To deal with troubles caused by anti-government protesters, the caretaker government has resorted to imposing a state of emergency on Bangkok and a few surrounding areas. Whether this action is effective enough to quell the dissent instead of provoking even stiffer resistance, we shall see soon enough.
But one thing is clear at the moment. The government under Yingluck Shinawatra has, to use a modern political metaphor, reached “the end of the soi” and is finding no way out in so far as its flagship rice pledging policy is concerned.
It seems everyone in the country, including the policy’s main beneficiaries, have now agreed the programme to pay farmers higher-than-world prices for their rice is a flop — everyone, that is, except Ms Yingluck and her Pheu Thai cohorts.
Caretaker Finance Minister Kittiratt Na-Ranong is looking for 130 billion baht to pay the farmers for the rice they pledged before October last year. But everywhere he turns, prospective lenders shy away for fear the transactions may not be compliant with the law. To be sure, pressure by the protesters may also add to their unwillingness to lend.
The commercial banks’ response to Mr Kittiratt’s approach is unprecedented. The government is supposed to be the most credit-worthy client. Their rejection of its loan request is nothing short of a slap on the face.
Except for the government’s supporters, there seems to be little sympathy from the general public. In my view, Ms Yingluck, Mr Kittiratt and other politicians in charge of implementing the policy deserve every bit of scorn heaped upon them.
Even before the policy was implemented, many concerned citizens had spoken out against it, warning the scheme was prone to corruption and could bring ruin to the Thai rice market both domestically and internationally.
Ms Yingluck and her accomplices could brush aside those warnings as ill-intentioned by "the regular critics". But the same could not be said of Veerapong Ramangkul, a prominent economist who was brought in to chair the government’s Strategic Formulation Committee for Reconstruction and Future Development in 2011.
Just before accepting the post, Mr Veerapong wrote a newspaper column in which he described the policy as problematic in both theory and practice. All agricultural produce-pledging programmes implemented since 1986, he said, had met with abject failure, wasting a huge amount of public money, with most of the benefits going to a select group of millers and exporters, ministers and politicians while the farmers got only crumbs.
To expect the price of rice to rise by hoarding it was illusory because Thailand, while a major producer, was one among many. Mr Veerapong said past schemes were rife with corruption, and then went on to explain how it was done.
Once the policy was implemented, he warned, the government would find it hard to abandon it because of pressure from vested interest groups. The government "is likely to suffer a headache trying to find an exit", he concluded.
How prescient his words have become. The government is now finding itself unable to admit failure, even while the programme has suffered losses most likely in the hundreds of billions of baht.
Against democratic principles it has avowed to uphold, Ms Yingluck’s government has kept details of the scheme under wraps, refusing to tell the public how much pledged rice is kept in warehouses, how much has been sold and at what price, and who the purchasers are.
One thing we know is the government-to-government deals on which the government had banked its scheme did not exist.
The rice pledging crisis has ensnared not only Ms Yingluck’s ministers but also some prominent academics and at least one major businessman.
Historian Nidhi Eoseewong, political scientist Kasian Tejapira, economist Pichit Likitkijsomboon and business tycoon Dhanin Chearavanont have been taken to task for their outspoken support for the programme.
Mr Dhanin, the CP boss, has been reminded of a press interview where he said if no exporters were willing to buy the rice at the prices set by the scheme, he would do it himself.
At the start of the programme, then deputy prime minister Kittiratt ensured the public the government could earn a similar level of income as previous years from selling rice in smaller amount at higher prices.
But if the programme "incurred losses of more than 60 billion baht, which was the amount lost in the price guarantee programme of the previous [Democrat] government, then the Pheu Thai government obviously cannot stay. And no need to ask what I, as the deputy prime minister for economic affairs, should do to take responsibility", Mr Kittiratt told the press.
Now the chickens have come home to roost.
In an open letter last week, former finance minister MR Pridiyathorn Devakula branded the Yingluck administration a "failed government", demanding Ms Yingluck step down for her government’s failure in a number of key policy initiatives, including the rice pledging programme.
As a matter of fact, the failure and damage caused by Ms Yingluck’s regime extend far beyond the few initiatives cited by MR Pridiyathorn, including for example, the one-tablet-per-child and the first-time car buyer programmes.
Her campaign promise to bring down the cost of living has become a laughing stock now that the prices of basic consumer goods and fuels have all risen to the dismay of low and middle-income people.
But there’s no need to cite all her failures. The devastating effects of the rice pledging scheme on a great number of farmers alone should be sufficient to justify the demand for her and her cabinet to show responsibility in the way any civilised government would have done.
In addition to damage done to the reputation of Thai rice in the world market and losses to the public coffers, so far at least eight farmers have committed suicide, with the failure to be paid for their rice believed to be the cause.
The most honourable thing for Ms Yingluck to do is to make a sincere apology to the Thai people and take a graceful exit.
Wasant Techawongtham is former news editor, Bangkok Post.