The incoming cabinet's pledge to crack down on corruption looks odd when the government's flagship policy, the rice-pledging scheme, remains enveloped in secrecy and, according to its critics, riddled with graft.
At the first meeting of her newly reshuffled cabinet on Tuesday, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra led her ministers and senior officials in declaring they wanted to crack down on corruption in the bureaucracy.
She said a clampdown on corruption would help bring about effective governance and national prosperity. Ms Yingluck also claimed the government had always practised good governance and transparency and had been open to public scrutiny.
The unusual exercise in which the entire cabinet and senior government officials showed up and publicly announced their anti-graft conviction amounts to a "social contract" that is legally binding.
The prime minister deserves applause for having the courage to tell the public what her government intends to do to rid the country of its worst scourge which has infected society at every level.
The words alone are encouraging and promising. But words alone do not suffice and must be matched with actions, which apparently remain elusive, judging by the government's record over the past two years under Ms Yingluck's leadership.
The prime minister's claim that her government has always attached importance to good governance and transparency rings hollow and does not reflect reality.
The rice scheme, the government's flagship populist policy, has been shrouded in secrecy from the start.
Every piece of information about the scheme is treated as confidential, including details about how much rice has been sold, to whom and at what prices, how much rice is still held in the stockpiles, and so on.
Most of her cabinet and senior officials appear to know little about what has been going on with the scheme. To lend credibility to her words, the premier must first bring the rice-pledging programme into the open.
Finance deputy permanent secretary Supa Piyajitti, who heads the scheme's accounting panel, told a Senate committee on Tuesday the programme was plagued with graft at every step starting with the number of farmers registering to join it, which she says are inflated; and a scam in which paddy which has already been pledged is recycled and pledged again because of a loophole in a regulation which allows millers to keep the paddy up to 50 days before it is milled.
She also complained she was denied access to information about the scheme from the Commerce Ministry.
Even before Ms Supa's whistleblowing about the massive losses suffered under the scheme, Horticultural Science Society president Anant Dalodom and a private sector anti-corruption network had warned about cheating and various loopholes.
The government ignored them. Unless the government starts taking action and heeds the well-meaning suggestions of its critics, Prime Minister Yingluck's declaration can be dismissed as mere publicity and image building, which would be a shame, as a crackdown on graft is well overdue.