THE Thai stock market has been rising since the Supreme Court verdict last Friday on the assets seizure case against the former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Analysts have been recommending Thai shares. "Clarity" was cited as the reason for the surge. Indeed, legal clarity may have been gained from the verdict. It was formally reaffirmed that there must not be such a thing as six degrees of separation when it comes to the power of office and personal business interests.
It is so murky that even people in the know can say nothing about realistic political scenarios for Thailand over the rest of the year and beyond.
Meanwhile, as the nation braces for political high noon and a possible maelstrom that would likely drag the country down the rabbit hole, several critical issues facing the nation have been pushed into the background, at a very high price.
The toxic issues (and I do not mean only pollutants here) pertaining to the Map Ta Phut Industrial Estate - the substratum of our industrial development and foreign direct investment prospects, as well as our GDP growth - are at a hopeless standoff. The whole thing is a sham that is relatively easy to solve if we own up to the truth that many perceive as being more noxious than the industrial waste.
Why hasn't anybody told the public there hasn't been any independent scientific study on the health impact of industrial contamination on the people and environment around the area? Two-year research found that the pollutants at Map Ta Phut no more affected people's health than those affecting people in Bangkok.
Why hasn't anybody admitted that the "smart alec" who stipulated the pollution index (that defines the pollution threshold) at Map Ta Phut ignored standard figures used in industrialised countries, which are much higher than ours? Why hasn't anybody told the truth that currently there are no laws or constitutional requirements for EIAs or the new HIA procedures?
Why hasn't anybody admitted that all the plants at the estate inflated their pollution outputs filed with the government so they could avoid any possible fines and penalties that might arise after the plants are up and running?
Nobody dares to admit these things because in this political climate, it spells "kamikaze".
The conflict in the South rages, but no coherent measures have been put in place to deal effectively and fairly with the situation. Everything we are doing there amounts to patching a flat tyre that will soon become unpatchable. There are simply too many nails in it.
Farmers are now hurting due to lower rice prices. That is only a tiny part of the problem. Farmers are poor, not so much at the exploiting hands of millers or middlemen, or because of depressed prices, but because they do not have enough land to make a living from. The government can guarantee the rice price as long as it wants, especially when it fills the pockets of some of those involved, but without a serious and well-thought-out land reform programme, Thai farmers will remain poor. It is a crime that we eat off their sweat and do nothing to show our gratitude.
The country is going through one of its worst droughts, but it will not be the worst we'll ever see. The government should come up with an effective water and irrigation management scheme for the whole country and be vigorous in its implementation. But it hasn't done nearly enough, or anything, because it has been so preoccupied with how to quell the political intensifying political unrest.
With good intent, the government came up with stimulus packages and measures to revive the economy. Sadly, these have failed to stimulate because most never got off the ground. If the house is on fire, how can one think of upgrading the kitchen?
Perhaps more worrisome is the lack of long-term economic direction for the country. Without it, we will fall further behind our neighbours in terms of our comparative advantage. In 1967, when Asean was formed, the GDP of the Philippines was second in Asia after Japan. Treachery, corruption and infighting robbed the Filipinos of the prosperity that should have been theirs.
Last but not least, we are seeing a growing a class of people who can do no wrong. These are people who claim they are victims, but ignore the fact that they are perpetrators. They say they want to return the country to democracy. And we want to shout to them that we too want it back. There can be no democracy if people do not have real regard for the rule of law and due process. There can be no democracy if some segments of the public are fed and fall prey to interminable false propaganda. There can be no democracy if our education is in such a shambles. There can be no democracy if people do not have consideration for the rights of others. The popular demand for democracy is geared not towards real democracy, but tyranny, autocracy, oligarchy and the warped epistemological mentality of "If I say it is true, it is true".
Are we past the 11th hour of a good faith, compromise or reconciliation? When legal means have to be used to solve political problems, 67 million lives are being held hostage in a despicable impasse. In the end, it is not the billions of baht we stand to lose to pursue legal cases that may follow the February 26 verdict. It is not the billions of taxpayers' money already wasted to deal with the political cancer of the last few years. It is our collective future that we have to pay in ransom.
