When storm clouds loom and thunder strikes, we think of one person. When the monsoon hits and water falls from Bangkok skies, his face appears in our dreams: Lord Mayor of Bangkok, wading the knee-deep floods of Ratchadaphisek Road like a horseman of the aqua-calypse, having come straight from his 16-million-baht office which, until recently, overlooked a 39-million-baht lighting décor.
Wet and worried, we curse the sunless sky of the past week. The rain will be with us for at least four more months. Which is bad enough, until you remember that the governor will be with us for another nine.
Maybe it's our own fault. Our fault for believing that any man has the capability to rescue us from rain, flood, fire, traffic horror, the expensive skytrain, snakes in a toilet, fake CCTVs, horrific New Year neon-land, etc. But above all, it's partly our fault for ticking No 16 in the last governor election out of the fear that No 1 was a proxy of the dark side: Bangkokians chose MR Sukhumbhand Paribatra of the Democrats (1.25 million votes) just to prevent Pongsapat Pongcharoen of Pheu Thai (1.07 million) from taking office and cementing the rise of his Yingluck Shinawatra-led party. Democracy hurts. Elections are a deathtrap. We chose him even though, it was clear then, we felt he wasn't the best candidate this City of Lost Angels deserved.
We can do better next time, hopefully, when our sense returns.
This past week the sullen governor has been subjected to much criticism and ridicule, meme jokes and photoshopped quips, and only Aung San Suu Kyi's visit spared him from more front-page splashes.
At a news conference, the governor apologised for the inconvenience caused by the flood -- an admirable gesture -- though he admitted that "it will happen again" because it's the nature of our city and then, in a poetic turn of phrase, "water flows from a higher place to a lower place". He added that in early 2017 the first of the three giant drainage tunnels, a 2.4-billion-baht megaproject to fix our water blues, will open in Bang Sue and two more will begin construction. By that time, MR Sukhumbhand will have seen the end of his second four-year term. For us it already seems an eternity.
Elected twice, why is he so resented? Let's pause and recall that in the late 1990s, MR Sukhumbhand was regarded as a progressive figure, a bearer of hope in the infested water of Thai politics. In 1999, as a Democrat MP and deputy foreign minister, the man was on the front page for an entirely different reason: an armed group of Karen students laid siege to the Myanmar embassy and in the tense negotiations that followed MR Sukhumbhand offered to trade places with the hostages and rode in a helicopter with the five gunmen to the border where the situation was resolved without anyone getting hurt. Later he said that Thailand did not need to give any explanation to the Myanmar military junta, who were offended by our soft treatment of the "terrorists".
What a liberal stance from our minister, a scene out of a Robert Redford-starring thriller -- 17 years later, how we miss that side of the man who now takes care of our lives.
It's more than a mere fed-up feeling -- we were fed up with other governors too whenever water rose in the sois. But there's something deeper in our frustration with MR Sukhumbhand: a loss of faith, a total disconnect from the head of City Hall. In the past four years the governor, a true aristocrat, has appeared cocooned in his tone-deaf entitlement even though his job requires more streetwise participation (or at least a semblance of it).
It doesn't mean he has to carry a broomstick around, but he is aloof, and he has said too many wrong things -- "live on a hill if you don't want floods"; "don't call it a flood, call it water waiting to be drained" -- and then came a barrage of scandals: the procurement of musical instruments for schools that have no music teachers; the dummy CCTVs; the 39-million-baht New Year lighting, a psychedelic paradise that is being probed by the Office of the Auditor-General. Lastly, the 16.5-million-baht refurbishment of his office, which is also being investigated by internal affairs (the governor countered that it's not just "his office" but several rooms in City Hall).
The rain won't let up, the governor won't give up, the residents are fed up. Nine more months, and we're through (if we're allowed to have an election!). The Democrats, who haven't seen eye to eye with the governor, must now think hard how to keep Bangkokians on their side. For us, the lesson is painful: do not vote out of fear. Now let's get our water pumps ready.
Kong Rithdee is Life editor, Bangkok Post.