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It must be a very revealing indeed for a government to be told by respondents to a poll that 77.7 per cent gave the thumbs down to the government's handling of the economy and rising cost of living.

How could any government hope to remain in office for long if 75.2 per cent said they were disappointed with the way it was dealing with the unrest in the deep South - and 71.8 per cent feel that the government's anti-corruption effort left much to be desired?

My inevitable conclusion is clear: Either the Bangkok University's pollsters were utterly unprofessional or terribly biased - or, the Thai people have finally spoken.

Yes, I could hear you shouting a third way to interpret this public opinion survey: Don't beat about the bush. This Cabinet simply doesn't pass the test.

I was trying desperately to leave the really bad news towards the end - for fear of piling too much negative news on the public all at once. But then, there is no avoiding the fact that good news is becoming a really scarce political commodity these days.

If there is any "good" news, under the unlikely event that you really insist on it, it is that Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej managed to avoid the ranking of being the "worst" member of the Cabinet. His good old friend, Interior Minister Chalerm Yoobamrung, has come to his rescue just at the right juncture.

It should be kept a national secret that could affect national confidence but since the papers have already broken that code of conduct in the name of transparency, I think it's only fair that you, as a member of the governed class, should know that your premier scored only 4.04 out of 10.

If it's any consolation, the poll shows Chalerm, with the worst performance at 3.39 out of 10. And that survey was conducted before the interior minister declared that he was proposing a law to declare part of Bangkok Metropolis directly under his ministry - which means Bangkokians would have no more say in any direct election of the governor in the future!

The three "top performers", according to the survey, aren't all that great either, mind you. They all failed to pass the half-way mark. That, I suspect, shows the big distinction between "performance" and "results".

The "best" Cabinet member, who got 4.96 points out of 10, was Deputy Premier and Commerce Minister Mingkwan Saengsuwan, followed by Tourism and Sports Minister Veerasak Kowsurat (4.93) and Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister Somsak Prissananantakul (4.91).

If you assume that the trio got relatively better marks because they had been seen on TV more often than the others to talk about their work, then how do you explain PM Samak's poor showing?

It doesn't make sense - if one can describe politics as a sensible business. After all, if on-air exposure is what counts for what pollsters call public "recall", the prime minister should without a doubt get the highest rating.

He was talking to the press every day - and before his latest emotional outburst - he also held formal press conferences twice a week. And that doesn't include his hour-long Sunday weekly: "Talking Samak's Style" talk show on Channel 11.

Mingkwan, the commerce minister handling the currently hot rice price issue, obviously could not compete for TV airtime with the more eloquent premier.

Tourism Minister Veerasak's soft-spoken style certainly was no comparison to the tough-talking prime minister. Agriculture Minister Somsak was only muddling through on TV when he faced the controversial questions on why farmers were still poor despite the high rice price around the world.

Why then does the public think the PM and his close friend Interior Minister Chalerm constitute such disastrous disappointments?

The obvious answer is, they simply don't get it. They think they are struggling to pave the way for the return of their patron.

They don't even realise that they are supposed to be running this country.