Via Tim Worstall’s weekly Britblog Roundup (a particularly good crop this week) I’ve found an excellent, obviously very informed Comment is Free piece by Daniel Davies about how continual “reforms” are making life impossible not just for NHS staff and teachers, but also for computer programmers. One big government system, (and in-house government not contracted-out government) has worked). But at least one factor in that is that change was specifically barred while it was being set up.

This reminds me of something I was taught very early on as an editor – not to use the word “reform” in a story – since that implied a value judgement about the action. You should say “changes” or similar. Sadly this doesn’t seem to have made it to London – I do try occasionally, but I’m swimming against the tide.

(Apologies to the people to whom I promised this a week ago. I hope it is worth the wait…)

When I moved to Bangkok early in 1995 the events of 1992, in which some of Thailand’s brightest and best youngsters had given their blood in the cause of democracy, were the great unmentionable that hung in the air. Yet there as hope. There was a decent man as prime minister – Chuan Leekpai – and if he’d made the necessary accommodations to the voters in appointing some members of his cabinet, well nostalgia for the technocrat government of Anand Panyarachun (appointed by the military in 1991 but distinctly independent-minded) was tinged with acceptance that this was the price of democracy. Regarding military rule the attitude was clear: Never again!

Gradually, however, over the five years I lived in Thailand, the mood soured. It was not that there was any longing for military rule. But there was increasing cynicism and despair as a succession of elections (more or less annual – forced by political manouevring) produced a depressing run of prime ministers, from the ex-road contractor Banharn Silpa-acha to the thuggish former general Chavalit Yongchaiyudh to the final one of this democratic round, the just deposed Thaksin Shinawatra. (Chuan had another go before Thaksin.) As The Economist commented in 1996 (November 23), “Elections … often produce the best government money can buy, rather than a good one.”

Thaksin was, for Thailand, a new sort of prime minister – very much from and of the Bangkok super-wealthy commercial class. But experience elsewhere suggests that even successful businesspeople find the transition to dealing with the slippery uncertainties, the necessary horsetrading, of politics, difficult. I was at the Foreign Correspondent Club on the night Thaksin addressed it as ”likely next PM”. It wasn’t a success. He speaks excellent English, but had been given a poorly written speech full of multisyllables. The club members are an anarchic lot, and quickly bored; many soon migrated to the back of the room and started playing pool and chatting. Thaksin was visibly angry. That’s not culturally usual in Thailand, and it wasn’t a good sign of a flexible, democratic character.

Yet Thailand’s troubles in trying to maintain a democratic regime cannot be blamed on any one man – even one as rich as Thaksin, who recently sold his family firm, tax-free, for $1.9bn. After all, this is the 18th coup since 1932 – there is something institutional about the Thai polity that allows, perhaps even forces, the military to step in at regular intervals – and it is not solely for the obvious reason of protecting their own interests.

The country is deeply, fundamentally split between city and country, educated and uneducated, in ways that make selecting a reasonable parliament a tremendous challenge. Bangkok isn’t the problem. It has a tremendously sophisticated, aware populace, led by an elite that is strongly attached to democratic ideals. I watched the city during the election campaign of 1995, when it voted with astonishing solidarity to keep the Chuan government of “angels”, as the press had, not entirely accurately, dubbed it. But it mattered not a jot.
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