Many political and social critics believe that after four months in power, it is now clear the Thai public should not expect much change from the military junta and new government it put in place.

What is more important, they say, is for Thais, especially the middle class, to take responsibility for their role in perpetuating the ongoing cycle of inept and corrupt leadership and not only demand, but actively participate in the democracy they claim they really want.

"You can't call for democracy and then ask for coups or some other party to come and clean up the mess you helped put into office," reasoned Vipar Daomanee of Thammasat University. "We too often hear it's the uneducated, rural folk who easily allow corrupt candidates to reach political office, but what have the elite and the middle-class backed Council for National Security (CNS) done?"

Apart from removing Thaksin Shinawatra from office, critics charge, the CNS and its administration have made few achievements.

After tearing up the 1997 Constitution, their first project was to discuss and then pull back from raising the minimum drinking age from 18 to 25. It proposed, then halted, the implementation of new regulations on alcohol advertising. Similarly, they went for, then against, repealing the two- and three-digit lotteries, then up and down on mechanisms to curb capital inflows. Their latest wobbling now surrounds amendments to the Foreign Business Act.

"The government's lost tremendous trust and creditability by changing its policies back and forth," asserted Thitinan Pongsudhirak of Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Political Science. "You would have assumed a more competent government from these technocrats."

With the exception of allocating some additional money towards education, the repeated failure to introduce any significant improvements to Thai society, says Thailand Research Development Institute (TDRI) senior specialist Viroj na Ranong, reflects a lack of consensus among the ministers about the mission of the new government.

While some in the Surayud Chulanont administration are determined to introduce changes, others simply believe that everything would automatically improve without Thaksin. There are also those who are trying to compete with Thaksin by copying his style of political marketing.

"One minister asks his advisers now and then if the issues he is handling would be good PR material," Viroj said. "The dilemma of this government is that it doesn't like what Thaksin did but has been haunted by Thaksin's ghost all the time."

But we cannot continue blaming only the CNS for its bumbling, the critics assert. The CNS is merely a reflection of what Thais are willing to accept.

After all, many of the same people who helped put Thaksin in office and overlooked his "honest mistake" six years ago - his controversial assets disclosure - then rallied to oust him. Now they are apologising again for the undemocratic means employed to replace him, along with the mistakes made by the generals now in charge.

"The Thai middle class has fallen into the fallacy trap of black-and-white thinking that if you are not with [the coup group], you are with the other [Thaksin]," said the TDRI's Viroj. "It's the fear that if they can't win outright, then they will lose the battle, and Thaksin will come back to power, and the country will be ruined."

Viroj noted that education did not seem to guarantee better judgement, as proven by the fact that many intellectuals, technocrats, professionals and journalists have either supported the CNS for personal gain or simply been trapped in the false Thaksin-or-not dilemma.

"Who said people with higher education have a higher [political] morality than rural voters? It's the same false logic that contends rich politicians aren't corrupt. While the poor may get trapped by populism, the middle class also gets stuck in flawed ideologies. To me, this emphasises the fairness of the 'one man, one vote' system," Viroj said.

The larger problem is that the educated middle class refuses to question the elite's monopoly of Thai politics. Viroj estimated that there were only a few thousand men and a sprinkling of women in the Thai aristocracy continuously jostling among themselves for control of the country.

Whether members of the military, industry, police, technocracy or politics, this elite conspires to manipulate politics and tanks and guns to determine who will be in charge.

Most are likely to be guilty of corruption at some level - or even worse, as the recent bombings illustrate. So, regardless of which group is in power, they seldom fully expose one another.

"Our political history clearly demonstrates that none of these people will ever go to jail," Thitinan said.

"The [CNS] target is not about putting anyone in prison; it just wants to keep Thaksin and his people out of politics."

Thammasat's Vipar agreed the crooks were likely to escape legal punishment. "Thaksin will be allowed to return and live happily like other dictatorial leaders in the past."

During the past four months, the CNS has only further muddied these waters, says Yos Santasombat, an anthropology professor at Chiang Mai University.

It was time for the "educated" middle class to stop apologising for it, stop asking others to fix it and start demanding that the electoral process and other democratic checks and balances be respected, he said.

"Suppose we have a new constitution, and there is an election. We may get Chuan [Leekpai] or Abhisit [Vejjajiva], the very same people whom Thais sought to replace with Thaksin six years ago," said Yos. "What good will that do us?"

Yos, author of "Power and Personality: An Anthropological Study of the Thai Elite", stressed that Thailand must build a new political culture in which people place the country's political future in their own hands, not rotate it among the same elite.

Instead of blaming rural people for electing bad governments, the middle class should help strengthen grass-roots politics by supporting political decentralisation, such as provincial governor elections, Yos said.

"Some crooks may get elected, but we have to be patient, so that our democracy can blossom from below. But until we can link the middle class and grass-roots politics to establish political checks and balances, there will be no light at the end of the tunnel."

Viroj said that the middle class should not expect democracy to produce utopia overnight.

"Democracy is both the end and the means. There's no answer or guarantee of fully achieving its rewards, but it's important for us to play by the rules and not repeatedly abandon the game.

"Democracy may be full of weak points, but the question is: if you don't choose democracy, what's the alternative?" he said.

Nantiya Tangwisutijit

The Nation