.
But he explained that he didn’t come to Isan to campaign. That’s what politicians do, and he’s no politician on a dusty campaign trail. “But if parties campaign, they should talk like me [on what they will do for the country].” The problem is, nobody gets to talk except him.
On the falling income of some southern provinces due to low rubber prices: The PM, responding to former Democrat chief Chuan Leekpai’s letter asking the government to fix the economic decline in the South, argued his regime “gives more to the South than any other government”. Again, it’s the sin of politicians, the species created from the dark depths of some ancient constitution who should be strung to a post and whipped. It’s not “when” there will be an election, said the PM in response to ex-chief Chuan, it’s about how any government can fulfill its promises made during a campaign.
The promise “to return happiness”. To smoothen the wrinkles and bridge the divide. To promote transparency. To have an election in 2016, then 2017, then 2018. No, it’s not the politicians who made those promises.
The emptiest promise of all is the one about treating everyone fairly under the same law, with the same level of scrutiny, through the same moral outrage. Gen Prawit’s bling-bling fiasco at first sounded like another meme-friendly scandal that would peter out in a few days. But when the PM came out in his defence and shifted the blame to the media for “targeting” Gen Prawit, it was clear that the fair-and-square promise is just a vague rule with an exception when it comes to the inner circle — just like what politicians do with their circles of family and friends.
Gen Prawit has to explain the existence of the watch and the ring to the National Anti-Corruption Commission, if that will amount to anything in the end. Remember Rajabhakti Park? Remember when Yingluck Shinawatra was hounded for her 2.5-million-baht watch. Flamboyant wealth and the blithe showiness of rich people — politicians or others — make me squeamish, but when one is treated with strictness and the other leniency, not to mention a pat on the back, I wonder what credibility we can still assign to the messiah who can’t practise what he preaches every day on TV.
Those who believe in the military as a white-horsed saviour who rescued us from an apocalypse, I admit, did have a point — at the beginning, for about three seconds in May 2014. By now, it’s clear that the nation has signed a Faustian contract with an ink drew from blood, as we ran away from one Dark Lord right into the outstretched claws of another, from Darth Vader to Snoke, or vice versa, if you’ll permit the analogy from another galaxy. And despite the ample display of unbecoming incidents — the watch is just the latest — junta supporters still make justifications and plough on, either out of ignorance or a conscious choice that this is a necessary evil, the one they want, regardless of the cost in the long run.
Not that an election next November will solve everything. But it’s a start, a promise, a way to regain some dignity, and the junta should show its sincerity by at least sticking to the promise and, please, stop blaming everyone else for the ills that have plagued us. After 41 months, it just no longer sticks.