• 
• 

Published on February 3, 2008

What is this all about? Ah! It's about the startling confession made by outgoing Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont that he has been unwilling to serve as national leader for the past 16 months, but that he has done it out of necessity.

He would never accept the task if he were able to turn the clock back! Sounds just like self-pity, or a lame excuse? Surely, this is an insult after the injury done to all of us. And it's the cause for the odd turn of events, which eventually brought us to the pathetic political situation.

We can see the light now as to why the outgoing government's performance has been so sloppy, and produced such a mediocre result. We now know why the team, particularly the chief, has been unresponsive to the public's call for real and result-oriented action.

We fully understand why there has been a stark lack of a sense of mission. The early positive public response when Surayud took office was misplaced. He was highly overrated, a poor choice for those who picked him to deal with the moment of crisis.

It's because Surayud, as he admitted, was reluctant to accept the mission of national restructuring and reforms that the people were seeking after over five years of moral decay and excessive greed. That mission has been against his will and his true self all along.

What would he rather have been doing?

His response to that was even more pathetic. He would have preferred a long and uninterrupted sleep. That's what he enjoys more than performing his duties with a sense of responsibility to serve the people.

With that confession as a departing shot - painful to all of us - the people have the right to ask: why the heck did he have to force himself to stay on for 16 months, leaving the country without direction and finally in dire straits?

His Cabinet is ridiculed for having achieved nothing of substance. Dubbed as being in "neutral transmission" for their indifference, aloofness and even ignorance in response to national problems and pressure, the team of ageing Cabinet members simply outlasted their usefulness.

Asked whether he would return if asked to do so, or if a crisis were to beckon, Surayud's response was predictably negative. That scenario must have been based on the presumption that there would be no other choice around and that he is indispensable.

Now the Surayud team is on its way out, without caring for any transition ceremony or having the courtesy to tell the public what the so-called "morality administration" achieved during this lost time.

Well, the Surayud team is not actually without anything to boast about. The administration's outstanding legacy is its success in paving the way for Thaksin's nominees and cronies to have regained power through the election with relative ease.

All along, the self-styled man on high moral ground had been preaching "reconciliation, unity, no vengeance, love, fraternity, peaceful coexistence… and blah… blah… blah" in order to have an excuse for not having performed any of the hard tasks the public expected of him.

There were more than a few times that clearly signalled the need for Surayud to step down so that somebody else of a higher calibre and gall could run the country with some productive results - political and educational reforms among others, not to mention the economic problems.

In the past few days, outgoing Cabinet members still have the nerve to bid farewell and ask their respective successor to do this and that… blah… blah… blah. This was even more pathetic. What have they been doing all these months other than killing time and warming seats?

Now that the Surayud team is departing, hopefully for good, the people are left with the unmistakable sense that the present state poses a true dilemma - between the devil and the deep blue sea, or from the frying pan into the fire, so to speak.

There might be some consolation in the fact that it is better to face oncoming risks with newcomers rather than to get bogged down in nothingness with a lame-duck government with no sense of urgency. Dynamic politics, even if conducted in the gutter, are still better than a static system in a listless condition.

Incoming prime minister Samak Sundaravej looks like a better bargain than having any other nominee or crony of Thaksin as national leader, which would lead to a greater shame than is necessary.

In the past few days, Samak showed some degree of independence and leadership by rejecting some nominations of cabinet members who look truly undesirable and despicable if not outright appalling.

If Samak could not stand what he regards as dimwits and the intellectually unwashed, how can the learned and civilised public cope with such lowbrows and cronies when they work as government ministers?

Samak would have been the first to feel uneasy about sitting with those misfits if he had not weeded them out.

After all, he has to be seen as the national leader who is partly or wholly responsible for what happens from now on.

No need to wish him good luck. He has already had a lot, more than he bargained for, even before winning the premiership.

Sopon Onkgara

The Nation