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Lying in State

I think I got it wrong.   

When Samak claimed that there was only one casualty on October 6 1976 (and he was left-wing, or ‘communist' in Samak's view, so serve him right), and that the Tak Bai corpses occurred when people standing in the backs of trucks fell over dead as a result of Ramadan fasting, we had a choice. 

The old duffer was either telling self-serving whoppers to save his own skin and protect people who share his opinions about outcasts like left-wing students and Muslims.  Or his grasp of reality is weakening to the point where the decent thing is to nod and smile and take no notice of what he says.  Scout around for a nice nursing home, maybe. 

Now, I was inclined to assume insincerity rather than incipient senile dementia.  The thought of a faltering brain at the head of the country's affairs is rather more disturbing than a politician whose word can't always be trusted.   

I mean, what politician's word can be trusted?  Sir Humphrey Appleby once had the greatest difficulty in explaining to PM Jim Hacker exactly what a ‘lie' was.  ‘I know this is a difficult concept to get across to a politician.' 

And there is a strong tradition of not telling the truth in the Thai government system.  Why, almost the very first act of the working day of every government official in the land is to tell an untruth. 

They have to sign in, you see.  They sign their name, note the time and then go and do whatever it is that government officials do all day.  Now they do sign their real names, no shenanigans there.  It's the time that is a lie. 

The theory is that the list of arrival times slowly progresses until the official kick-off.  Then a red line is drawn and any official who arrives later than that has to sign below the line so everyone knows they came late.   

It's never worked.  Some dedicated souls actually arrive before the sign-in book is available, start work and then forget to sign in by the witching hour.  Not many of that sort, though.  Far more sign in and then take the kids to school, wander off in search of breakfast, get in a bit of shopping, whatever. 

But the biggest problem is the civil service sense of beauty and proportion.  If the unit has 30 officials and an 8.30 starting time, then, for maximum formal harmony, the first official arrives at 7 and a new name should be added at regular 3 minute intervals.  No matter when they do actually arrive. 

But suppose one official decides to tell the truth (an unlikely occurrence, I know).  And let us stretch your credulity even further and assume that this official arrives on time.  At 8.25, say.  This means that there will be a disproportionately long interval since the previous entry of 7.15, and 26 later-arriving officials somehow have to squeeze their entries into a 5-minute time-frame.   

Our honest official has committed a cardinal sin.  She has made her colleagues look like liars.  (Which of course they are, but that is beside the point.)  So what happens to these honest but awkward entries?  Well, this is what liquid paper was invented for.   

Having started their working day with an untruth, one should not be surprised that civil servants conduct many other activities in a similar manner.  Planning and reporting, for example. The major difference between the two activities is a matter of changing the tense rather than actually doing something in between the one and the other. 

This is not to absolve the private sector from deliberately and knowingly saying what is not true.  They advertise after all. And it has been decided in an American court that expecting commercials to tell the truth is an unreasonable and legally unenforceable assumption.  A customer complained that the hamburger they were actually served was significantly different from the scrumptious-looking object in the ads.  The judge decided that the reasonable person would be well aware of advertising practices and could not expect the product to match the description.  Case dismissed. 

So back to Samak.  Lying or losing it?   

Well, this past week he started the round of ASEAN capitals that every new PM has to do.  And in Lao he decided to reminisce about how long it was since he'd last been to Vientiane.  Then, to a collective intake of breath by both his hosts and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials who had prepared the briefing paper he'd not bothered to read, he announced he was very pleased to be back in the Kingdom of Lao.   

Does anyone out there know a good nursing home? 

 

About author:  Bangkokians with long memories may remember his irreverent column in The Nation in the 1980's. During his period of enforced silence since then, he was variously reported as participating in a 999-day meditation retreat in a hill-top monastery in Mae Hong Son (he gave up after 998 days), as the Special Rapporteur for Satire of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and as understudy for the male lead in the long-running ‘Pussies -not the Musical' at the Neasden International Palladium (formerly Park Lane Empire).

And if you believe any of those stories, you might believe his columns

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