The Prayuth Chan-ocha "military cabinet" has generated less buzz this week than the news that Hello Kitty is not actually a cat (She's a British girl).
But that is predictable. Names of people to make up the provisional government have been reported — correctly mostly — days before they were officially confirmed.
Either the list has been prepared well in advance or the pool of qualified people from the pro-coup camp is running dry.
One minister has served in three coup-installed governments in the past, for example, while two of them have served in two coup-related cabinets.
Besides, who would get excited about this new government when we ordinary citizens don’t have anything to do with it? We didn’t get to pick any members of the cabinet and none of them will be reporting to us.
From its overall appearance, the new cabinet is a pro-military, pro-establishment camp. No minister appears to represent a different voice, politically, economically, socially, militarily or culturally. It looks set to be a cabinet of conformists, not a team of rivals like the one Abraham Lincoln assembled to help reconcile political factions and ideologies before the American Civil War.
Considering the face of the new cabinet, and its one-sided mien, it appears the one-year transition period will end in even deeper polarisation.
How can unity be forged when only one group of seemingly like-minded people — soldiers, civil servants or business people — gets to consolidate its hold on power while leaving other interests out in the cold?
That the ministers are mostly military officers, ex-commanders and bureaucrats, is also part of a well-known plan. Prime Minister Prayuth has emphasised several times before that he is here to reclaim the dignity of civil servants whose abilities and performance have supposedly been trampled over by empire-building, selfish and greedy politicians.
So we are in for a year of living predictably. It’s not that predictability is a bad thing. A level of certainty and continuity is a desirable asset, especially in doing business. In politics, however, this type of predictability that the junta is after — the determination to being freedom under control, to freeze progressive aspirations of certain groups of people and force Thailand back to a hierarchical order that presumably existed before the Thaksin era — is unrealistic.
I don’t mean the new PM and his freshly appointed government will fail in their tasks. The new government may be able to do everything as planned — implementing train projects as envisioned and running water management schemes the way they see fit — but it won’t be able to stop non-conservative agendas from surging back.
It’s true the junta will use all the tools currently at its disposal — the government, the National Legislative Assembly and the National Reform Council — to lay down new rules that will reduce the power of the executive arm while increasing the oversight for bureaucrats, the judicial and independent agencies.
It’s likely the powers-that-be will make sure these new rules or laws cannot be amended by elected lawmakers once a new poll is allowed.
The junta may believe that writing deadlock explicitly into the charter will guarantee its provisional work will not go to waste. But recent history has shown us otherwise.
Even though politicians may agree to run in the new election under the rules set forth by the coup-appointed legislators — like Pheu Thai did in the 2012 election — there is no reason for them to accept every law issued by the military-controlled mechanisms once they become representatives.
If the new charter is made to be unchangeable, it will simply become the source of new conflicts, just like the 2011 version was.
It is difficult to imagine where or how the long-running rift will end. For a year, however, the military cabinet can rest assured that it will get to govern the country smoothly, with no dissent. This is an unusual time, as Gen Prayuth has often said. There is no room for opposition or free speech.
The junta or the new government may indeed find they are fans of Hello Kitty. The cartoon cat (or human girl or metaphor for a nation’s citizens) can have no say. It has no mouth.
Atiya Achakulwisut is Contributing Editor, Bangkok Post.